JPG to PNG
What JPG to PNG actually does
This conversion has no settings, and the reason is worth stating plainly rather than hiding behind an empty options panel. PNG stores every pixel exactly, so there is nothing to tune. The picture that comes out is a faithful copy of the picture that went in, including every artefact the JPG compression baked in when the photograph was first saved. Converting to PNG does not sharpen anything, does not remove blocking around edges and does not recover detail; it fixes the picture in its current state so that later edits and saves do not degrade it further. It will also be considerably larger, often several times over, because lossless storage of a photograph is expensive. Where that trade is worth making is when a picture is about to be edited repeatedly, or when a tool downstream refuses to take a JPG.
How to use it
- Add the JPG files. There is nothing to configure.
- Convert, and read the size change on each row so the growth is visible before anything is downloaded.
- Take the results individually or as a zip.
Useful for
- Freeze a photograph before a run of edits so repeated saving stops compounding the compression.
- Satisfy a tool or a printer that accepts PNG only.
- Get a lossless master to work from when the original raw file is gone.
Limits worth knowing
- Compression artefacts already present are copied faithfully. Nothing here removes them.
- The file gets larger, frequently by several times, and that is inherent to lossless storage rather than a setting.
- A JPG has no transparency to restore, so the PNG is fully opaque.
- Colour profiles are not carried through.
Questions people ask
Will this improve the quality of my photograph?
No. The detail a JPG discards is gone from the file. A PNG preserves what remains exactly rather than adding anything back.
Why is there no quality slider?
PNG compression is lossless, so there is no quality to trade. Every pixel is stored as it is.
Why did the file get so much bigger?
Photographs are full of fine variation that lossless compression cannot fold away, which is why JPEG was invented. Several times the original size is normal.