Compress an Image to Email It
Quick answer
Supported: JPG, PNG, WebP · Recommended ≤ 30 MB / file
Drag & drop images here, paste from clipboard, or
Step by step
- 1Add your photo above (JPG, PNG or WebP).
- 2Pick Balanced or Smaller file, then Compress all.
- 3Check the new size — aim under your provider's limit (usually 20–25 MB; under 10 MB is safest).
- 4Download the smaller image and attach it to your email.
| Preset | Quality | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Best quality | 92% | The photo is going to be printed or edited again; expect modest savings |
| Balanced | 75% | Normal email use — the default |
| Smaller file | 60% | Many photos in one message, or a strict corporate limit |
| Custom slider | 10% – 100% | You have a specific size to hit and want to nudge it |
Quality alone has a floor — resize for bigger savings
The compressor on this page only changes the quality setting; it never touches the dimensions. That is deliberate (it will never surprise you with a smaller picture), but it means the savings on a 4032 × 3024 photo bottom out at some point. Nobody reads email on a 4000-pixel-wide screen, so dropping the long edge to 1600 or 1280 pixels halves or quarters the file again with no visible loss on a laptop or phone. Do that in Image Studio's resize panel, then attach.
Screenshots and PNG files
The quality slider has no effect on PNG, and the compressor says so in a note when it spots one. Browser PNG re-encoding rarely shrinks a file, so a 5 MB PNG screenshot is better converted: JPG at 80% for anything photographic, or PNG to WebPfor sharp graphics — though check that the recipient's mail client displays WebP before relying on it, because several still show it only as a download.
Sending several photos at once
After compressing, Download all as ZIP gives you one archive of every finished image. Note that zipping JPGs does not shrink them further — they are already compressed — it only bundles them. If the recipient expects a single document rather than a folder of pictures, Images to PDF lays the compressed JPGs out one per page, either at their own size or fitted to A4.
Troubleshooting
- It compressed, but the email client still refuses the message.
- Add up every attachment on the message, not just this one, and leave a margin below the cap — the transport encoding adds overhead on top of the file size you see.
- The photo looks blocky or has halos.
- Move the slider back up to 80–85%, or keep the quality and resize instead; resizing degrades far more gracefully than very low quality.
- My iPhone photo was rejected as unsupported.
- It is a HEIC file. Convert it with HEIC to JPG first, then compress the JPG here.
- The result says “kept original”.
- The re-encoded file would have been larger, so the compressor returned your original untouched. Choose a lower preset, or resize in Image Studio.
Sources
- Send attachments with your Gmail message — Google · verified 2026-06-19
- Insert or attach files in Outlook.com — Microsoft · verified 2026-06-19
Last verified · reviewed rarely.
Change history
- — Initial publication.