JPG, PNG, or PDF: Which File Format to Use, and When
By Joey RasmussenPublished June 23, 2026
JPG, PNG, and PDF are the three file types most people bump into every week, and they are easy to mix up because they overlap. Two of them are picture formats and one is a document format, but all three can end up holding a scan of a page or a screenshot. Choosing the right one saves you blurry images, bloated files, and documents that will not open the way you expect. Here is the plain-language version.
JPG: best for photographs
JPG (also written JPEG) is built for photos. It uses lossy compression, which throws away detail your eye is unlikely to miss in exchange for a much smaller file. That is a great deal for a sunset or a portrait, where smooth gradients hide the loss. It is a poor deal for anything with sharp edges, like text, logos, or screenshots, where the same compression smears the crisp lines into a faint haze. JPG also cannot store transparency, so it always has a solid background.
Use JPG when: the image is a photograph, or you need the smallest reasonable file and a little softness is acceptable.
PNG: best for screenshots, logos, and sharp edges
PNG uses lossless compression, so it reproduces every pixel exactly. That makes it the right choice for screenshots, diagrams, logos, and anything with text or hard edges, where sharpness matters more than file size. PNG also supports transparency, which is why logos and icons are almost always PNGs. The trade-off is that a PNG of a photograph is usually much larger than the same photo saved as a JPG.
Use PNG when: the image has text, sharp lines, or a transparent background, or you cannot afford any loss of quality.
PDF: best for documents you want to share or print
PDF is not a picture format at all; it is a document format. A single PDF can hold many pages, mix text and images, preserve exact layout across devices, and print reliably. It is the right container when the goal is a finished document rather than a single image: a multi-page scan, a set of receipts, a report, or anything you want to send as one tidy file that looks the same everywhere.
Use PDF when: you have more than one page, you want the layout to stay put, or you are sending something to be read or printed rather than edited as an image.
Converting between them without losing quality (or privacy)
Most real tasks are really conversions. A few rules of thumb keep the quality intact:
- Images into a document:when you have a stack of JPGs or PNGs to send as one file, combine them into a PDF rather than zipping loose images. FeatherPDF’s JPG to PDF tool puts each image on its own page at its own size.
- A document into images: when you need to post a single page online or drop it into a slide, turn the PDF into images with PDF to JPG. Remember that the result is a flat picture, so the text in it is no longer selectable.
- Avoid round-trips. Every time you re-save a JPG it loses a little more detail. Convert from the highest-quality original you have rather than from a copy of a copy.
All of these conversions can happen right in your browser, with the file never leaving your device. If you are curious how that works, see how in-browser PDF tools work.
The short version
Reach for JPG for photos, PNG for screenshots and anything with text or transparency, and PDF for multi-page documents you want to share or print. When you need to move between them, convert from the best original you have, and you will rarely go wrong.