What 500 KB is enough for
At 500 KB most photos keep their full size in pixels with only the quality lowered a little. It suits uploads with a limit of half a megabyte, email and photos you want to keep looking good on a large screen.
| Limit | Bytes |
|---|---|
| 500 KB, counted as 1000 bytes per KB | 500,000 bytes |
| 500 KB, counted as 1024 bytes per KB | 512,000 bytes |
| This tool keeps the file under | 500,000 bytes |
When 500 KB is not enough
A photo with very fine detail, such as grass, gravel or a crowd, needs more bytes. If the tool has to make it smaller, choose a larger size, or crop away what you do not need.
Quality first, then pixels
A JPG or WebP file gets smaller in two ways: a lower quality, which drops fine detail the eye hardly sees, or fewer pixels. The tool lowers the quality first, only as far as the photo still looks good, and then makes the photo smaller. Tick “Keep the dimensions” when the size in pixels must stay; then only the quality goes down.
When the photo itself is the problem
Compression makes a photo lighter, not better: it cannot fix a blurry, dark or badly framed picture. If the photo is for a CV, a profile or an application and you have no good one, a professional headshot made from a few selfies gives you one.