Why a PNG photo is so large
October 11, 2026
A PNG of a photo is often several times larger than the same picture as WebP or JPG. That is how the format works.
A photo is a poor fit for PNG
PNG stores pixels without throwing detail away. That suits a logo or a screenshot with flat colors. A photograph has thousands of colors, so the PNG stays large.
Glazlo does not reduce the number of colors in a PNG. Running a photo through Compress often barely changes it.
WebP is the smaller file for a page
Convert PNG to WebP when the picture is a photo and the page needs a smaller file. Transparency can stay. Quality 80 is a practical default.
Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari open WebP. If a tool only accepts JPG, use PNG to JPG and pick a background color for any transparent pixels.
Keep the PNG while you are still editing
Keep PNG when you need lossless graphics, or when another program must edit the file without another round of lossy compression.
A flat logo with few colors may shrink less than a photo, because this site does not build a smaller color palette.