PNG vs JPG: which do you need?
PNG is lossless and supports transparency, which makes it ideal for logos, icons, diagrams and screenshots with sharp text. JPG is much smaller for photographs but can't be transparent and blurs hard edges slightly.
If your PNG is actually a photo, you'll save far more by converting it to JPG — use the "To an exact size" option or one of the KB tools. If it's a graphic or needs a transparent background, stay in PNG.
We tested it: real screenshots and a photo saved as PNG
We took two Retina screenshots (2880×1800) of web pages, one mostly text and one with large coloured areas, plus a 12-megapixel phone photo saved as PNG:
| File | Original | High Quality | Web Optimized | Balanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text-heavy screenshot | 332 KB | 252 KB · 2880×1800 | 212 KB · 1920×1200 | 112 KB · 1280×800 |
| Colourful screenshot | 488 KB | 398 KB · 2880×1800 | 196 KB · 1920×1200 | 113 KB · 1280×800 |
| Phone photo as PNG | 20.94 MB | — | 551 KB · 859×1145 | 233 KB · 570×763 |
High Quality kept full resolution and still saved 18–24%. Web Optimized is ideal for screenshots: 1920×1200 keeps text perfectly readable.
The photo shows why photos shouldn't be PNG: 20.94 MB, and even compressed it had to shrink to 859 pixels wide. Simply converting it to JPG gave a 3.46 MB file at full size. Use PNG to JPG for photos.
But for the text screenshot, JPG was 11% bigger than the PNG. For text and sharp edges, PNG is the right format.
How PNGs get smaller here
PNG is lossless, so there's no quality slider like JPG. Re-saving with better packing helps a little (High Quality saved 18–24% on our screenshots at full size), but the big savings come from reducing pixel dimensions. Screenshots from high-resolution screens are often twice the size they need to be for sharing, so scaling them to a normal width cuts the file a lot without making text unreadable.
Tips for smaller screenshots
- Crop to just the part you need before compressing.
- Avoid screenshots of photos — save those as JPG instead.
- For documentation, the Web Optimized level keeps text crisp at normal zoom.
Frequently asked questions
Will transparency be kept?
Yes, when you use a quality level the output stays PNG with transparency. Exact-size mode converts to JPG, which fills transparent areas with white.
Why didn't my PNG shrink much?
Small or already-optimised PNGs have little to remove. Try a stronger level, or convert to JPG if the image is a photo.
Can I compress PNG to under 100KB?
Yes — switch to "To an exact size" and choose 100KB. Note that this saves the result as JPG.