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PNG vs SVG
SVG for anything drawn; PNG for anything photographed or already flattened.
Choose PNG when
Screenshots, photographs, and any artwork you only have as pixels. A PNG is a grid of pixels and enlarging it can only invent the ones in between.
Choose SVG when
Logos, icons and diagrams, where the file describes shapes rather than pixels. One SVG is sharp at any size, on any screen, and is usually a fraction of the bytes.
The thing that catches people out
You cannot turn a PNG into a real SVG by converting it. The result is either a traced approximation or the same pixels wrapped in an SVG, which is larger and no sharper.
Side by side
| PNG | SVG | |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Portable Network Graphics | Scalable Vector Graphics |
| Extension | .png | .svg |
| Media type | image/png | image/svg+xml |
| Compression | Lossless | None |
| This site can write it | Yes | Yes |
Decided? Convert it here
Where these figures come from
The claims this page makes about PNG and SVG are checkable, and these are the documents that settle them.