Compress an image without losing quality.

You can’t make a photo much smaller without losing something. Lossless methods keep every pixel exactly, but on a photo they only trim a little. Big savings come from lossy compression: a JPG at a sensible quality drops detail your eye is unlikely to notice. So in practice, “without losing quality” means “without a difference you can see”. You get there by lowering the quality one step at a time and comparing each result with the original.

The image compressor lets you do that in your browser, and the photo isn’t uploaded.

Lossless vs. lossy: what “without losing quality” means

Google’s web.dev guide splits image compression into two kinds. Lossless compression packs the same pixels into fewer bytes, and you get back exactly what you put in. Lossy compression throws some pixel data away first, and you get back an approximation. web.dev notes that for photos the results of lossy compression are “often very good” and the savings “can be quite large”.

Method	Keeps every pixel?	How much smaller	Best for
Remove metadata	Yes	A little	Any photo you share
PNG to lossless WebP	Yes	About 26% smaller than PNG on average	Screenshots, logos, graphics
Lower the JPG quality	No	Often a lot	Photos
Fewer pixels	No	Roughly in step with the pixel count	Photos for screens and forms

Lossless ways to make an image smaller

Remove the metadata. web.dev points out that many photos carry data the picture doesn’t need, such as where it was taken and which camera took it, and recommends stripping it. Remove photo metadata copies the compressed picture byte for byte and leaves those blocks out. The photo looks identical, the file usually gets slightly smaller, and the location is gone. To see what a photo carries first, open it in the EXIF viewer.

Save graphics as lossless WebP. For screenshots, logos and drawings saved as PNG, Google says lossless WebP files are 26% smaller on average. WebP opens in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge and Opera. Google’s free command-line encoder, cwebp, makes one with its -lossless option. Check first that the site or form you’re uploading to accepts WebP. Some forms only take JPG or PNG.

Don’t save a photo as PNG to protect its quality. web.dev says PNG gives the highest quality “at a cost of significantly higher file size”. A photo that’s already a JPG doesn’t get its lost detail back as a PNG. It only gets bigger. For photos, web.dev recommends JPG, lossy WebP or AVIF.

How to compress a photo so it still looks the same

1. Start from the original. Use the photo from your camera, not a copy that’s already been compressed.
2. Open the image compressor and choose Quality. It starts at 75.
3. Add the photo and check the new size shown next to it.
4. Compare. Open the original and the new file and zoom in on faces, text, sky and fine patterns, where damage shows first. If they look the same, try a lower quality. If you see blur or blocks, go back up a step.
5. Download the version you’re happy with. Your original stays as it was.

Don’t copy a quality number from one app to another. web.dev warns that quality levels aren’t comparable between formats: a quality 90 JPG looks very different from a quality 90 WebP. Even two apps saving JPGs at the same number can give visibly different results. Judge by eye, not by the number.

If the compressor says it left a file as it was, that JPG was already compressed so well that saving it again would have made it bigger. Every time a JPG is saved again it loses a little more, so leave it alone.

If you need to get under a size limit in KB, use the compressor’s Target size mode, which finds the highest quality that fits. How to reduce photo size in KB explains that route step by step.

Resize an image without losing quality

Making it smaller. Fewer pixels means less detail, and web.dev notes that fewer pixels also means a smaller file. Whether you notice depends on how the photo will be seen. If it will only ever be shown smaller than its pixel size, on a phone screen or in a form, the extra pixels weren’t adding anything you could see. Keep the full-size original for printing and cropping.

Resize image changes the pixel size in your browser. Enter only the width and leave the height blank, so the photo keeps its shape. Setting both stretches a photo whose shape doesn’t match. PNG files stay PNG. Everything else is saved as a high-quality JPG.

Making it bigger. Enlarging can’t add detail that wasn’t captured. The new pixels are filled in from the ones around them, so the result looks softer, and the more you enlarge, the softer it gets.

Google Photos Storage saver isn’t lossless

If you back up to Google Photos, its Storage saver quality is a form of lossy compression. Google says photos are “stored at a slightly reduced quality”, compressed to save space, and resized to 16 MP if they’re larger. They may also be converted to a different format, like JPG. Original quality keeps them “with no change to their quality”, and Google recommends it for photos over 16 MP and for printing large banners.

Google also lets you convert photos you’ve already backed up in Original quality. On a computer, go to Settings, then Manage storage, and under Recover storage click Convert existing photos & videos to Storage saver.

Before you convert: Google’s help page doesn’t say the conversion can be undone. Treat the full-size backups as gone once it runs. If a photo exists only in Google Photos because you’ve deleted it from your phone, download the original first.

Questions

Can I compress a JPG without losing any quality?

Removing its metadata doesn’t touch the picture at all, but it only saves a little. Saving it again at a lower quality always drops some detail. Whether you can see that depends on how low you go.

Is PNG lossless?

Yes. web.dev says PNG applies no lossy compression beyond the choice of palette size, which is why it produces the highest quality and much larger files. That’s fine for screenshots and logos and wasteful for photos.

What quality setting keeps a photo looking the same?

There’s no single number. web.dev says to try several settings for your images. Start at 75 in the image compressor, compare, and move up or down from there.

Why did my photo get bigger after compressing?

It was already compressed harder than the setting you chose, or it was a JPG saved as a PNG. Use the original file and a JPG output.

Does compressing a photo remove its location?

The JPGs the image compressor makes contain no metadata, so the location is gone. If you want to keep the quality untouched and only drop the location, use remove photo metadata.

Can I make an image bigger without losing quality?

Not really. Enlarging spreads the same detail over more pixels, so the photo looks softer. If you need a bigger file in KB for a form, that’s a different problem from a bigger picture.