How to save a WebP image as PNG or JPG

Why you keep getting .webp files

WebP is an image format developed by Google for the web. It can compress photos lossily, like JPG, or store graphics losslessly, like PNG, and it supports transparency and animation. For the same visual quality the files are usually smaller than JPG or PNG, so pages load faster and use less data, which is why many websites, online shops and content delivery networks serve their pictures as WebP.

Often the server decides the format per visitor. When your browser says it can show WebP, which every current browser does, the site sends a WebP, sometimes even when the address of the picture ends in .jpg or .png. Right-click > Save image as stores exactly what the browser received, so you get a .webp file. There is no reliable browser setting to change that, so converting afterwards is the usual way.

The trouble starts when the file leaves the browser. Older image editors, some office and design programs, print services, marketplaces and many upload forms still expect JPG or PNG. Before you convert, decide which of the two you need, because they behave differently.

PNG or JPG?

Choose PNG for logos, icons, stickers, screenshots, diagrams and anything with a transparent background. PNG is lossless, so it holds exactly the pixels of the WebP, and it keeps the alpha channel, so a logo can still be placed on any colour. The downside is size: a photo saved as PNG can be several times larger than the WebP it came from.

Choose JPG for photos you want to share, print or upload. It opens practically everywhere and keeps photos far smaller than PNG. JPG has no transparency, so transparent areas must be filled with a colour, and it is lossy, so a WebP that was already lossy is compressed a second time. At high quality settings that extra loss is hard to see.

Neither format restores detail. If a website compressed a picture heavily, blocky or blurry areas stay the same in the PNG or JPG.

Convert WebP on Windows with Paint or Photos

Current versions of Windows 10 and 11 can usually open WebP images in the Photos app and in Paint, because Microsoft's WebP support is installed on most systems. If a WebP does not open, search the Microsoft Store for Webp Image Extensions from Microsoft. Paint is the simplest way to convert, because its Save as menu offers PNG and JPEG directly. The Photos app is fine for viewing, but its save options have changed between versions, so Paint is the more predictable choice.

When you save a transparent WebP as JPEG in Paint, the transparent areas are filled, so use PNG for logos and cut-outs.

1. Right-click the .webp file and choose Open with > Paint.
2. Choose File > Save as and pick PNG picture or JPEG picture.
3. Choose a folder and file name and click Save.

Convert WebP on a Mac with Preview

Preview, the image viewer built into macOS, opens WebP files on recent versions of macOS and can export a copy in another format. For several images at once, select them all in Finder, open them together in Preview, select all thumbnails in the sidebar and use File > Export Selected Images. On recent versions of macOS, Finder's Quick Actions > Convert Image on a right-click can also turn selected images into JPEG or PNG.

1. Open the WebP image in Preview.
2. Choose File > Export.
3. Set Format to PNG or JPEG, and for JPEG pick a quality with the slider.
4. Click Save.

Convert WebP on the command line

Google's libwebp package includes dwebp, a small decoder that writes PNG by default. It is available in most Linux distributions, often in a package called webp, and through Homebrew on a Mac. dwebp works on still images; for animated WebP, libwebp has separate tools such as anim_dump.

ImageMagick converts between almost all image formats and is handy for batches. With ImageMagick 7 the command is magick; older version 6 installs use convert instead. For an animated WebP, ImageMagick writes one file per frame, so add [0] after the file name if you only want the first frame. Add -quality to set the JPG quality, and note that transparent areas in a JPG get the background colour, which you can set with -background white -flatten.

# WebP to PNG with libwebp
dwebp in.webp -o out.png

# WebP to JPG with ImageMagick 7, white behind transparent areas
magick in.webp -background white -flatten -quality 90 out.jpg

# Only the first frame of an animated WebP
magick 'in.webp[0]' first-frame.png

# Every WebP in the folder to PNG
magick mogrify -format png *.webp

Convert WebP in your browser with FileReshape

FileReshape's WebP to PNG and WebP to JPG pages work on any computer with a current browser, including Chromebooks and work PCs where you cannot install software. The WebP is decoded by your browser's own image decoder and the new file is written on your device, so the images are not uploaded. You can drop one file or select all images in a folder, up to about 200 MB at a time; a single image downloads directly and several are downloaded as a zip, each named after its original.

WebP to PNG keeps transparent and partly transparent pixels exactly as they are. WebP to JPG fills every transparent pixel with white and blends soft edges with white, and lets you choose a quality of 95, 90, 80 or 70 %, with 90 % as the default. Both save colours in standard sRGB and do not copy EXIF or XMP metadata from the WebP.

Animated WebP images are detected and marked in the file list with the note that only the first frame is saved. PNG and JPG are still images, so the result is the first frame of the animation; to keep the movement, use a GIF or video converter instead. Going the other way, PNG to WebP makes WebP files from PNGs, lossless by default, and Compress Image saves photos as smaller JPG or WebP files.

1. Open WebP to PNG or WebP to JPG and drop your .webp files in the box, or click to choose them.
2. For JPG, choose a quality, or keep 90 %. Check the list for images marked as animated.
3. Click Convert and download the image, or a zip with all of them.