Compress a photo for an online form
Somewhere between a 4MB phone photo and a form that accepts 500KB, there is a rejection waiting. Close the gap before you fill in twenty fields.
Drop images here
or browse your files — JPG, PNG, WebP. Paste works too.
Output will be at or below this size.
WebP is usually 25–35% smaller.
Caps the longest side. Leave empty to keep the original size.
Compression happens on your device. Files are never sent to a server.
Why this works
Why forms are stricter than they look
Every uploaded file costs the operator storage and bandwidth, and forms that accept public submissions get abuse. The result is low ceilings — 100KB, 500KB and 2MB are the numbers you will meet most often — and error messages that usually amount to “file too large”.
If you do not know the limit, work downwards
Start at 500KB. If the form still complains, drop to 200KB, then 100KB. Each round takes seconds, and the tool never produces a file above the number you set, so one retry is usually enough.
Check for a pixel requirement too
Plenty of forms ask for both a size and a resolution, for example “under 500KB, at least 600 pixels wide”. Compressing alone will not satisfy that second condition. Put the required value in the Max dimension field so the image is scaled correctly before encoding.
What happens to your photo
Nothing leaves your device. The browser decodes the file from disk, re-encodes it in memory at the highest quality that fits your target, and hands you a download. There is no server in that loop, and no copy to delete afterwards.
Questions
The form said 500KB but my file is 480KB and still rejected — why?
Some systems measure in kilobytes (1024 bytes) and some in decimal (1000 bytes), and a few check something else entirely such as image dimensions. Try compressing to 400KB to leave margin.
Does compression remove location data?
Yes. Re-encoding through the canvas drops most embedded metadata including GPS coordinates, which is usually what you want when uploading a photo to a public form.
Can I keep the original file as well?
The tool never modifies the original on your disk — it produces a new download alongside it.