How to Reduce Image File Size Without Losing Quality
A single photo from a modern phone can be 3–10 MB. That is too big for many upload forms, slow to send by email, and heavy for a website. The good news is that most images can be made several times smaller with no difference you can see.
Here are the four techniques that matter, in order of how much they help, and how to apply them in a few clicks.
1. Reduce the dimensions
Resizing is usually the biggest win. File size grows with the number of pixels, and pixels grow with the square of the width. A 4000-pixel-wide photo resized to 1600 pixels keeps only 16% of the pixels, which removes roughly 84% of the data.
Most screens never show more than about 2000 pixels across, so for sharing, websites and documents a width of 1200–2000 pixels is plenty.
2. Lower the JPG or WEBP quality
JPG and WEBP let you choose a quality level. Going from 100% to around 75–85% often halves the file size, while the difference is very hard to see on a normal screen.
Avoid going below about 60% for photos, where blocky artifacts start to appear around edges and in skies.
3. Use a more efficient format
- Photos saved as PNG are often five to ten times larger than the same photo as JPG. Converting photo PNGs to JPG is an easy saving.
- WEBP is usually noticeably smaller than JPG at the same visual quality and is supported by all modern browsers.
- Keep PNG for screenshots, logos and graphics with sharp text or transparency, where JPG would look blurry.
4. Do not compress the same file repeatedly
Every time a JPG is saved again at a lower quality, a little more detail is lost. Always start from the original file, and keep that original somewhere safe.
Step by step with PixShift
- Open the Resize tool, drop in your images and enter a width such as 1600. Leave “Keep aspect ratio” on.
- Download the results, then open the Compress tool and drop them in. Start with quality 75%.
- Check the size shown next to each file. If you need it even smaller, switch the output to WEBP or lower the quality a little.
- Everything runs in your browser, so even private photos are never uploaded.
- If an image would get bigger after compression, the original is kept automatically.