ExactImage

Compress an image to 200 KB

Room to keep real detail. At 200 KB you can hold document scans and text legibly, not just faces.

Drop an image here, or click to choose one

You can also paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. JPG, PNG, WebP.

Target file size
Network measuring… Your file never leaves this device

Every byte of that work happened on your own machine. Verify it: open DevTools → Network, and use the tool. No request carries your image, because none is made.

The limit where documents become possible

Everything below 200 KB is really about faces. At 200 KB something else becomes achievable: a scanned document that is still readable. Text is unusually hostile to JPEG — sharp black-on-white edges are exactly the high-frequency detail the format throws away first, and undercompressed text develops a grey halo that makes small print unreadable. Two hundred kilobytes is roughly where an A4 page scan stays legible.

Where it shows up

Job application portals, insurance claim uploads, university transcript submissions, property and tenancy applications. These systems typically want proof documents rather than portraits, which is why their limits are more generous — and why the failure mode is different. Nobody rejects a job application because the photo was slightly soft. They do reject it because the certificate could not be read.

Scanning advice that matters more than the compression

If you are photographing a document with a phone, the compression is not your main problem. Shoot it flat, in even light, square to the page, and crop to the page edges before compressing. A well-shot page at 200 KB reads perfectly. A skewed, shadowed, half-page photo will not read at any file size, and no amount of clever encoding rescues it.

Other targets

Compress to 20 KBThe tightest limit you are likely to meet. The tool shrinks dimensions rather than destroying quality, so the result stays readable.Compress to 50 KBTight, but workable. At 50 KB a properly cropped portrait still looks like a proper photograph.Compress to 100 KBThe web's most common ceilingCompress to 500 KBA generous ceiling. Most photos reach it with quality losses you would need to go looking for.Compress to 1 MBThe gentlest common limit. Usually a matter of trimming excess rather than making sacrifices.Resize to exact pixelsSet width and height directly

Questions about 200 KB

Is 200 KB enough for a scanned document?
For a single page of normal print, yes — provided the scan itself is sharp and cropped to the page. The compression budget is spent on the detail that is actually there, so a clean 1500-pixel-wide capture of an A4 page will stay readable. A blurry capture will not, and that is a photography problem rather than a compression one.
Should I use PNG for documents?
Only if the form accepts it and the size limit allows, because PNG is lossless and therefore much larger for photographic content. For a pure black-and-white document scan PNG can actually be smaller than JPEG and much cleaner, since it has no artefacts around text edges. For anything with photographic content, JPEG wins on size.
Multiple pages — one file or several?
If the form takes one file per document, compress each page separately to its own limit rather than combining them. Merging pages into one image means each page gets a fraction of the budget, and legibility collapses.