Keeping the pixels
At 500 KB there is room for a lot of the picture. The tool searches for the highest quality that fits. For photos that were saved at a very high quality, going from, say, quality 95 to a lower one is where most of the saving comes from, and it is rarely visible.
Large or detailed photos need fewer pixels as well: a photo from a 12 megapixel phone has to be reduced noticeably to fit 500 KB at a good quality. The note on the result tells you the new size. If you would rather keep more pixels, choose a larger limit.
Email, slides and attachments
- Attachments add up: ten photos of 500 KB are 5 MB, comfortably under the limits of most mail providers.
- Several photos to one recipient: add them all and download the ZIP.
- If the receiver will print the photo, keep a bigger limit. 500 KB is ideal for screens.
Presentations and reports that carry many pictures get heavy quickly: twenty pictures at 500 KB are 10 MB. If the file has to be emailed, a smaller limit for each picture is kinder to the receiver. For pictures that are shown full screen on a projector, 500 KB keeps them crisp. Removing camera details and the GPS location is the default, which helps when you share a photo with someone you do not know. You can keep them with one switch.
Large pictures on a website
A full width banner or a hero picture at the top of a page can justify 300 to 500 KB, because it fills the screen and is the first thing a visitor sees. WebP or AVIF can fit more quality in the same size when your site and your visitors' browsers support them. Everything else on the page should be far lighter.
Half a megabyte, counted in thousands
A limit of 500 KB here means 500,000 bytes, which is 0.5 MB when kilobytes and megabytes are both counted in thousands. Windows counts in units of 1,024, so it shows the same file as slightly smaller. Because the tool uses the smaller count, a result under 500,000 bytes is under the limit in both systems. The sizes in the list are counted the same way, so they match what the limit saw.
What goes missing with the weight
By default the camera details, date and GPS location stored in a photo are removed, which also saves a few kilobytes and matters when you share a photo with people you do not know. The colours are converted to sRGB. Nothing else is taken out. Switch on Keep camera details and location if you need them.