WebP to PNG
Your images never leave this device
WebP is what most websites now serve and what a lot of desktop software still refuses to open. PNG opens anywhere. The conversion is direct, transparency included, with one thing to expect: PNG records every pixel exactly, so the file usually comes out several times larger than the WebP was.
How to convert WebP to PNG
A WebP saved from a web page is almost certainly the lossy kind, which means detail was discarded before the file ever reached you. Converting to PNG retrieves none of it. What it does is freeze exactly what is there into a container that cannot lose anything further, which is the right move if the file is about to be edited and the wrong one if what you wanted was something smaller.
If the WebP happened to be the lossless kind, this conversion really is lossless in both directions: the pixel values are identical and only the encoding changes. Nothing in the filename tells you which kind you have. The only hint is the file size relative to how complicated the picture is.
Animated WebP is common and is the limitation worth knowing about. The browser decodes the first frame and that is the frame you get, because PNG has no animation to carry it into. If what you dropped in was a short loop, the PNG is a still from it.
Transparency comes across intact. Both formats carry a full eight-bit alpha channel, so a cut-out stays a cut-out and no background colour is painted behind it.
What people use it for
- Opening a downloaded WebP in software that refuses to read it
- Getting an image past an upload form that rejects the .webp extension
- Keeping a downloaded logo’s transparent background intact
- Handing a file to somebody on an older machine
- Pulling the first frame out of an animated WebP
Questions
Because PNG is lossless. It records every pixel exactly, while the WebP threw away detail to get small. A three to five times increase is normal.
Yes. PNG has a full alpha channel, so a WebP with a transparent background comes out with the same transparent background and nothing painted behind it.
No. Nothing can restore detail that was already discarded. It will look identical, in a bigger file.
Only the first frame. Animation is not carried into PNG. APNG or GIF would be the formats for that, and converting between animated formats is a different job.
No, and there should not be. PNG stores exactly what it is given, so there is nothing to trade away. The slider only appears on this site’s lossy conversions.
No. The image is rebuilt from decoded pixels, so no EXIF, no colour profile and no text chunks survive into the PNG.
No. The browser decodes and redraws them in this page, so nothing is sent anywhere.