When is PNG the right format for a PSD?
When you need transparency or exact pixels. PNG keeps a transparent background, which JPG can’t, and it never adds compression artefacts, so it suits logos, artwork, cut-out products, game sprites and anything that will be placed over something else. For photos you want to send or post, JPG makes much smaller files.
| PSD | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Layers | Yes | No, one flat image |
| Transparency | Yes | Yes, 8-bit alpha |
| Compression | Lossless (RLE or ZIP) | Lossless (Deflate) |
| Bits per channel | 1, 8, 16 or 32 | 8 from this converter |
| Colour modes | RGB, CMYK, Grayscale, Lab and more | RGB here |
| Opens in browsers and phones | No | Yes |
What exactly is in the PNG?
The image Photoshop stored in the PSD when it was last saved: all visible layers merged, with their blend modes, effects, adjustment layers and text drawn exactly as Photoshop drew them. The converter decodes that stored image and writes it to PNG without redrawing anything. If the PSD was saved with Maximize Compatibility off, there is no stored image, so the converter stacks the layers itself and warns you that blend modes other than Normal, adjustment layers and effects are left out.
How are layers saved as PNGs?
Each layer with pixels becomes one PNG, cropped to the layer’s own bounds, so a small sticker on a large canvas gives a small PNG, not a canvas-sized one. File names come from the layer names (characters that file systems don’t allow are replaced) and groups become folders. If two layers share a name, the second gets a number. To put the PNGs back together later, the PNG to PSD tool stacks them into a layered PSD again, although the crop positions are not kept.
How it was tested
Tested on 2026-10-15 in Chrome 148 on a laptop with an Intel Core i7-14700HX, using a 6,000 × 4,000 px PSD with five layers:
- The PNG was pixel-identical to the merged image as ImageMagick 7.1.1 reads it from the PSD, and was saved in about 1.5 seconds.
- The ZIP of five layer PNGs took about 3.7 seconds. Each layer PNG had the same size and colour pixels as ImageMagick’s reading of that layer. (ImageMagick multiplies the layer’s opacity into its transparency; this converter leaves opacity out, as the note under the tool says.)
- In the automated tests, transparent PSDs written by Photoshop, GIMP and ImageMagick decoded with the same transparency as ImageMagick or the ag-psd library reads them, soft edges included.