By Ayesha Khan · Updated July 23, 2026 · 3 min read
There is no single best image format — only the right format for the job. JPG is great for photographs, PNG is great for logos and screenshots, WebP is great for websites that want both at smaller sizes, and AVIF is great for the most modern browsers. Pick the wrong one and you either lose quality, balloon the file size or break compatibility with older devices.
JPG is the right choice for photographs, scanned documents and any image with lots of natural colour gradients. It compresses by discarding subtle detail your eye does not notice, which makes the file small but means quality drops a tiny bit each time it is re-saved. Stick to a quality of 80–90% for the first save and avoid editing the same JPG repeatedly.
PNG is the right choice for logos, icons, screenshots and anything with sharp edges, transparent backgrounds or text. It uses lossless compression, so the file is bigger but the image is mathematically identical to the original every time it is saved. Never save a photograph as PNG just to 'preserve quality' — the file will be 5–10 times larger than the equivalent JPG with no visible benefit.
WebP is the modern replacement for both. It compresses photographs about 25–35% smaller than JPG at the same quality, and graphics about 20% smaller than PNG, all with transparency support and animation. Every major browser supports WebP now, so it is the default choice for new web projects. Older platforms like print-on-demand shops or some legacy software may still need a JPG or PNG fallback.
Open the Image Converter on Rash Tools to switch between JPG, PNG, WebP and AVIF in a single click. A common workflow is to keep originals as PNG or RAW, export web-ready WebP for the live site, and export a JPG copy for anywhere WebP is not supported. Then use the Compress Image tool to squeeze each variant a little more before publishing.
