How to compress an image for web or email
Modern phone cameras produce huge files, a single photo can easily be 5–10MB. That's fine for storage, but it's overkill (and sometimes outright rejected) for a website upload field, an email attachment limit, or a job application form. Compressing intelligently means picking the right quality level, not just cranking a slider to the minimum.
Step by step
- Open Compress Image and add your photo(s).
- Start the quality slider around 80%, that's usually indistinguishable from the original to the eye, at a fraction of the file size.
- If you need it smaller still, switch the output format to WebP. It compresses noticeably better than JPEG at the same visual quality, and most modern email clients, browsers and upload forms accept it.
- Click "Compress Images" and download.
Format matters more than people think
- JPEG, universal support, good for photos, no transparency.
- WebP, smaller than JPEG at equal quality, supports transparency, supported everywhere that matters today.
- PNG, lossless, which means the quality slider won't shrink it much. Only use PNG when you genuinely need pixel-perfect output (logos, screenshots with text) or transparency and WebP isn't an option.
If you need an exact pixel size
Quality sliders reduce file size without changing dimensions. If a form specifically wants, say, a 1200px-wide image, use Resize Image first (by exact dimensions or by percentage), then compress.
Ready to shrink a photo?
Open Compress Image