Converting a JPG to PNG does not restore anything. Whatever the JPG compression threw away is gone, and PNG cannot invent it back. What the conversion does give you is a lossless container, so from this point on nothing further degrades no matter how many times the file is opened, edited and saved.
That is the real reason to do it: you are about to edit the image, and you do not want each save to compound the damage. This converter runs in your browser, so the file is never uploaded.
How to convert JPG to PNG
- Add your JPG. Drag it onto the box above or click to browse.
- Convert. Press Convert to PNG. There is no quality setting because PNG is lossless; there is nothing to trade.
- Download. The PNG downloads immediately with the same name and a .png extension.
Generation loss, and why editors default to PNG
Generation loss is what happens when a lossy format is decoded and re-encoded repeatedly. Open a JPG, crop it, save. Open it again, adjust the levels, save. Each pass re-runs the compression over an image that is already an approximation, and the errors compound. After five or six rounds it is visibly mushy, with blocky patches around every edge, and no single step looked wrong at the time.
This is why editing software nudges you toward PNG or its own lossless format for work in progress and treats JPG as an export step. The rule that follows is simple: convert to PNG before you start editing, do all the work there, and export to JPG once at the end.
When this conversion is the right move
Convert to PNG when the image is about to be worked on: cropped, annotated, composited, or passed through several rounds of editing. Each JPG save re-compresses the whole image, so an edit-save-edit cycle degrades it visibly after a handful of passes. PNG makes that impossible.
Do not convert simply to archive a photo. You get a much larger file that contains exactly the same visual information, artefacts and all. If the JPG is the final form, keeping it is the sensible choice.
Frequently asked questions
- Will converting to PNG improve my image quality?
- No, and any tool implying otherwise is misleading you. JPG compression is destructive and permanent. Converting to PNG faithfully preserves the image including the compression artefacts already baked into it. The benefit is preventing future loss, not undoing past loss.
- Why is the PNG so much bigger than the JPG?
- Because it is lossless. PNG stores every pixel exactly, while the JPG got small precisely by not doing that. A three to five times size increase is completely normal for a photograph, and it is the cost of the guarantee.
- Will it have a transparent background now?
- No. PNG supports transparency but converting cannot create it: a JPG has no alpha channel, so every pixel is opaque and stays opaque. Removing a background is a separate operation entirely.
- Is the file uploaded anywhere?
- No. Your browser decodes and re-encodes the image locally using its own canvas engine. Nothing is transmitted.