Compress photo to 1 MB Under 1 MB for listings and portals.

Big, sharp photos that still pass a 1 MB upload limit.

or drop them here · paste with Ctrl+V

Free · No sign-up · Photos stay on your device

A mountain lake at sunset, snowy peaks reflected in the water — 867 KBfrom 3.6 MB · Same 3000 × 2000 photo

Quality

Size per file

Long edge

Format

Metadata

Recipe

Encoder quality

Number

JPEG 0.88, WebP 0.90, PNG every colour kept. The same number for every file — only a size rule makes a file go lower, and its row says so.

Form preset

Check against

A preset sets the size range, pixel size, DPI and JPEG for one kind of upload, then checks every output against it.

Dimensions

Pixel size by

The long edge is on the recipe bar. Percent, an exact width × height, or a megapixel cap are chosen here.

Colour and density

Greyscale (documents, signatures)Signature clean-up: paper to white, ink darkened, cropped to the ink

DPI written

Lossless only

Do not re-encode: rebuild JPEG Huffman tables, recompress PNG, edit metadata

Every pixel stays the same, and each row says so only after both files were decoded and compared. Savings are small (often 2–10% on camera JPEGs) and some files cannot be made smaller this way; those are kept as they were.

Orientation groups

Portraits get their own long edge

Counts appear once the photos have been looked at.

Leave alone

Anything smaller thanAnything that came out bigger — the original goes in instead

Saved recipes

Kept in this browser only, with nothing but the settings in it.

Recipe as a file

A small JSON file with the settings and nothing else, to share a recipe with someone else.

In words: quality light, PNGs recompressed losslessly, each file at most 1 MB, with fewer pixels where quality 40 is still over, dimensions unchanged, capture information kept, every file processed, however small, anything that grew is discarded.

A 1 MB target per photo: the quality comes down from 88 until it fits, and the pixels only if it still does not.

A measured example

Synthetic 4032 × 3024 test photo (gradients, shapes and grain), run by this build in Chromium 153 on 2026-10-23
Recipe	Target 1 MB, Light (88), format and capture information kept
Before	1.73 MB · 4032 × 3024 · JPEG
After	1004.1 KB · 4032 × 3024 · JPEG q81
Change	−43.3%

What this does

Compress photo to 1 MB with the least change: the desk starts at quality 88 and a 1 MB target, keeps the format and the capture information, and lowers the quality only as far as it must. The honest limit: a very large or very detailed photo may need fewer pixels, and its row says how many.

When to use this, and when not

Use it when a site refuses anything over 1 MB or 2 MB.
For limits in KB, such as 100 KB or 200 KB, use compress photo to 200 KB or reduce photo size in KB.
For a set that has to fit one email, compress photos for email holds the whole set to one total.

Honest limits

Photos already under 1 MB are re-encoded only if that makes them smaller; otherwise they are kept as they were.
Your browser's own encoders are used, so results differ by a few KB between browsers.

Privacy on this page

Capture information is kept on this page. Choose No place or Strip on the recipe bar to remove the location or all of it before sharing. More in KB and pixels.

Questions

What is the difference between MB and KB here?

1 MB is 1,024 KB and 1 KB is 1,024 bytes, as on your computer and on most portals. A 1 MB limit is 1,048,576 bytes, and the check is on the exact bytes written.

Will the photo get smaller in pixels?

Usually not. A phone photo at 12 megapixels fits under 1 MB at a good quality, so the search lowers only the quality number. Only if quality 40 is still over 1 MB do the pixels step down, and the row prints both sizes.

Can I set 2 MB instead?

Yes: type 2 MB (or 2048) in the target field on the recipe bar. Any other number works the same way.

Where are 1 MB and 2 MB limits used?

Listing sites, job portals, college applications and messaging services that refuse large photos. Check the limit your site states; this page does not guess it.