How to Reduce Image File Size Without Losing Quality
Six practical ways to make images smaller for email, websites and upload forms: resizing, quality settings, WebP, PNG quantisation and removing metadata.
Upload form says "maximum 2 MB"? Website loading slowly? These steps, in order of impact, will shrink almost any image.
1. Resize to the size you actually need
A 12-megapixel phone photo is 4000 px wide. Most screens show images at 1000-2000 px. Halving the width cuts the pixel count, and roughly the file size, by 75%. Use the image resizer or set a maximum width in the compressor.
2. Lower the JPG or WebP quality
Quality 75-80 is visually indistinguishable from 100 for photos and is often a third of the size. For thumbnails, 60 is plenty.
3. Switch to WebP
For websites, converting to WebP saves another 25-35% at the same quality.
4. Quantise PNG graphics
Screenshots and logos rarely need millions of colours. PNG compression reduces them to 256 or fewer colours and typically saves 60-80% while keeping transparency.
5. Don't save photos as PNG
A photo saved as PNG can be ten times bigger than the same photo as JPG. Convert PNG to JPG if there is no transparency.
6. Remove metadata
EXIF data, embedded thumbnails and colour profiles can add 20-100 KB per image. Stripping metadata also protects your privacy.
How to compress an image to an exact size like 100 KB
Open the compressor, set the format to WebP or JPG, set a maximum width around 1200-1600 px and lower the quality step by step while watching the result size. Most photos fit under 200 KB at 1600 px and quality 70.