Every image format is a set of trade-offs someone made on your behalf. Once you know what each one was actually built for, picking the right one for a given job takes about two seconds.
JPG — built for photos
JPG uses lossy compression tuned specifically for photographic detail: gradual color transitions, natural textures, lots of subtle variation. That makes it excellent at shrinking photos to a fraction of their raw size with little visible loss. It has no support for transparency, and it handles hard edges — sharp text, flat colors, thin lines — poorly, often introducing a slight blur or blocky “halo” around them.
Use it for: photographs, anything that came out of a camera, images headed to email or a website where file size matters more than pixel-perfect edges.
PNG — built for precision
PNG is lossless: every pixel is preserved exactly. It also supports true transparency, which is why it’s the standard for logos, icons, and anything that needs to sit on top of another background. The cost is size — a detailed photo saved as PNG can be five to ten times larger than the same photo as a well-compressed JPG, for a difference most people won’t see.
Use it for: screenshots, logos, UI graphics, diagrams, anything with sharp edges or flat color, anything that needs a transparent background.
WEBP — the modern all-rounder
WEBP was designed to beat both of the above at their own games: it supports lossy compression that typically beats JPG at the same visual quality, lossless compression that beats PNG, and transparency on top of either. Support is now near-universal across modern browsers, which is why it’s become the default recommendation for web images where load speed matters.
Use it for: pretty much everything destined for the web, when you’re not locked into JPG or PNG for compatibility with an older tool or platform.
The short version
Photo, and file size matters more than perfect edges → JPG. Graphic, screenshot, or needs transparency → PNG. Building for the web and not constrained by legacy tools → WEBP. When in doubt, WEBP is very rarely the wrong answer in 2026 — the main exception is when you need a file that opens correctly in older software that still doesn’t recognize it.