For web images, the best format depends heavily on the content type and desired balance between quality and file size. JPEG excels at compressing photographs and complex images with many colors using lossy compression (discarding imperceptible detail). PNG uses lossless compression, preserving perfect quality and supporting transparency, making it ideal for sharp graphics, text, and logos. WebP offers a modern alternative, combining lossless and advanced lossy compression to often provide significantly smaller files than both JPEG and PNG at comparable quality levels while also supporting transparency.

For photographic content like product images on e-commerce sites or banner photos, JPEG remains widely used due to its excellent size efficiency for those visuals. PNG is the standard for website logos, icons, and illustrations requiring perfect edges, text clarity, or transparency capabilities. WebP is increasingly adopted across industries for both photos and graphics, supported natively by browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and integrated into CMS platforms like WordPress; it delivers faster page loads by reducing image file sizes substantially.

WebP generally offers the best compromise, providing high-quality visuals with the smallest file sizes for both photos and graphics on modern websites, improving user experience through faster loading. Its main limitation is partial support in older browsers like Internet Explorer, requiring PNG/JPEG fallbacks. Newer formats like AVIF promise even greater compression but face slower browser adoption. Prioritizing WebP, with PNG for graphics needing transparency or JPEG fallbacks for older browsers, optimizes performance while ensuring broad compatibility.