Choosing an image format is a trade-off between quality, file size, transparency, and browser support. Get it right and your pages load fast; get it wrong and you're shipping megabytes of unnecessary bytes — or worse, visual artifacts.
The short version
- PNG — lossless, full transparency. Best for logos, screenshots, and graphics with text.
- WebP — lossy or lossless, smaller than PNG and JPEG. The safe modern default.
- AVIF — best compression of the three, but heavier to encode and needs a capable browser.
What about JPEG?
JPEG still wins for huge photographic archives, but for most web use WebP at q75–85 looks as good at roughly half the size.
How to choose, practically
For screenshots and UI elements, keep PNG or convert to lossless WebP — text must stay crisp. For photos on your site, convert to WebP or AVIF and compare file sizes at equal quality. For icons that need to scale, keep vector SVG instead of any raster format.
ForgePlug's Image Converter turns PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WEBP, and more into any of these formats with a live preview showing exact pixel dimensions and file size before you commit. The Image Compressor lets you dial in quality with an interactive slider and see the size drop in real time — all in your browser, so your images never leave your device.
Convert and compress images
Convert between formats with smart recommendations, or compress with a live quality slider — batch supported, fully client-side.
Open Image ConverterThe performance payoff
Image bytes are the largest part of most pages. Switching from PNG to WebP typically cuts image weight by 25–35%, and AVIF can halve it again. Smaller images mean faster LCP, lower data costs, and a better Core Web Vitals score — which matters for both SEO and user experience.