Question 1

What does JPG stand for?

Accepted Answer

JPG (or JPEG) is a file type designed to minimize the file size of photographs to make it more suitable for sharing and using in web design. In other words, JPG files are web-friendly because such files are typically smaller. JPG or JPEG stands for Joint Photographics Export Group, the group that developed it. Read more about image and photo file formats here

Question 2

What does PNG stand for?

Accepted Answer

PNG is an acronym for Portable Network Graphics. The image format is optimized for graphics like graphs, logos, and text, but you'll often will notice higher quality than a JPEG with photos as well. PNG is usually used in web design to provide a transparent background or image.

Question 3

What's the difference between PNG and JPG?

Accepted Answer

The key difference between JPG and PNG has to do with the tradeoff between file size and quality. JPG is considered a "lossy" format, meaning that as you increase compression (and file size), the quality of the photograph decreases. PNG was designed as a "lossless" format, meaning that it attempts to compress the file without a loss in quality. Because of this, you can generally achieve much smaller file sizes with JPG vs. PNG, but will need to balance size and quality.

Question 4

Is JPG or PNG better?

Accepted Answer

JPG images are usually smaller files, and thus experience quality loss because of image compression. PNG images are larger files and don't experience as much quality compression. Both image file types have their advantages and disadvantages depending on their application. Converting to PNG is often the best thing to do if you plan on editing photos since they have no quality loss. On the other hand, converting to JPG is preferrable is you don't plan to edit the image, but you look to optimize it for web.

Question 5

How to open a PNG image?

Accepted Answer

PNG is an extremely common image size, so most image viewers will open them. In Windows you can open PNG files with Windows Photo Viewer. Use Preview if you are a Mac user. All specialized photo editing software will open PNG files easily, if the PNG file is not corrupted.

Question 6

How do I convert JPG to PNG?

Accepted Answer

Shutterstock's file converter makes it easy to convert JPG to PNG images. Simply drag your JPG image into the "Step 1" box above, select "PNG" under "Step 2", and click "Download". You'll be able to save your new PNG image to your computer. Note that your PNG image will retain the same quality as your original JPG image; it will not restore any of the quality that might have been lost during the initial JPG compression.

Question 7

How do I convert PNG to JPG?

Accepted Answer

Shutterstock's file converter makes it easy to convert PNG to JPG images. Simply drag your PNG image into the "Step 1" box above, select "JPEG" under "Step 2", and click "Download". You'll be able to save your new JPG image to your computer. Note that your JPG image will retain the same quality as your original PNG image.

Online Image File Converter

Need to change your image file format quickly? Just drag your original image into the box below, choose your new format (PNG, JPEG, or TIFF), and click the Download button. It's easy, and it's free!

Step 1

Step 2

Select a file type.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Image File Types

Learn more about Image File Types