500 KB keeps photos looking good
Unlike tiny limits such as 20 KB, half a megabyte is generous. A typical 3 to 6 MB phone photo can usually reach 500 KB with only a quality change, at full or near-full resolution, and the difference is very hard to see on screen. That makes 500 KB a good target when quality still matters but the original is simply too heavy.
Common uses for a 500 KB image
- Website and blog images - smaller images load faster, which helps visitors on mobile data and helps your pages rank.
- Visa, passport and ID applications - many online services cap document photos and scans at 500 KB.
- Email and chat - several photos at 500 KB each fit comfortably within attachment limits.
- Online marketplaces and listings - product photos upload faster and still show detail.
How the compression is done
The tool tries the highest JPEG quality first and lowers it only as far as needed to get under 500 KB. If a very large image still does not fit, it reduces the pixel size slightly. Rotation from your phone is applied, so the photo is the right way up. If your file is already under 500 KB, you get it back unchanged.
Scans and documents
Scanned pages with lots of white space compress very well. For a multi-page document, it is often easier to put the pages into one PDF and use the PDF compressor instead.