Convert WebP to PNG

Why you have a file nothing will open

WebP is now the default on a large part of the web, so saving an image out of a browser often hands you one. Then you try to use it. Older versions of Office reject it, a good deal of print software has never heard of it, plenty of upload forms refuse the extension, and some desktop editors still open it only grudgingly.

Nothing is wrong with the file. It is simply newer than the software you are trying to put it into, and converting it is the quickest way round that.

The file will get bigger, and that is expected

WebP exists to be small. PNG exists to be exact. Converting from one to the other will usually produce a noticeably larger file, sometimes several times larger, and that is not a fault in the conversion.

You are not losing anything by going to PNG, because PNG is lossless: whatever the WebP contained is preserved exactly as it is now. What you cannot do is recover detail the WebP already discarded, if it was a lossy one. A conversion can keep what is there. It cannot put back what was thrown away before you got the file.

PNG, or JPEG

Pick PNG when the image has transparency, hard edges or text: logos, icons, diagrams, screenshots. PNG keeps all of it exactly, and transparency survives the conversion.

Pick JPEG instead when it is a photograph and you want a sensible file size, using the format control above. A photograph as a PNG is enormous for no benefit, which is the whole reason the opposite conversion exists. Note that JPEG cannot carry transparency, so anything transparent is flattened onto white.

If you are putting it back on the web

Then you probably want to stay on WebP, or go further. On our own photographs WebP was 14 to 20% smaller than JPEG and AVIF was 57 to 58% smaller. Converting a WebP to PNG for a web page makes the page heavier for no gain. The full comparison has the measurements.