Convert WEBP to PNG and keep the transparency
WEBP is what your browser saves when you download an image from Google, and it is what half the web now serves. That is fine until you try to use the file. Photoshop wants a plugin. Plenty of desktop software and print workflows will not open it at all. Office refuses to embed it. Upload forms that never updated their allowed file types reject it outright. PNG is the way out, and it costs you nothing that matters: it opens essentially everywhere, it is lossless from this point on, and unlike JPG it has a real alpha channel.
Transparency survives, which is the whole reason to pick PNG over JPG
PNG has the same kind of alpha channel WEBP does, so transparent and semi-transparent areas carry across untouched. Nothing is composited onto a background, because nothing needs to be. A logo, a screenshot, a sticker or a cut-out product shot arrives exactly as it left. Send the same file to JPG instead and it comes back with the transparency filled in with a solid colour, because JPEG has no alpha channel at all and never has.
Your PNG will be bigger, and that is the format doing its job
This is the part every other page on this keyword leaves out, and it is the reason people think the tool broke. WEBP compresses aggressively. PNG stores every pixel exactly and throws nothing away. Put a photograph through that and the file grows several times over. These are measurements from real files, saved at the same zlib level the Recommended setting uses.
| Source WEBP | Plain full-colour PNG | With the default palette pass |
|---|---|---|
| 5000 × 2813, 1.45 MB | 11.1 MB (7.6×) | about 2.3 MB |
| 4490 × 2993, 1.79 MB | 16.4 MB (9.1×) | about 4.1 MB |
| 1470 × 980 with alpha, 1.12 MB | 1.79 MB (1.6×) | well under the source |
A seven to nine times jump on a photograph is normal, not a fault. Notice the third row: an image with transparency barely grows, because that is the kind of picture PNG was designed for in the first place.
The palette pass runs by default so the size stays in hand
Rather than hand you an 11 MB file and wish you luck, a colour-palette pass runs automatically: 256 colours on Less, 128 on Recommended, 64 on Extreme. That takes roughly 60 to 75 percent off the output with a mean per-pixel error under 2 percent, which is invisible on a photograph. And if the palette would not actually make your file smaller, it is thrown away and the full-colour PNG is kept instead. A compression option that hands back a bigger file is not a compression option.
When you want the full-colour version instead
Turn the palette off and every original colour is kept byte for byte, just wrapped in PNG. That is the right call for print, for anything headed back into an editor, and for flat artwork with soft anti-aliased edges or subtle gradients, where a reduced palette can show banding. For a photograph the palette version is visually indistinguishable at a fraction of the size, which is why it is the default rather than the exception.
Colour comes across properly
Any colour profile embedded in the WEBP is preserved rather than stripped, so your colours do not shift on the way through. If you would rather standardise, the profile converts cleanly to sRGB instead. The file type is read from the bytes themselves rather than the extension, so a WEBP that somebody renamed to .png or .jpg still converts correctly instead of failing with a confusing error.
Animated WEBP gives you one frame
Animated WEBP is common for stickers and downloaded web graphics, and PNG is a single-image format. An 81 frame animation comes back as one still picture, not a sequence and not an animated file. If the movement needs to survive, keep the file as WEBP. If you only ever wanted the artwork, the first frame is usually exactly what you were after.
What happens to your files
Convert one image or a folder of them, returned as a single ZIP under your original filenames. Files travel over an encrypted connection, get converted, and are deleted from the server an hour later. Your original on your own machine is never touched.
What you get
- Transparency preserved exactly, with no background colour pasted in behind it
- Lossless from here on, so editing, cropping and re-saving stop degrading the image
- A palette pass by default that cuts the output 60 to 75 percent, discarded automatically if it would not help
- Full-colour byte-exact output available in one setting when you need it for print or editing
- Embedded colour profiles kept, or converted cleanly to sRGB
- Format detected from the file bytes, so a wrongly renamed WEBP still converts
What’s next?
If the image is an opaque photograph and size matters more than transparency, WEBP to JPG is the smaller target. Going the other way, PNG to WebP takes you back. And once you have your PNG, Compress PNG will trim it further.