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Image Compressor

Drop an image and drag the quality slider until the file is small enough — the compressed size and the percentage saved update on every move, so you can stop the moment quality starts to suffer. The tool re-encodes the picture as JPG or WebP on a <canvas> in your browser, with an optional max-width cap for the biggest single win. Nothing is uploaded, so you can compress a 6 MB phone photo down to a few hundred KB for an email attachment or a marketplace listing without handing it to a third-party server first.

Drop an image here or click to choose

Compressed in your browser — the file never leaves your device. JPG, PNG, WebP.

How to use the image compressor

  1. Drop or choose an image — its dimensions and original size appear above the slider.
  2. Pick JPG (best for photos) or WebP (usually smaller still), then drag the quality slider; the result re-renders live.
  3. Optionally set a max width to shrink the pixels too — that's often where the biggest savings come from.
  4. Watch the 'Saved' figure, then Download when you're happy with the size/quality trade-off.

Where file size actually comes from

A JPEG's size is driven by two things, and most people only touch one of them. The first is the quality factor — how aggressively the encoder discards high-frequency detail. Dropping from 95 to 75 is usually invisible on a photo yet can halve the file. The second, and bigger, lever is pixel count. A 4032 × 3024 phone photo is 12 million pixels; the same shot capped at 1600 px wide is under 2 million — six times less data before the encoder even starts. That is why this tool offers a max-width cap: shrinking dimensions plus a moderate quality almost always beats crushing quality alone.

If you only need to change pixel dimensions, the image resizer is the focused tool; if you need a different format entirely, the image format converter handles PNG ⇄ JPG ⇄ WebP.

Lossy vs. lossless, and why PNG isn't offered here

JPG and WebP are lossy: they throw away information your eye barely registers, which is exactly why they get small. PNG is lossless — it reproduces every pixel perfectly, so re-saving a PNG through a canvas almost never shrinks it and often makes it larger. That's why this compressor outputs JPG or WebP: those are the formats where a quality slider does real work. Use PNG only when you need crisp text, sharp edges, or transparency; for those, reach for the format converter instead.

One caveat to know: lossy compression compounds. Every time you re-save a JPEG at, say, quality 70, it loses a little more — the "generation loss" you see when a meme has been screenshotted a dozen times. Always compress from the original, not from a file you already compressed.

Picking a quality number

  • 90–100: near-archival. Big files, little visible gain over 85 on screen. Use only when the image will be printed or edited further.
  • 70–85: the web default. Photos look clean, files are a fraction of the original. Start here.
  • 50–70: thumbnails, background images, anything seen small or briefly. Compression artifacts appear on close inspection but rarely matter.
  • Below 50: visible blocking and color banding, especially in skies and gradients. Reserve for extreme size limits.

Flat graphics, screenshots of text, and logos are the exception — JPEG smears their sharp edges at any quality. Keep those as PNG or lossless WebP.

Frequently asked questions

Is my image uploaded to compress it?

No. The picture is decoded, redrawn on a canvas, and re-encoded with canvas.toBlob entirely in your browser. Most online compressors POST your file to their servers; this one physically can't, so confidential photos and documents never leave your device.

Why is my 'compressed' file sometimes bigger than the original?

Because your source was already efficiently compressed. If you feed in a small, optimized JPG and re-encode it at high quality, the result can grow. The tool flags this when it happens — lower the quality, set a max width, or switch to WebP to actually save bytes.

How small can I make an image without it looking bad?

For a typical photo, quality 70–80 plus a sensible max width (1600–2000 px for full-screen, 600–800 px for inline) usually cuts the file by 80–95% with no visible loss. Push quality below 50 and you'll start seeing blocky artifacts in skies and smooth gradients. Watch the live preview as you drag.

JPG or WebP — which should I choose?

WebP is smaller than JPG at the same visual quality (commonly 25–35% less) and supports transparency, and every current browser displays it. Choose WebP unless you need to hand the file to old software that doesn't read it; then use JPG. Avoid both for sharp-edged graphics and text, which belong in PNG.

Does compressing change the image dimensions?

Only if you set a max width. By default the pixel dimensions stay the same and only the encoding quality changes. Setting a max width scales the image down first, which is the single most effective way to cut file size — fewer pixels means less data regardless of quality.

Why does re-compressing the same file keep degrading it?

JPG and WebP are lossy, so each save discards a bit more detail — a cumulative effect called generation loss. Always compress from your original file, not from one you compressed earlier, or the artifacts stack up the way a repeatedly screenshotted image looks muddy.

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