JPG vs PNG for PDF: Which Format to Use for Photos, Screenshots and Logos
Photos go in as JPG, screenshots and logos as PNG. Here's why, and what each choice does to the size of your PDF.
JPG vs PNG comes down to what's in the picture: use JPG for photos and PNG for screenshots, diagrams and logos. JPG keeps photos small, while PNG keeps sharp edges, small text and transparent backgrounds exactly as they are.
What's the Difference Between JPG and PNG?
JPEG (saved as .jpg or .jpeg) uses lossy compression. It throws away detail your eye barely notices in a photo, which is why a camera picture fits in a few megabytes.
PNG uses lossless compression. Every pixel comes back exactly as it was saved, and the format can store an alpha channel, so parts of the image can be fully or partly see-through.
| Feature | JPG | PNG |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy | Lossless |
| File size | Far smaller for photos | About equal or smaller for crisp screenshots and logos |
| Transparency (alpha channel) | No | Yes |
| Best for | Photos | Screenshots, logos, diagrams |
| Print quality | Great for photos | Great for line art |
| Artifacts | Yes, at low quality | Never |
When JPG Is the Right Choice for a PDF
Pick JPG for photos: scans of receipts taken with a phone, product pictures, portraits, anything with soft color gradients. The lossy compression hides well in that kind of image, and the file stays small enough to email.
Our JPG to PDF converter puts an upright JPG into the PDF without compressing it a second time, so the photo keeps its pixel size. Only a photo with an Exif rotation tag gets turned upright and saved again at JPEG quality 92.
Avoid JPG for screenshots and logos. Text and hard edges get a faint smudge around them, and a heavily compressed JPG shows blocky patches in flat areas.
When PNG Is the Right Choice for a PDF
Pick PNG for screenshots, charts, diagrams and anything with small text. Lossless compression keeps every letter crisp, which matters when someone zooms in on the PDF. Our guide to PNG to PDF without quality loss covers the settings.
PNG is also the format for logos and icons with a transparent background. Our PNG to PDF converter stores that transparency as a separate soft mask, so see-through areas show the white page instead of a black or gray box.
Don't save photos as PNG just to be safe. It only makes the file bigger: our 800 by 600 test photo weighed 705,670 bytes as PNG and 96,215 as a quality 85 JPG.
How JPG vs PNG Affects the Size of Your PDF
The PDF mostly weighs what its images weigh. Our PNG to PDF test turned a 157,936 byte screenshot into a 159,047 byte PDF, so the conversion itself adds almost nothing.
If a PDF full of PNGs is too big to send, Compress PDF stores the images as JPEG in most cases. In our test, Recommended took that screenshot PDF down to 45,373 bytes (1286 by 723 pixels). JPEG is lossy, so check small text afterwards.
How Much Bigger Is the Same Picture as JPG or PNG?
For a photo, PNG was about seven times the size of a good JPG, and the PDF followed it closely. For a crisp screenshot or a flat logo, the gap vanished or flipped. In November 2026 we saved each picture as PNG and as a quality 85 JPG, then made an A4 PDF from each with our tools.
| Picture | PNG | JPG 85 | PDF from PNG | PDF from JPG 85 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photo of a lake, 800 by 600 | 705,670 | 96,215 | 705,947 | 97,498 |
| Sharp browser screenshot, 1440 by 900 | 77,849 | 83,611 | 78,977 | 84,902 |
| Soft, blurry screenshot, 2146 by 1514 | 334,394 | 127,386 | 335,252 | 128,680 |
| Flat logo we generated, 800 by 600 | 14,872 | 14,823 | 14,141 | 16,106 |
All sizes are in bytes. Each PDF came out within about 1.3 KB of its image, and the pixels went in unchanged.
So PNG doesn't always cost more. The sharp screenshot was smaller as PNG, while the soft one was smaller as JPG. If a screenshot looks blurry already, compare both.
Does Converting a JPG to PNG Improve Quality?
No, it only makes the file bigger. We took the quality 85 JPG of that lake photo and saved it as PNG: the decoded pixels were identical, and the file grew from 96,215 to 847,340 bytes, nearly nine times the size.
The detail the JPG threw away stays gone. In a PDF, the two came to 97,498 and 847,432 bytes, so keep the JPG.
JPG vs PNG for Printing
For print, the pixel count matters more than the format. A small picture stretched across a whole A4 page prints soft whether it's JPG or PNG.
Photos print well as JPG at a decent quality setting. Line art, plans and screenshots with small text print sharper from PNG, because the edges never got blurred.
Mixing Both Formats in One PDF
Most real documents need both: a photo on one page, a screenshot on the next. Our guide to merging screenshots into one PDF shows how to put a stack of captures in order, and saving a screenshot as a PDF covers the single image on any device.
To mix JPG and PNG files in one go, Merge Images to PDF takes both and puts each image on its own page.
Frequently Asked Questions about JPG vs PNG
Is PNG better quality than JPG?
PNG keeps every pixel, so it never adds compression artifacts. For a photo, a good JPG looks the same to the eye and is much smaller, so "better" depends on the picture.
Does converting a JPG to PDF lose quality?
Not with our JPG to PDF converter, as long as the photo is upright. It goes into the PDF without being compressed again; only photos with a rotation tag get saved once more at quality 92.
Why does my logo have a white or black box in the PDF?
The logo was probably saved as JPG, which can't store transparency. Save it as PNG with a transparent background and convert that file instead.
Should screenshots be JPG or PNG?
PNG for most, since screenshots are full of text and sharp edges, which JPG compression smudges. The exception is one that's already blurry: ours was smaller as JPG, so compare both.
