Does Win11 PHOTOS Save-As convert the file or simply add the incorrect extension ?

Hi all,

I made a screenshot, which the system saves as PNG

The I open that PNG in Windows11 PHOTOS

Click Save-As and select JPG

Does this convert the file to JPG or will it now still be a PNG but with the incorrect JPG extension ?

Thanks !

When you select "Save As" it converts the file to the extension you pick, so yes, that will change a PNG to JPG and not just give it the wrong extension

Thanks, interesting is that when I upload them to Wordpress they end up being PNG.

That's an issue with Wordpress... I've dealt with it for years.

Thankfully all modern OS's are smart enough to display basic images (JPG, PNG, BMP, etc.) with the wrong extension so it 'should' display even when wrong, which is what Wordpress relies on.

Weird, it was fine till Sept last year. Is only now that I noticed this is happening. According to Wordpress helpdesk (at least that is what I understand from them) this is not an issue the are familiar with and also do they not have code running that converts images.

GeneralLee01 said:

Does this convert the file to JPG or will it now still be a PNG but with the incorrect JPG extension ?

Click to expand...

Rather stupidly, no, Photos does not do any conversion. It just changes the extension.

If you really want to do the conversion properly, then open the .png in MS Paint and save as a .jpg. However, you may not want to. A .png uses loss-less compression, wheras a .jpg introduces compression artefacts. And if the image has large areas all the same colour, then a .png may actually be a more efficient compression, with a smaller file size.

Wait, Photos doesn't? I thought it used the same as Paint... my bad on that one.

Dang why would Windows do that ??? Sloppy programming or is there a good reason to do it like they did in PHOTOS ?

Now I have uploaded many thousands of images with an incorrect extension ?!?!? :-( I used to do it with Paint but could do it faster (I thought) with PHOTOS.

Archigos said:

Wait, Photos doesn't? I thought it used the same as Paint... my bad on that one.

Click to expand...

No, I couldn't believe it was true so I actually tested it. All Photos does is change the extension, opening the resulting saved '.jpeg' in Notepad shows a PNG tag at the top of the file !

Smart !

And Wordpress recognizes that and changes the extension back to PNG.

If all you were doing was changing PNGs to JPGs and not 'editing' them, I'd recommend SageThumbs (SageThumbs)... you can have File Explorer (or alternative) open to the folder, highlight the PNGs you want to convert, right-click, go to Sage's area of the Context menu and bulk convert the files... I've been using it for years and it's great.

Thanks for the suggestion Archigos. Will SageThumbs also get me WEBP thumbnails in Win11 ?

The thing about WordPress and the .png [Portable Network Graphics] format does kinda make sense since WordPress is all about Internet and Networking.

GeneralLee01 said:

Thanks for the suggestion Archigos. Will SageThumbs also get me WEBP thumbnails in Win11 ?

Click to expand...

Sadly, I don't think Sage works with WEBP files, so it wouldn't have any effect on thumbnails for them.

I just tested. SageThumbs can not handle webp, so i deleted it again.