Why your image is too big
Phone cameras have improved far faster than upload limits have. A photo from a recent iPhone or Pixel runs 3 to 8MB straight out of the camera, and a scanned document can be larger still. Meanwhile the form you are trying to submit was probably built years ago against a 2MB ceiling that nobody has revisited since.
Common upload limits
| Where | Typical cap |
|---|---|
| Gmail attachment | 25 MB |
| Outlook attachment | 20 MB |
| Passport and visa photo uploads | 240 KB – 1 MB |
| Job application portals | 2 – 5 MB |
| University applications | 1 – 2 MB |
| WordPress default upload | 2 MB |
How to hit a size limit without wrecking the image
Reduce the pixel dimensions before you reduce quality. An 8000-pixel-wide photo squeezed to 200KB will look smeared, because the encoder is trying to describe far too much detail in far too little space. That same photo resized to 1920 pixels wide first will hit 200KB looking clean.
As a rule: 1920 pixels on the longest side is plenty for anything viewed on a screen, and 1080 is fine for most application forms and profile photos.
Questions
Are my images uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything happens inside your browser using your device's own processor. Nothing is sent to a server, and the tool keeps working if you disconnect from the internet after the page loads.
Why is my compressed file bigger than the original?
This happens when the original was already efficiently compressed and you asked for high quality, or when converting a small PNG graphic to JPG. Lower the quality, reduce the dimensions, or keep the original.
Does compressing remove location data?
Yes. Re-encoding drops EXIF metadata, including GPS coordinates, camera model and timestamp.