What this does
Sending photographs by email fails in a specific way: the message is refused, or it sits in the outbox for four minutes and then is refused. The cause is almost never one enormous file. It is eighteen ordinary ones, each five megabytes, adding up to something no mail server was going to accept.
That makes it a set problem rather than a file problem. This page applies one rule to the whole selection and then tells you what the selection weighs. You compare that against the limit you are up against and either send it or tighten the rule and run it again — the originals are untouched either way, so a second pass costs nothing but time.
Setting the rule
- The set total is the limit that matters: 18 MB of photos is about 24 MB once a mail program has encoded them, inside a 25 MB limit. Change it on the recipe bar.
- Capping the long edge is doing most of the work. A 6000-pixel photograph attached to an email is 6000 pixels of nobody's benefit.
- Strong quality is defensible here in a way it is not for an archive: the recipient is going to look at this on a screen, once, probably on a phone.
- Capture information starts removed on this page only. A photograph sent outside the household is the one case where the metadata is a disclosure rather than a record.
- The skip floor is lower here, because a 200 KB screenshot in an email batch is already small enough to leave alone.
What it will open
The same formats as everywhere else on this site: JPEG, PNG and WebP, identified from their leading bytes. Anything else in the selection is counted and reported, and nothing that cannot be handled is silently dropped from the total.
Screenshots are the common surprise. A PNG screenshot of a spreadsheet is often already small, and if it is under the floor it is left exactly as it was and passed through untouched — which is the correct outcome and is stated on its row rather than hidden in the arithmetic.
Questions about long jobs
What limit should I aim at?
Gmail stops at 25 MB for the whole message, and many other services stop between 10 and 25 MB, headers and encoding included. Attachments are encoded on the way out and grow by about a third, so aim the photos' total well under the limit. The safe reading is to treat the smaller figure as the real one, because the limit that matters is the recipient's server, not yours.
Why does this page start with the long edge capped?
Because a photograph attached to an email is going to be looked at on a screen. At 2560 pixels on the long edge it is still larger than almost any screen it will meet, and it is a third of the weight of the file the camera wrote.
Is capture information removed here?
On this page it starts switched on, because a photograph sent to a stranger carries the date, the camera and sometimes the location of the house it was taken in. Everywhere else on this site it starts off. Either way the row says what it weighed.
What does the set total do?
It holds the whole set under one size. Before each photo starts, it is given a share of what is left in proportion to its pixels and is compressed to fit that share; whatever it does not use goes back for the photos after it. The page starts at 18 MB because an attachment grows by about a third on the way out, so 18 MB of photos is about 24 MB in the message: inside Gmail's 25 MB. The meter under the skyline shows the set against 10, 20 and 25 MB, and Try on a sample projects the total before anything runs.
Can I keep each file under a size instead?
Yes, as a ceiling: set a maximum per file in the recipe, or drag the line on the skyline. Each photograph keeps the batch quality if it already fits and is searched down only if it does not; one that cannot get under is marked on its print. For an exact size per photo, switch the size to Target or Range in the recipe bar.
Other jobs
More ways to shrink a photo
- Compress photosOne photo or a whole folder, one recipe, a skyline of sizes with a line you drag, and a receipt for every file.
- Compress JPEGOne quality number for every JPEG, printed on every row; capture information kept or removed.
- Compress PNGA 256 or 128-colour palette against a lossless pass, the smaller kept, transparency intact.
- Compress WebPLossy WebP at a quality you choose, or lossless with every pixel compared.
- Compress GIFAnimated GIFs under 10, 8 or 5 MB, with the motion and timing kept.
- Compress iPhone photosHEIC to small JPEG where your browser can open HEIC, with every format change stated on its row.
- Compress image without losing qualityNo re-encode: JPEG Huffman tables rebuilt, PNG recompressed, pixels compared before a row says identical.
- Reduce photo size in KBType a KB target or a range. Quality first, then fewer pixels, checked against the exact bytes written.
- Compress photo to 20 KBSignature-sized limits: the pixels come down as well as the quality, with a legibility floor.
- Compress photo to 50 KBThe 20–50 KB range bank and PAN-style forms ask for, with both ends checked.
- Compress photo to 100 KBQuality first, pixels kept where they can be: the common portal upload limit.
- Compress photo to 200 KBSharp enough to print, under 200 KB: usually quality alone gets there.
- Compress photo to 1 MBMB-scale limits for listings and portals: quality first from 88, pixels only if they must.
- Increase photo size in KBReach a form's minimum honestly: a higher quality, then more pixels up to a limit. Never padding.
- Compress photo for exam formSourced, dated presets for bank, PAN, NEET, SSC and US visa uploads, with a PASS or FAIL line per file.
- Compress signature to 20 KBPaper whitened, ink darkened, cropped to the ink, sized to 140 × 60 and checked.
- Compress a scanned documentPaper whitened, text darkened, 200 DPI, under 300 KB a page.
- JPG to PDF under 200 KBPhotos into one PDF under the size you choose, in your order.
- Compress a photo libraryStorage framing: folder structure preserved, originals untouched, gigabytes counted.
- Compress images for websiteWebP at quality 80, long edge 1920, capture information removed, folders kept.
- Reduce image resolutionFewer pixels by percent, exact width × height, long edge or megapixels, at a light quality.
- Photo metadata viewer and removerSee the camera, date and GPS place in a photo, then remove them.