Image Compression Tools

When to use Compress Images

Reach for these when the picture already looks the way you want and the only problem is its weight — an email attachment that bounces, an upload form with a hard cap, or a page that loads slowly because its images are straight off a camera. Compression re-encodes the same pixels more aggressively; it does not change the dimensions, so if the image is also far larger than it will ever be displayed, resize it first and compress second.

Choosing between these tools

Start with the general Image Compressor

It accepts JPG, PNG and WebP, lets you switch the output format, and is the only tool here with a target-size mode that searches for a setting under a number you name. If you do not already know which format you want out, this is the right starting point.

Use a format-specific compressor when the format is fixed

Compress JPEG exposes one quality slider and nothing else, because that is genuinely the only lever JPEG has. Compress PNG offers palette reduction instead of a quality slider, since PNG is lossless. Compress WebP adds the lossy/lossless switch that WebP alone supports.

Consider converting rather than compressing

A PNG photograph or an old JPEG often shrinks far more by moving to WebP than by any quality setting in its original format. Each compressor here can write a different format, so you can test that in the same pass.

What to watch out for

• PNG is lossless by definition, so the quality slider is inactive for PNG output — the tool disables it and says why, rather than pretending it did something.
• Re-compressing a file that was already compressed loses more detail for very little size gain. Work from the best original you have.
• A result can come out larger than the source, especially on small or already-optimized files. Every tool shows both sizes and refuses to label a bigger file as a saving.
• Target-size mode searches quality, then resolution if it must. It reports honestly when the target was not reachable instead of silently returning the closest attempt.

Typical jobs

• Getting a 6 MB phone photo under a 2 MB upload limit.
• Cutting the weight of a page’s hero image without changing its dimensions.
• Shrinking a folder of product shots in one batch and downloading them as a ZIP.

Related guides