Compress an image to 500 KB

500 KB is a typical budget for pictures on a web page, in a blog post or in a CMS upload, and a comfortable size for an email with several images. Type 500 into the “Target size (KB)” box and the tool looks for the highest quality that fits, and only shrinks the pixel dimensions if quality alone cannot get there. It takes a few seconds, and the image never leaves your browser.

Open the image compressor

Step by step

1. Open the compressor and add your JPG, PNG or WebP image.
2. Type 500 in the “Target size (KB, optional)” box.
3. Press Compress. The size shown next to the image is at or under 500 KB, and the download is ready.
4. Looks too soft? The Quality slider is the ceiling the tool searches up to. Raise it a notch (free goes up to 80%) and run again; each run starts from your original file, so repeated tries do not stack up quality loss.

What 500 KB looks like

For a photo, 500 KB usually means roughly 2000 px on the longest side at a good quality, so on most pictures the tool only needs to lower the quality a little. The free plan caps output at 2000 px, which suits this size. This is a rough guide: very detailed photos, such as foliage, crowds or fine texture, need more shrinking than simple ones.

Building a web page? Compressed images load faster, and each image keeps its own dimensions, so also set a Max width/height that matches how large the picture is shown.

If your image is a PNG

PNG is lossless, so quality plays no part: with a target set, the tool can only reduce the pixel dimensions until the file fits. Screenshots and flat graphics often fit that way. A photo saved as PNG is usually much larger than the same photo as a JPG. Converting between formats is part of Pro ($29 a year or $4 a month), and transparent areas turn white when a PNG becomes a JPG.

When it will not go under 500 KB

• If the image is still over the target at the smallest size tried (100 px on the longest side), the tool says so in the status line instead of handing you a postage stamp silently.
• If you see “already optimal”, your original was already no larger than anything the tool could produce, so you got the original back.
• Images are never enlarged, so a max size bigger than the image changes nothing.

Compress an image to 500 KB now

Other target sizes: to 50 KB · to 100 KB · to 200 KB · to 1 MB

Sharing the photo? Strip its location and camera data too: Photo Scrubber

Related: compress an image online · reduce a photo's file size · image too large to upload · resize an image online · compress a PNG online