JPG, PNG or WebP for product photos? A practical export check

Choose by the content, not the extension alone

MDN describes JPEG as lossy and useful for photographs, PNG as lossless with alpha support, and WebP as supporting lossy or lossless compression. Those capabilities do not guarantee the smallest file for every image or acceptance by every upload form.

Reference: MDN: Image file type and format guide ↗

Keep the comparison fair

Do not compare a large PNG with a much smaller JPG and conclude the format alone caused the difference. Use one composition and one output size. Start with a saved original and export candidates from that rather than repeatedly reopening and recompressing a previous JPG.

Pixel dimensions, aspect ratio and file size answer different questions. A square 1000 × 1000 file describes the pixel grid, 1:1 describes its shape, and the number of kilobytes describes stored data. Changing one does not automatically fix the other two.

1. Pick the destination and confirm its accepted file types and dimension limits.
2. Export the same image at the same dimensions in two suitable formats.
3. Open both at full size and at the expected display size.
4. Check the upload result as well as the local files, then keep the smallest acceptable version.

Look at text and edges before counting kilobytes

Inspect a label's small lettering, the outline of a dark product on a pale background, and any smooth shadow. Compression damage can show up as blocks, ringing near letters or broken gradients. A modest file-size reduction is not useful if a capacity number becomes ambiguous.

There is no universal target file size in this article. The right choice depends on the image, destination limits and displayed detail. For a content page you control, also inspect its loading behavior; a smaller file is one input, not proof of a fast page.

A PNG does not automatically have a transparent background

A format can support transparency while a particular image remains fully opaque. If your composition includes a white or colored background, saving it as PNG keeps that background. Check the actual export against a contrasting surface instead of assuming the file extension removed it.

SokuPhoto offers JPG, PNG and WebP export for its composition, but exporting PNG is not a background-removal command. ‘Download image’ and exporting an edited composition are also different: inspect the final file to confirm your separate headline is included. Keep a text-free original so you can make another layout without rebuilding the photograph.