Converts PNG to JPG, which for a photograph typically cuts the file to a tenth of its size. The usual reasons are an upload limit, an email attachment cap, or a form that only takes JPEG.
When this is a big win, and when it is a mistake
A win: photographs. PNG stores them losslessly, which for a photograph means enormous files — a 12-megapixel photo saved as PNG is 20–30 MB and as a quality-82 JPEG is around 2 MB, with no visible difference.
A mistake: screenshots, diagrams, logos, anything with text or flat colour. JPEG's compression is built for smooth gradients and produces visible ringing around hard edges — text gets a grey halo, and it never goes away. For those, keep the PNG or use WebP.
Transparency, and the black background problem
The naive implementation draws the image onto a fresh canvas and encodes it. A fresh canvas is transparent black, so those pixels come out black — and "my logo has a black box around it" is the single most-reported bug in every image converter that exists.
Here the canvas is filled with your chosen background first, white by default. Set it to whatever the image will sit on: #ffffff for a page, #000000 for a dark one, or any CSS colour.
It is a one-way trip
Re-saving a JPEG repeatedly compounds this — each pass discards a little more. Convert once from the original rather than from a previous conversion.
Metadata is removed, which is usually the point
For a photo you are about to publish this is a feature. A JPEG straight off a phone can carry the exact coordinates of where it was taken, and stripping that before it goes anywhere public is good practice — the conversion does it as a side effect.
The one piece of metadata that is honoured before being dropped is the orientation flag. Phones store photos in the sensor's native orientation with a tag saying which way is up; ignoring it produces sideways pictures. It is applied to the pixels, so the result is upright without needing the tag.
If you need the EXIF preserved, this is the wrong tool — a converter that re-encodes cannot keep it.
Other names for this
Also searched as “png to jpeg”, “convert png to jpg”, “png to jpg high quality”.
Questions
- My transparent background turned white.
- JPEG cannot store transparency, so it had to become a colour. White is the default and any CSS colour can be set. Use WebP if you need transparency and a small file.
- The text in my screenshot looks blurry.
- That is JPEG doing what it does to hard edges. Screenshots should stay PNG, or become WebP — both handle text without ringing.
- What quality should I choose?
- 82 for photos. Above 90 the file grows fast for a difference you cannot see; below 70 artefacts become obvious.
- Can I convert a whole folder of images?
- Yes. Drop as many files as you like, or a whole folder. Each keeps its original name with the new extension —
IMG_4032.heicbecomesIMG_4032.jpg, neverconverted_1.jpg— and you can download them individually or as a ZIP. - Are my photos uploaded?
- No. The decoding and re-encoding happen in this tab using the browser’s own image support. Photos are personal in a way most files are not, and none of them is transmitted. Turn your Wi-Fi off and the converter keeps working.
- How large an image can I convert?
- The practical ceiling is the browser’s canvas limit, about 268 million pixels in total area — roughly 16,000 × 16,000. Above that you get a clear error rather than a silent failure, and resizing first is the fix. File size itself is limited only by your device’s memory.