Compress Image

Where the bytes go: quality versus pixels

Two things make a photo large: how many pixels it has and how aggressively they are compressed. A 12-megapixel phone photo is 4000 pixels wide; a laptop screen shows at most 1600 to 2000 of them, so scaling down to 2000 pixels alone removes about three quarters of the file. Re-encoding at the Balanced quality removes another third to a half. Combine both for the biggest saving.

Pick a quality

The presets map to the JPG and WEBP encoder quality.

Best (0.92)

For printing or further editing; modest saving

Balanced (0.8)

Indistinguishable from the original on screen; the default

Small (0.65)

Email, messaging, and web pages

Smallest (0.5)

Thumbnails and previews; slight softness in flat areas

PNG screenshots versus PNG photos

PNG is lossless, so re-encoding a PNG at a "quality" does nothing. Keep PNG for screenshots with text, logos, and anything with transparency. A photograph saved as PNG, which happens when apps export the wrong format, shrinks five to ten times when saved as JPG or WEBP: choose that output format in the last option. If PaperKit cannot make a file smaller it keeps the original and says so.

Compress for email, forms, and uploads

Common limits and a setting that comfortably meets them.

• Email attachments, 10 to 25 MB total: Balanced quality, 2000 px wide
• Government and job-application forms, 2 to 5 MB per file: Small quality, 1600 px wide
• Website images: WEBP, Balanced, no wider than the slot they fill
• Chat and messaging apps re-compress anyway; Small at 1200 px is plenty

Batch and the before/after numbers

Drop as many images as you need. The result panel shows the original and new size with the percentage saved for the first file, and every file gets -compressed added to its name; several files download together as one ZIP. Nothing is replaced on disk.

What changes besides the size

Re-encoding applies the EXIF orientation so photos stay upright, and drops EXIF metadata including the GPS location, which is usually welcome before sharing. Transparent areas become white when you save as JPG; keep PNG or WEBP to preserve transparency. HEIC input is converted to JPG.