Why convert a PNG to JPG?
PNG is a lossless format: it stores every pixel exactly. That is great for logos and screenshots, but very inefficient for photos. A photo saved as PNG can be three to ten times heavier than the same photo as JPG, with no visible benefit.
This happens more often than you think: screenshots of photos, images exported from editing software with the wrong setting, pictures copied and pasted from one app to another. Converting them to JPG is often the quickest way to divide their size.
JPG is also accepted absolutely everywhere, including administrative forms that sometimes only take .jpg files.
What happens to the transparent background?
This is the key point of this conversion. PNG can have transparent areas, for example a logo with no background. JPG does not support transparency at all.
When Plume converts a PNG with transparency to JPG, the transparent areas are filled with white. For most documents, presentations on a white background and forms, that is exactly what you want.
If you need to keep the transparency, do not convert to JPG. You have two better options:
- keep the PNG and make it lighter with Compress PNG;
- convert it to WebP, which supports transparency and is much lighter, with JPG to WebP (PNG files are accepted).
When to keep PNG, and when to switch to JPG
Before converting, look at what the image shows:
- A photo, a drawing with gradients, a scanned document: JPG is the right choice. The file will be much lighter.
- A screenshot with a lot of text: JPG works, but at low quality, small text may get slightly blurry edges. Keep the quality at Balanced or High.
- A logo, an icon, a diagram with flat colours: PNG is usually better, both for sharpness and sometimes even for size.
Not sure? Convert, then compare the size shown by Plume with the original. If the JPG is not much lighter, keep the PNG.
Convert PNG to JPG for e-mail, forms and websites
Lighter images are easier to use everywhere. A few examples:
- attaching several screenshots or scans to an e-mail without going over the 20 to 25 MB limit;
- uploading a photographed document to a portal that only accepts JPG under 2 MB;
- putting photos on a website or an online shop without slowing it down.
If the image is also too large in pixels, set a maximum width during conversion, or use the resize tool.
Private, free and unlimited
Screenshots can show private information: messages, bank pages, personal documents. Unlike most online tools that upload your files, Plume converts PNG to JPG inside your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and the tool even works offline once the page is loaded.
No account, no watermark and no daily limit. Drop a whole folder and get a ZIP back. To go the other way, see JPG to PNG.
How to convert PNG to JPG step by step
The conversion works in any recent browser, on a computer or a phone:
- Select your files. Drop the PNGs into the box, or click to browse. You can select a whole folder of screenshots at once.
- Choose the quality. Balanced is right for most images. Pick High quality for screenshots with small text, Smallest for strict upload limits.
- Check the result. Plume shows the size of the PNG and of the new JPG side by side.
- Download. Save each file, or download everything as a ZIP.
The JPGs are encoded with MozJPEG, which keeps them small for their quality. The file name stays the same, only the extension changes to .jpg.