What it is
The Image Compressor makes a picture lighter without changing its format, by re-encoding it at a quality level you choose.
Why it matters
Weight is what makes a page slow, an email bounce and an upload fail. A photo straight out of a phone is often 4 to 8 MB, and almost nothing needs that: a picture displayed at 800 pixels wide on a website is doing the same job at a fraction of the size.
Most forms that reject your photo are not rejecting the picture, they are rejecting the megabytes.
How to use it
- Add the image.
- Choose the quality level and watch the estimated size change.
- Compare before and after, then download.
Finding the right level
Compression is a dial, not a switch. Around 80% quality is where most photographs stop being distinguishable from the original while losing more than half their weight. Below about 60% the artefacts start showing, first in smooth gradients like sky and skin.
Two cases behave differently. Screenshots with text degrade earlier than photographs, because compression blurs sharp edges. Images that will be edited again should be compressed last, not first: each save compounds the loss.
If the file is heavy because it is enormous in pixels rather than in quality, resizing it will do more than compressing it. Use the image resizer for that.
Nothing is uploaded
The whole operation runs inside your browser. Your file is never sent to a server, never stored and never seen by anyone else. There is no queue, no daily cap and no account: the only real limit is your own device.