Chrome, Discord, and a lot of “Save image” buttons hand you a .webp. That is not a bug. The site was already serving the small file. You asked for the picture. You got the container they used.
The next click is often “WebP to JPG.” That is the right door for a camera photo and Outlook. It is the wrong door if the image has a hole — a logo, a sticker, a product cutout, a UI screenshot with a transparent background. JPEG has no alpha. Those pixels become white.
PNG keeps the holes. That is the only good reason to go WebP → PNG.
The form said PNG. It did not say “make it larger.”
PNG is lossless and chatty. WebP already did the hard work of staying small. A PNG of the same pixels is usually fatter. You did not recover quality. You paid for a format an old uploader still understands.
Convert when:
- The destination literally will not accept
.webp - You need transparency (JPEG would ruin it)
- You are about to edit in a tool that is happier with PNG
Do not convert to “improve” a photo. If the other end wants a picture anyone can open, that is WebP to JPG, and the JPEG may still be smaller than the PNG would be.
What stays, what does not
- Pixels — same count. This is not a resize.
- Transparency — kept, if the WebP had it.
- GPS and other tags — they do not copy through a canvas re-encode. If you need to know whether the original had a pin, check it first with Photo Location.
The original .webp stays on disk. You download a new file.
Do it without giving the file away
Upload converters treat a sticker the same as a passport scan. You do not need that.
WebP to PNG reads the file in this tab and writes a PNG. Pile + zip. Close the tab and the working copy is gone.
Need a smaller file for a site that can open WebP? Start from a PNG with JPG to WebP if you already have a JPEG, or keep the original WebP. The size argument between JPEG and WebP is this note, not this pair.