Does converting JPG to PNG improve quality?

No. This is the single most common misunderstanding about the conversion. PNG is lossless, so it preserves exactly what it is given — but what it is given is the already-compressed JPG. Every artefact the JPG contains is faithfully copied into the PNG. Nothing is recovered, because the information was discarded when the JPG was created and is not in the file to recover.

Then why convert at all?

Two good reasons. A destination might simply require PNG — plenty of forms, print workflows and design tools do. And if the image is about to be edited and re-saved several times, converting to PNG first stops each save from compounding the loss, which JPEG does.

Will the PNG be bigger?

Almost certainly, and often by a factor of five or ten for a photograph. JPEG achieves its size by discarding information; PNG keeps everything. For a screenshot or a graphic with flat colour the increase is much smaller, because those compress losslessly very well.

Does converting to PNG give my image transparency?

No. PNG can store transparency; it does not create any. A JPG has no transparent areas to preserve, so the PNG will be fully opaque. Removing a background is an editing operation, not a format conversion.

Convert JPG to PNG

Straightforward, and worth knowing what it does and does not achieve.

Choose an imageor drag it here, or paste it

JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF and BMP. Your file is processed on your device.

How do I convert a JPG to PNG?

Add the JPG below and download the PNG. The conversion is exact — every pixel of the JPG is preserved, because PNG is lossless — but it cannot recover detail the JPG discarded when it was first saved. Converting is useful when a destination demands PNG, or to stop further loss before an image is edited repeatedly.

What this conversion actually does

It takes the pixels currently in your JPG and writes them into a PNG, exactly. No pixel changes value. That is what lossless means, and it is a genuinely useful property.

What it does not do — and this is worth being blunt about, because a great many pages imply otherwise — is improve the image. A JPG is the result of information having been thrown away. Converting the survivor to a lossless format preserves the survivor. The detail that went is not stored anywhere in the file, so nothing can bring it back.

Two cases where it is the right move

The destination requires PNG. Some upload forms, print workflows, document systems and design tools specify it, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes out of habit. Either way it is not an argument you can win from outside, and converting takes a second.

The image is about to be edited repeatedly. Every time a JPEG is opened, changed and saved, it is re-compressed, and the losses compound — crop, save, adjust, save, annotate, save, and the fifth version is visibly worse than the first. Converting to PNG at the start of that process means the intermediate saves cost nothing. Export back to JPG once, at the end.

The size increase, and what to do about it

A 2 MB photographic JPG can become a 15 MB PNG. That is not a bug: photographs are continuous tone with no two adjacent pixels quite alike, which is the worst possible input for lossless compression and the best possible input for lossy.

If the PNG then has to fit a limit, understand that PNG has no quality dial. The only lever is resolution — fewer pixels. The compressor handles that and tells you it is doing it, but the honest answer in most cases is that a lossy format is the right one and the requirement for PNG was mistaken. The format tool will encode your file three ways and show you the real numbers.

Screenshots are the exception

If your JPG is a screenshot, converting to PNG is worth doing for its own sake — and taking the screenshot as a PNG in the first place is worth more. Screens are full of hard edges and flat colour, which is where JPEG’s artefacts are most visible and where PNG’s compression is most efficient. A PNG screenshot is frequently both smaller and cleaner than the JPEG of the same thing.

Common questions

Does converting JPG to PNG improve quality?: No. This is the single most common misunderstanding about the conversion. PNG is lossless, so it preserves exactly what it is given — but what it is given is the already-compressed JPG. Every artefact the JPG contains is faithfully copied into the PNG. Nothing is recovered, because the information was discarded when the JPG was created and is not in the file to recover.
Then why convert at all?: Two good reasons. A destination might simply require PNG — plenty of forms, print workflows and design tools do. And if the image is about to be edited and re-saved several times, converting to PNG first stops each save from compounding the loss, which JPEG does.
Will the PNG be bigger?: Almost certainly, and often by a factor of five or ten for a photograph. JPEG achieves its size by discarding information; PNG keeps everything. For a screenshot or a graphic with flat colour the increase is much smaller, because those compress losslessly very well.
Does converting to PNG give my image transparency?: No. PNG can store transparency; it does not create any. A JPG has no transparent areas to preserve, so the PNG will be fully opaque. Removing a background is an editing operation, not a format conversion.