How to reduce photo file size without losing quality
A modern phone photo weighs 3–10 MB. For a website, an email or an upload form, that is 10 to 100 times more than needed. The good news: cutting 90% of the weight with no visible loss takes no artistic judgement — just three levers pulled in the right order.
1. Dimensions: the most powerful lever
Weight grows with the square of dimensions: a 6000 px-wide photo has 25 times more pixels than a 1200 px one. And 1200–1600 px comfortably covers any web content; an entire Full HD screen is only 1920 px wide. Always start by resizing the image to the size it will actually be seen at: it is the only reduction that is free in perceived quality, because nobody will ever see the surplus pixels.
2. Format: WebP by default
At equal visual quality, WebP is 25–35% smaller than JPEG and up to 90% smaller than PNG for screenshots. Every browser has supported it since 2020. The practical rule: WebP for publishing on the web, JPEG when you need universal compatibility (forms, older software), and PNG only as a working format for further edits. You can convert formats here.
3. Quality: 75–85% is the sweet spot
Lossy formats discard the information the human eye distinguishes worst, first. Between 100% and 85% quality the visual difference is practically nil and the savings are huge; below 60%, artifacts appear in gradients and edges. The compressor shows exact savings per file as you move the slider, so you decide with data.
Asked for an exact maximum size?
Forms with limits (“maximum 100 KB”) are the most frustrating case to solve by hand: every attempt is an export-and-check cycle. Target size mode solves it automatically: it finds the highest quality that fits the limit and, if that is not enough, adjusts dimensions too.
The three most common mistakes
Compressing multiple times: every lossy save degrades a little more; always start from the original. Saving photos as PNG: PNG is for graphics and transparency, not photography — a photo stored as PNG weighs 5–10× more than its visual equivalent in WebP. Uploading camera photos untouched: even if your platform recompresses them, you are wasting data and upload time for nothing.