Compress an Image to 200 KB

Two hundred kilobytes is 1,638,400 bits. A 1920 x 1080 image (about 2.07 million pixels) gets roughly 0.79 bits per pixel, and a 1600 x 1200 image about 0.85. That is enough for full-width web images and product photos where people expect reasonable detail, and it is a common upper limit on forms that accept larger photos.

A 12-megapixel phone photo at full size would still only get about 0.14 bits per pixel, so very large originals are reduced in size as part of the process.

The tool first draws your image at full size (anything longer than 4096 pixels on its long side is reduced to 4096 px) and encodes it at quality 0.8. If that file is already at or under the target (and not larger than your original), you get it straight away. If not, it repeats up to 10 times. On each pass it multiplies the quality by 0.95 (0.85 for PNG) and, because the first attempt was too big, also shrinks the width and height to 95% of the previous pass.

Ten passes is the limit. After all ten, the width and height have dropped to about 60% of where they started and the quality setting to about 0.48. If the file is still too big at that point, you get the last attempt and a note saying the target was not reached.

Because each extra attempt shrinks the image by 5%, the final width depends on how far over the target the first attempt was. If you need a specific width, for example 1600 px for a website template, resize to that width first with the Image Resizer. The compressor then only has to adjust quality and will usually reach 200 KB on the first or second try.

For tighter limits use 100 KB or type your own target. To compress a whole folder with one quality setting, use the Bulk Image Compressor.

Processing happens in your browser and the image is not uploaded.