How to compress an image to 100KB (and which format to pick)

Photo uploads have limits too, and they're often stricter than PDF forms. A profile picture capped at 100KB, a product image that has to load fast, a passport photo for an online application — all of them want a small file, and your phone's camera produces the opposite.

You can hit basically any target. The trick is picking the right format first, because that decision does half the work before you touch a quality slider.

The 20-second format guide

• Photographs → JPG. It's built for photos and compresses them brilliantly. Use Compress JPG.
• Logos, screenshots, anything with sharp edges or transparency → PNG. It stays crisp where JPG would smudge. Use Compress PNG.
• Images for a website → WebP. It's smaller than both at the same quality, and every modern browser reads it. Use Compress WebP.

Hitting an exact number

If a form demands 100KB or less, don't guess at quality percentages. Switch the compressor to target-size mode and type your number — it'll work down to it and stop. We keep dedicated pages for the common targets too, like compress JPG to 100KB and compress JPG to 50KB, if you'd rather land on one directly.

When compression alone isn't enough

There's a limit to how much you can squeeze a huge image before it looks rough. If you're starting with a 6000-pixel-wide photo and you only need it 800 pixels wide for a web page, resize it first. Shrinking the dimensions with Resize Image cuts the file size dramatically on its own, and then a light compression pass gets you the rest of the way — with a much cleaner result than brute-forcing it.

One image or fifty, the approach is the same — pick the format for the job, aim for your target, and skip the guesswork.