Compress Image to 200 KB

Q: Should I let it shrink the pixels on a scanned document?

Usually not. Untick Shrink pixels if needed before you drop a scan in. A photograph survives being made smaller because you are looking at shapes, but text stops being readable long before it stops being pretty, and a marksheet nobody can read is a rejected upload even if it is the right size. At 200 KB a page of A4 rarely needs shrinking anyway: dropping the quality alone gets there.

Private: the search runs on your device, nothing is uploaded

Drop images here, or click to choose them As many as you like at once, each brought under the same limit. You can also paste a screenshot straight onto this page. Up to 25 MB each.

Must be under

Unit

Shrink pixels if needed

Type the size limit you have to meet, for example 100 KB, then drop an image in.

The limit is already set to 200 KB, so drop your file in and it comes back underneath it. This is the size where scanned documents show up as often as photographs, so the tool takes quality down before it touches the pixel dimensions: a page of text has to stay readable, not just small.

About the 200 KB limit

200 KB is the document limit. Job applications asking for a scanned certificate, university portals wanting a marksheet, tenancy and loan forms taking a copy of an identity card: these tend to allow 200 KB rather than the 100 KB or less a photo gets, because whoever set it knew a page of A4 needs more room than a face does.

Text and photographs do not compress the same way, and that changes what you should do here. JPEG stores smooth gradients cheaply and hard edges expensively, so black type on white paper is the expensive case and you will see a faint halo around letters before you see anything wrong with a photograph at the same setting. What text really cannot survive is losing pixels: shrink a scan and the letters stop being legible well before the image looks bad. So for a scan, untick Shrink pixels if needed and let the quality search do the work on its own.

The good news is that 200 KB rarely needs the pixels anyway. A full page scan at about 1200 pixels wide, readable line by line on screen, comes in under 200 KB once the quality is tuned properly, and so does a photograph around 1000 by 1300. For a portrait this is a generous limit: you are unlikely to see the compression at all.

If what you are holding is already a PDF, do not convert it to an image to make it smaller. Compress PDF handles scanned documents directly and gives you the original back untouched when compressing would have made it bigger, which is what happens to a text PDF.

How to compress an image to 200 KB

Drop the photo or scan on the box, click to choose it, or paste it onto the page. The limit is already 200 KB.
For a document, untick Shrink pixels if needed so the text keeps its resolution.
Leave the format on JPEG. It is what document upload forms expect.
Look at the result pane at full size before you trust it: with a scan, what matters is whether the smallest print is still readable.
Press Download. Several files at once come back as one ZIP.

Common questions about compressing to 200 KB

Should I let it shrink the pixels on a scanned document?

Usually not. Untick Shrink pixels if needed before you drop a scan in. A photograph survives being made smaller because you are looking at shapes, but text stops being readable long before it stops being pretty, and a marksheet nobody can read is a rejected upload even if it is the right size. At 200 KB a page of A4 rarely needs shrinking anyway: dropping the quality alone gets there.

What fits in 200 KB?

Comfortably more than people expect. A full page A4 scan at about 1200 pixels wide, which is enough to read every line of a certificate on screen, fits under 200 KB once the quality is tuned. So does a photograph at roughly 1000 by 1300 pixels. This is the limit where you stop fighting the compressor and start just satisfying the form, which is why job applications and document portals tend to pick it.

Does my document get uploaded to be compressed?

No. The scan is read and re-encoded by your own browser and no request is made to anyone, which is the only sensible arrangement for a payslip, a bank statement or a copy of an identity document. You can verify it: open the network panel in your browser's developer tools, or disconnect from the internet entirely, then use the page. It behaves exactly the same either way.

My scan is a PDF, not an image.

Then compress it as a PDF rather than converting it here. Compress PDF is built for scanned documents specifically, and it hands you back the untouched original if compressing would have made the file bigger, which is what happens to a PDF that is mostly text. If the form insists on an image, PDF to Image converts the pages first and the result can come here.

Why does the text in my scan have fuzzy edges?

That is JPEG doing what JPEG does. It stores smooth gradients cheaply and hard edges expensively, and black text on white paper is nothing but hard edges, so the compression leaves a faint halo around the letters. Raising the limit, or scanning in greyscale so there is no colour noise for the encoder to spend bytes on, both reduce it. If the document has to stay crisp and the size limit is generous, a PDF is the better format.

Related tools

All Image tools

Compress Image to 100 KB Get a photo under 100 KB, the limit most portals set. Compress Image to 1 MB Get a photo under 1 MB for an email or an upload cap. Compress Image to Size Hit an exact file size limit, like under 100 KB for a form. Compress PDF Shrink a PDF's file size while keeping it readable.