Compress Image
Get photos under the limit that keeps rejecting them — by quality, or by naming the size you need and letting the tool find it.
Runs on your device — photos are never uploadedDrop your images here
or click to browse — as many as you like
JPG · PNG · WebP · HEIC
75% is the usual sweet spot for photographs. Below about 50 the edges start to smear.
The tool hunts for the quality that lands there. Government forms commonly cap uploads at 500 KB or 1 MB.
JPG opens absolutely everywhere. The safe choice for photos.
Resizing shrinks a file far more than quality does. A phone photo is often 4000 px wide when 1600 would do.
Every image is decoded in memory, so a hundred phone photos at once will strain a phone. Work in batches of a few dozen if it slows down.
How it works
Three steps, no account, and the photos never leave your computer.
Drop the images in
Any number of them, including HEIC straight from an iPhone. Each one shows its dimensions and size before anything happens to it.
Say what you need
A quality level, or a target size in kilobytes and the tool finds the quality that lands there. Limiting the longest side helps more than either.
Check the saving, then download
Every image reports what it was and what it became. Save them one by one or take the batch as a ZIP.
When a photo is too big
An upload form with a hard cap
Visa applications, job portals and government forms routinely cap images at 500 KB or 1 MB, which a modern phone photo passes several times over.
Email that will not send
A dozen holiday photos straight from a phone can be 60 MB. The same dozen at 1600 px and 75% quality is a couple.
Making a site load faster
Uploading a 4000 px photo to display it at 800 px wastes most of what the visitor downloads. Resizing first is the single biggest win available.
Sending pictures over a slow connection
Smaller files send in seconds rather than minutes, and arrive at all on a weak signal.
What actually makes a photo smaller
There are two independent dials on any image, and most people only ever touch one of them. Understanding the other is where the real savings are.
Dimensions matter more than quality
The number of pixels in a photograph is width times height, so halving each side quarters the pixel count. A 4000 by 3000 photo holds twelve million pixels; the same shot at 2000 by 1500 holds three million. That is a 75% cut before any compression is applied at all.
And most of the time those pixels were never going to be seen. A photo attached to a form, displayed in a browser, or looked at on a phone is being viewed at perhaps 1000 pixels across. Everything beyond that is downloaded, stored and thrown away by the screen.
This is why the "limit the longest side" control here usually beats the quality slider. Dropping quality from 90 to 60 might halve a file. Going from 4000 px to 1600 px cuts it by far more and, at normal viewing sizes, is much harder to see.
What the quality number really means
JPEG quality is not a percentage of anything. It is a dial on how aggressively the encoder discards detail the eye is least likely to miss, and the relationship between the number and the file size is not linear.
- 90 to 95 — visually identical to the original for almost any photo, and much larger than it needs to be
- 70 to 80 — the sweet spot; the difference is invisible at normal viewing size
- 50 to 65 — noticeable on close inspection, fine for a thumbnail
- Below 50 — edges smear and flat areas develop blocks
Going from 95 to 80 often halves a file with no visible cost. Going from 80 to 65 saves much less and starts to show. The first cut is nearly free; the second rarely is.
Aiming at a size instead
When a form says "maximum 500 KB", quality is the wrong dial to be turning by hand — you are guessing, exporting and checking.
The target mode does that hunt for you. It encodes the image repeatedly, halving the search range each time, until it finds the highest quality that still fits under the number you gave. Ten passes land within a fraction of a percent, and there is no formula that could replace them: how well a picture compresses depends entirely on the picture. A photograph of a plain wall and a photograph of a forest behave completely differently at the same setting.
Choosing a format
| Format | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| JPG | Photographs, anything being uploaded anywhere | No transparency; lossy |
| WebP | Websites, and photos where size matters most | Rejected by some older software and upload forms |
| PNG | Screenshots, logos, anything with sharp edges or transparency | Lossless, so the quality dial does nothing — only resizing shrinks it |
WebP is typically 25 to 35% smaller than JPG at the same visual quality and every current browser reads it. The catch is outside the browser: plenty of upload forms and older desktop software still refuse it. If the file is going to a person or a system rather than a web page, JPG remains the safe answer.
One thing worth knowing about PNG: it is lossless, so the quality slider genuinely does nothing to it. A PNG photograph is usually several times larger than the JPG of the same picture. If a photo arrived as a PNG, converting it to JPG is often the entire saving.
When compression makes a file bigger
It happens, and it is not a bug. Re-encoding an image that was already compressed harder than your setting produces a larger file, because you are asking for more quality than the source retains. The tool says so rather than handing back something worse than what you started with.
The same applies to a second pass. Compressing an already-compressed JPG loses a little more each time, so it is better to go back to the original and compress once than to squeeze the same file repeatedly.
Nothing is uploaded
Images are decoded, resized and re-encoded in your browser. There is no server, which is why there is no account, no daily cap and no watermark.
The photos people most often need to shrink are the ones attached to applications: passports, certificates, signed documents, photographs of themselves. Those should not need a round trip through a stranger's machine to lose a few hundred kilobytes.
Common questions
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. They are decoded, resized and re-encoded in your browser using your own processor. Nothing is transmitted, which is why there is no account, no daily limit and no watermark.
Should I lower the quality or shrink the dimensions?
Dimensions, almost always. Halving each side quarters the pixel count before compression even starts, and a photo viewed at 1000 pixels across gains nothing from being 4000. Use quality for the last bit of tuning.
How does the target size mode work?
It encodes the image repeatedly, halving the search range each time, until it finds the highest quality that still fits under your number. Ten passes land within a fraction of a percent. There is no formula for it, because how well an image compresses depends entirely on the image.
What quality should I use?
75 for most photographs. Between 70 and 80 the difference from the original is invisible at normal viewing size. Below 50 edges smear and flat areas break into blocks.
Why did my file get bigger?
Because it was already compressed harder than the setting you asked for, so re-encoding added quality back. The tool tells you when this happens rather than handing back something worse than the original — keep the original in that case.
Does the quality slider work on PNG?
No, and that is not a fault. PNG is lossless, so there is no quality to trade away. Shrinking the dimensions is the only thing that reduces a PNG — or converting a PNG photograph to JPG, which is often the whole saving.
Does it work with iPhone HEIC photos?
Yes. HEIC files are decoded here first, so photos can come straight off an iPhone without converting them separately. The first one takes a few seconds while the decoder loads.
More tools
Every one of them runs on your device. No uploads, no accounts.