Three formats cover nearly every image on the web. Choosing the right one is usually worth a 30–80% file-size saving — which is to say, faster pages, better Core Web Vitals and happier users.
JPG: photographs
JPG is lossy: it throws away detail your eye barely notices, and photographs hide those losses beautifully. Use it for photos when you need maximum compatibility — email clients, old CMSes, print pipelines.
Weaknesses: no transparency, and it butchers sharp edges. Screenshot text saved as JPG gets the telltale fuzzy halo.
PNG: graphics, screenshots, transparency
PNG is lossless — every pixel exact — and supports transparency. It's the right call for logos, UI screenshots, diagrams and anything with hard edges or text. The price is size: a photo saved as PNG is often 5–10× larger than the same photo as JPG, for no visible benefit.
WebP: the modern default
WebP does both jobs: lossy compression that beats JPG by roughly 25–35% at the same quality, and lossless compression with transparency that beats PNG. Browser support has been universal for years. For anything you serve on the web, WebP should be your default in 2026.
When you still need JPG/PNG: sending images to people (WhatsApp previews, email attachments) and uploading to tools that haven't caught up.
The quick decision table
| You have… | Use |
|---|---|
| A photo for your website | WebP (lossy) — convert from JPG |
| A logo or screenshot for your website | WebP (lossless) — convert from PNG |
| A photo to email or message | JPG — convert back if needed |
| An image that's just too big | Run it through the compressor |
Two habits that beat any format choice
Resize before you compress. A 4000-pixel photo displayed at 800 pixels wastes bandwidth no format can recover — the image resizer fixes the dimensions first.
Compress at 80%. For lossy formats, quality 80 is the sweet spot where files shrink 40–70% and virtually nobody can spot the difference. All the TurboTweaks image tools run in your browser, so you can experiment freely — your originals never leave your device.