Why Do Images Save as WebP? (And How to Get a JPG or PNG)

Images save as WebP because the website sent them as WebP. Most large sites, online stores and image CDNs convert their pictures to WebP since the files are smaller than JPG or PNG and pages load faster. When you right-click and choose Save image as, your browser saves the exact file it received, so you get a .webp even if the page seemed to show an ordinary photo.

To get a usable file, convert it: WebP to JPG for photos, WebP to PNG for logos, screenshots and anything with a transparent background. Both run in your browser and upload nothing. The rest of this guide explains why sites do this, how they decide which format you get, and the other ways to end up with a JPG or PNG.

Why websites switched to WebP

WebP is an image format Google released in 2010. It can be lossy (like JPG) or lossless (like PNG), supports transparency and animation, and compresses better than both older formats. Google’s WebP compression study found that WebP files were on average 25–34% smaller than JPEG files at equivalent quality (measured with the SSIM index), and MDN reports lossless WebP about 26% smaller than PNG.

For a website, smaller images mean faster pages, lower bandwidth costs and better scores in performance tools such as Google’s Lighthouse, which flags images that could be delivered in a more efficient format. Once Safari added WebP in version 14 (2020), every major browser could display it, and sites no longer needed to keep JPG as the main format.

Many sites don’t convert images by hand. Content management systems, e-commerce platforms and image CDNs generate a WebP (or AVIF) copy automatically from the JPG or PNG the editor uploaded. You see the WebP; the original often still exists on the server.

How the site decides which format you get

Browsers tell the server which image formats they accept. Each image request carries an Accept HTTP header; Google’s WebP FAQ explains that when this header includes image/webp, “the web server knows it can safely send WebP images”. This is called content negotiation: the same image address can return WebP to one browser and JPG to another. MDN’s content negotiation guide describes how servers use the Vary header so caches keep the variants apart.

Sites can also let the browser choose in the HTML, with the <picture> element listing an AVIF, a WebP and a JPG version of the same picture. The browser downloads the first one it supports.

That is why:

• the image address may end in .jpg while the saved file is a WebP,
• the same image can save as WebP in Chrome and as JPG in an old browser,
• you sometimes get AVIF instead of WebP: it is the same mechanism with a newer format, explained in what is an AVIF file.

How to get a JPG or PNG instead

Method	Works when	Effort
Convert the saved WebP	Always	~10 seconds
Open the image in a new tab and check its address	The site exposes the original file	Hit or miss
Remove a format parameter from the URL	The image URL contains something like format=webp	Hit or miss
Use the site’s own download button	Stock photo, social and cloud sites	Depends on the site
Take a screenshot	Anything visible on screen	Lower quality, smaller size

Convert it (the reliable way).

1. Save the image as usual, even though it is a .webp.
2. Open WebP to JPG or WebP to PNG.
3. Drop the file (or several files at once) on the page.
4. For JPG, keep the default 92% quality and choose the background color that fills transparent areas (white by default).
5. Click Download. Several files come back in one ZIP with their original names.

The conversion keeps the exact width and height. Only the first frame of an animated WebP is kept, and embedded metadata is not copied, since the new file is rebuilt from pixels.

Look for the original. Right-click the image and choose Open image in new tab. If the address ends in .jpg or .png, the server may still be negotiating; if it contains a parameter such as format=webp, fm=webp or auto=format, editing or removing it sometimes returns the original format. This depends entirely on the site, so treat it as a trick, not a rule.

Use the site’s download option. Stock photo libraries, cloud drives and many social networks offer a download button that gives you the original file instead of the optimized copy shown on the page.

JPG or PNG: which to choose

• Photos (products, recipes, travel pictures): convert to JPG. The file stays reasonably small and opens in every app, email client and print service.
• Logos, icons, stickers, cut-out product shots: convert to PNG. It keeps the transparent background that JPG would fill with a solid color.
• Screenshots, charts and images with text: PNG keeps sharp edges without the blur JPG compression adds around letters.
• An image you will edit and save several times: PNG, because it is lossless.

Expect the converted file to be bigger than the WebP; that is the cost of the older format. If size matters, lower the JPG quality, or shrink it afterwards with Compress Image.

Can you open WebP without converting?

Often, yes. Every current browser displays WebP, and recent versions of Windows and macOS show it in their built-in photo viewers. Problems come from older software (some versions of Office, older photo editors), print kiosks, online forms that only accept JPG or PNG, and some messaging and email clients. If the file only needs to be viewed, dragging it into a browser tab is enough. If it has to be uploaded, printed or edited, convert it.

The same compatibility gap exists for iPhone photos, which save as HEIC; see HEIC vs JPG. And if you are on the other side, publishing images on your own website, JPG to WebP converts your JPG and PNG files to WebP in the browser.

Is WebP worse quality?

Not as a format. At equal file size, WebP usually looks as good as JPG or better. What you notice is the website’s choice: to save bandwidth, some sites compress heavily, and a blurry or blocky WebP stays blurry after conversion, because changing the format cannot bring back detail. If you need a sharper version, look for a larger copy of the image or the site’s download button rather than converting several times.