Compress an image to 200 KB

The first target where you stop losing pixels

200 KB is the point at which a typical photograph can be compressed without cutting its dimensions. A 1600 by 1200 image usually reaches 200 KB at JPEG quality in the sixties, which looks clean on a screen and holds up to moderate zooming.

That makes 200 KB the sensible choice for document scans that someone will actually read, for property or product photos, and for anything where a reviewer might zoom in. If the form allows 200 KB, do not use 100 KB out of caution — the extra headroom is real quality.

Scanned documents at 200 KB

A page of text scanned at 200 dots per inch produces a large file, and JPEG is a poor fit for sharp text edges. If a 200 KB target is forcing heavy dimension reduction on a text scan, the fix is usually at the scanner rather than here: scan in greyscale rather than colour, and at 200 rather than 600 dots per inch.

For a photograph of a document taken with a phone, cropping to the page edges before compressing typically saves a third of the file size on its own.

Compressing a batch

Select several images at once and each is processed to the same 200 KB target independently, with its own before-and-after figures. Processing happens one file at a time in the background so a large batch will not freeze the page, and nothing leaves your device at any point.

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