How to Compress Images Without Losing Quality

Why image files get so large

A photo straight from a phone or camera is usually far bigger than it needs to be for a website, an email or a form upload. The file stores millions of pixels at high quality, and most screens never show that much detail.

Two things control file size: how many pixels the image has (its dimensions) and how much detail is kept per pixel (its quality setting). Good compression adjusts one or both.

How to compress an image in four steps

• Open the Image Compressor and upload your image (PNG, JPEG and WebP all work).
• Move the quality slider. Lower quality means a smaller file.
• Optionally turn on "Also limit dimensions" and set a maximum width and height — this shrinks the file much further for very large photos.
• Click Compress image, check the preview and the before-and-after file size, then download.

Which quality setting should you use?

For most photos, a quality between roughly 60% and 80% keeps the image looking sharp to the eye while cutting the file size significantly. Staying around 80–90% gives very little visible loss, while going far below 50% starts to show blur and blocky artifacts, especially in skies and skin tones.

The best approach is to compare: compress once at a moderate setting, look at the preview, and only go lower if the file is still too big.

Compression versus resizing

Compressing lowers the quality of each pixel; resizing reduces how many pixels there are. If a 6000-pixel-wide photo is only displayed 800 pixels wide on your site, resizing it first will save far more space than quality compression alone. The compressor's dimension limit does both in one step; the Image Resizer is the better choice when you need an exact width and height.

Things to know about the output

The compressed result is saved as a JPEG. That is ideal for photographs, but it means transparency in a PNG is not kept — transparent areas become solid. If you need to keep transparency, use the Image Converter or Background Remover instead and avoid converting to JPEG.

All processing happens in your browser, so your photo is never uploaded to a server.