Image Compressor

Compression here means re-encoding. Your image is decoded into pixels, drawn on a canvas (in a background Web Worker when your browser supports it), and saved again in the format you pick at the quality you pick. A lower quality setting tells the encoder to throw away more fine detail, which is what makes the file smaller.

It handles one image at a time so you can judge the result in the comparison slider before saving. For a folder of images with the same settings, use the Bulk Image Compressor. If you need to land under a specific size, such as an upload form that rejects files above 100 KB, the Reduce Image Size tool lets you type a target instead of guessing a quality.

• Accepted files: JPG, PNG and WebP. HEIC is listed in the file picker, but only browsers that can display HEIC (normally Safari) can read it.
• Quality (10 to 100%, default 60%): passed to the encoder as 0.1 to 1.0. It is a setting, not a percentage of the original, so 60% does not mean "60% of the size".
• Output format (default WebP): WebP, JPG or PNG. The download keeps your original name with the new extension unless you type a different file name.
• Automatic limits: images longer than 4096 px on either side are scaled down to 4096 px. If the encoded file is still over 1 MB (2 MB when quality is above 90%), the tool keeps going: it lowers the quality and the dimensions in small steps, up to 10 times, until the file fits.
• Never bigger by design: if the first result is larger than your original, the tool also tries lower quality passes to get under the original size. It cannot always succeed, for example with a small, already well-compressed JPG saved at 100%.

WebP is the default because at the same visual quality it usually produces smaller files than JPG, and it keeps transparency. Current versions of the major browsers display it, but some older software, email clients and upload forms still reject it.

JPG is the safest choice when you do not know where the file will end up. It has no transparency, so any transparent areas are filled with white.

PNG is a lossless container, but the PNG this tool writes is not a lossless copy. The library reduces the number of distinct colours (up to 4096 multiplied by the quality setting, so about 2,450 colours at the default 60%). That suits screenshots, logos and flat graphics, which often have few colours to begin with. On photos it can cause visible banding in smooth gradients such as skies.

Because the image is redrawn on a canvas, nothing except the pixels survives. EXIF data (camera model, capture date, GPS location), XMP and IPTC fields, and embedded colour profiles are all dropped. Photos are drawn upright first, so the missing orientation tag does not leave them sideways.

Dropping the colour profile is usually harmless for sRGB images. Photos taken in a wide-gamut space such as Display P3 are converted to sRGB on the canvas, which can make very saturated colours look slightly duller. If you only want the metadata gone and the pixels untouched, use the Lossless Image Compressor instead.

• The image is already compressed. A JPG saved at low quality by a phone or social network has little detail left to discard. Re-encoding it mostly adds new artifacts.
• The image is simply large. A 6000 x 4000 photo has 24 million pixels. No quality setting makes that tiny without visible damage. Reducing the dimensions with the Image Resizer first usually saves far more than lowering quality.
• Repeated saving. Each lossy save loses a little more. Keep your original and always compress from it, not from a previous compressed copy.

• "This browser cannot save WEBP files": your browser could not encode the chosen format and fell back to PNG. Pick JPG or PNG instead.
• "This image could not be processed": the browser could not decode the file. HEIC from an iPhone is the usual cause outside Safari. Convert it first, or export it from your phone as JPG.
• The result is smaller than expected in pixels: the 4096 px cap or the 1 MB fallback reduced the dimensions. Raise the quality above 90% to allow up to 2 MB, or resize to the size you need before compressing.
• Banding in a PNG photo: this is the colour reduction described above. Save the photo as WebP or JPG instead.

Decoding, encoding and the preview all run inside your browser tab, in a background Web Worker where supported. The image is not sent to Image York or anyone else, and nothing is stored after you close or reload the page. The site itself still loads scripts such as analytics, which are described in the Privacy Policy.