Convert JPG to PNG

How to convert JPG to PNG — 3 steps

1. 1

   Add your JPG files

   Drop in one image or a batch. Conversion runs locally, so a folder of camera-resolution photographs is handled by your own processor.

2. 2

   Convert to PNG

   Each file is decoded and rewritten losslessly. Every pixel of the JPG is preserved exactly as it currently exists.

3. 3

   Download the PNGs

   Save the results. From here the image can be edited and re-saved repeatedly without accumulating any further compression damage.

Converting to PNG preserves quality — it does not restore it

This is the misconception worth addressing directly, because it drives a lot of unnecessary conversion. PNG is a lossless format, so people reasonably assume that converting a JPG to PNG improves it. It does not. JPG discarded detail when the file was first created, and that detail is gone. Converting to PNG stores what remains with perfect fidelity — including every compression artefact, every bit of banding in the sky, every halo around text.

What you get is a faithful, larger copy of an already-degraded image. Expect the file to grow substantially, often by five to ten times, because PNG stores photographic data far less efficiently than JPG does. That is the cost of losslessness, and for a photograph it usually buys nothing at all.

The distinction that matters is between preserving and restoring. PNG preserves the image from this point forward, which is genuinely valuable if the file is about to be edited. It cannot restore what was lost before you arrived. If the original camera file or a higher-quality version exists, start from that instead — no conversion recovers detail that was never in the file you are converting.

When the conversion earns its place

The strongest case is editing. Every time a JPG is opened, changed, and saved it is compressed again, and the losses stack up across a series of edits until artefacts become visible. Converting to PNG at the start of the work stops that accumulation: you can crop, adjust, and re-save as many times as you like with no further degradation, and export back to JPG only once at the end.

The second case is a requirement rather than a preference. Some systems accept only PNG — certain app stores, icon and asset pipelines, some print and design workflows, and tools that need a lossless input. Screenshots and graphics containing text also belong in PNG on principle, since JPG compression is at its worst exactly where black meets white, and if such an image arrived as a JPG, converting at least prevents further damage.

One thing the conversion cannot do is create transparency. PNG supports an alpha channel, but a JPG has no transparency information to carry across, so the converted file is fully opaque — the white background stays white. Making part of the image transparent is a separate editing step, such as removing the background, rather than something a format change delivers.

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