What this tool does

Set 200 KB as the target and the engine works down to it in steps, stopping at the first result that fits rather than padding the file back out.

The JPEG quality factor steps down until the file fits. The output is still a JPG and still opens anywhere.

Files are processed on our servers, not in your browser. The upload and the result are both permanently deleted within 1 hour, no backups and no copies kept.

No watermark, and no account needed to use it. 5 files a day at up to 50 MB each, sent singly or together; signing in is free and raises each file to 100 MB.

Working at the 200 KB budget

1. 1

   Fix the display width first

   At roughly 1800 px on the long edge this target settles near quality 82, which withstands close inspection. Work out the dimensions you need before compressing, because that number decides how far the quality factor has to fall.

2. 2

   Encode once, from the full-resolution capture

   A file built from an already compressed copy spends part of its 200 KB faithfully storing the previous encode's faults. One pass from the original gives the budget entirely to the picture.

3. 3

   Inspect it at actual size

   This image is going to be viewed large, so check it large. Smooth gradients and the boundaries between light and dark regions are where a quality factor set too low shows itself first.

The target for an image that gets looked at

Some photographs are scrolled past at the width of a paragraph. Others fill a screen: the banner across the top of a page, a portfolio frame, a product shot somebody opens in order to inspect it. 200 KB is where a photograph can be shown that large without the compression announcing itself. By web standards it is a generous budget, and it is meant to be spent on pixel dimensions.

The cap is not what limits this one

The 4000x3000 frame at 3.4 MB does not even use the full allowance. It finishes at 173 KB, comfortably inside the cap, which means the dimensions you chose are what decided the result rather than the target.

That is a different position from the tighter targets, where the budget binds and something has to be surrendered. Here you can push the long edge out further, or hold the quality factor higher, and still finish under 200 KB.

Where the extra kilobytes go

What survives at this size and not below it is mostly high-frequency texture: hair, woven fabric, leaves, the grain in stone. A falling quality factor sacrifices those first, because they are expensive to store and easy to approximate.

Colour behaves the same way. A gradient spread across a wide area, a sky or a studio backdrop, needs enough levels to stay smooth, and the larger it is displayed the more plainly a shortage of them reads as banding. Display size, not resolution on its own, is the reason to choose this target.

Most images on a page do not belong here

A photograph sitting in a column of text is getting twice what it can use. The 100 KB target holds a full frame at reading width with nothing visibly surrendered, and it serves the page better, because every image on it is competing for the same loading time.

There is also the case for not compressing at all. Where the destination re-encodes whatever it receives, as many publishing platforms do, any quality you buy above its own internal ceiling is discarded on upload. Find out what it does before spending effort on a file it will overwrite.

Questions people actually ask about this