Compress a JPEG photo
Camera and phone JPEGs routinely run 3–15 MB at full resolution — far more than an email attachment limit, a form upload cap, or a fast-loading web page needs. Drop one in below, pick a quality level, and download a smaller copy without a server ever seeing the original.
Why a JPEG straight off a phone is so large
Two things stack on top of each other. First, sensor resolution: a modern phone camera commonly captures 12 to 48 megapixels, which is far more detail than any screen displays a single photo at — a 48-megapixel image has roughly six times the pixels of a 1080p monitor's entire screen. Second, the camera app usually saves at a high JPEG quality by default, on the reasonable assumption that you might want to crop or edit the photo later and would rather not start from a heavily compressed source.
Neither of those is wrong for a camera roll. Both are wasteful once the photo's job becomes "attach it to an email" or "add it to a web page", where the display size might be a few hundred pixels wide and nobody will ever zoom in. Compressing for that destination is a completely different, and much smaller, target than compressing for archival.
Settings for common size targets
These are starting points, not guarantees — the same settings produce different file sizes on a busy, detailed photo versus a plain one. Compress once and check the result.
| Destination | Suggested quality | Suggested max dimension |
|---|---|---|
| Email attachment, general sharing | 0.75–0.85 | 1920 px |
| Web page / blog photo | 0.7–0.8 | 1200–1600 px |
| Form upload with a strict size cap | 0.6–0.7 | 1000–1280 px |
| Thumbnail or list preview | 0.5–0.6 | 400–600 px |
| Printing or further editing | 0.9–1.0 | No limit |
If a file still comes out over a hard limit after trying a table row, drop the max dimension first rather than the quality — halving both width and height roughly quarters the pixel count, and file size scales with pixel count far more directly than it scales with the quality setting once you are already in a reasonable range.
Step by step
- Drop the JPEG into the tool above, or choose it from a file picker.
- Leave the output format on Keep original type so it stays a JPEG, unless you specifically want to switch to WebP.
- Set a quality from the table, or start at 0.8 and adjust after seeing the result.
- If the photo is larger than it needs to be displayed at, set a max width/height — this is usually the single biggest lever on file size.
- Check the size shown next to the preview, then download it.
JPEG compression questions
What quality should I use to get a JPEG under a specific file size?
Start around 0.75 and check the result. If it's still over your limit, the max width/height setting usually gets you there faster than dropping quality further — halving both dimensions cuts pixel count, and therefore file size, to roughly a quarter, whereas quality reductions below about 0.5 buy comparatively little extra saving for a lot of extra visible artifacting.
Why is my phone photo so much bigger than photos I see on websites?
Two independent reasons stack together. Phone cameras now commonly shoot 12 to 48 megapixels, far more detail than a screen displays a photo at; and phones often save at a high JPEG quality to preserve editing headroom. A website photo has usually already been resized down to its actual display size and compressed for the web — exactly the two things this tool does.
Will compressing a JPEG here reduce its resolution?
Only if you set a max width/height. The quality slider alone does not change pixel dimensions at all — it changes how much fine detail the JPEG encoder discards within the same width and height. Leave the max-dimension field empty to compress without resizing.
Can I compress a JPEG without losing any quality?
Not with JPEG specifically — it is a lossy format by definition, so any JPEG encoder, including this one, discards some information every time it saves. If the source file already exists as PNG or another lossless format and you need zero quality loss, keep it in that lossless format rather than converting to JPEG; JPEG's whole purpose is trading a small, usually invisible quality cost for a much smaller file.
Does this tool keep compressing my photo smaller the more times I run it?
Running the same source image through again at the same or a lower quality will usually shrink it a little further, but running an already-compressed JPEG back through JPEG compression repeatedly compounds quality loss rather than compounding savings — each pass discards more detail on top of what the last pass already removed. Compress once, from the original, at the quality and size you actually need.
Is JPEG still the right choice, or should I use WebP instead?
For a photo with no particular compatibility constraint, WebP usually produces a smaller file at the same visual quality — the main compressor page covers the comparison. JPEG remains the safer choice specifically when the file has to open in older or more limited software that has no WebP support.