Compress a photo to 500 KB

Reduce a photo or image to under 500 KB and keep the detail. Made for upload forms and email. Free, no sign-up, and the photo never leaves your device.

Before you start

500 KB is a generous limit: enough for a sharp photo with fine detail. Photos straight from a phone are often 2 to 5 MB, so reaching 500 KB means dropping about 75% to 90% of the size, which is a gentle cut compared with going down to 50 KB.

The tool below opens with "Under 500 KB" chosen. SafeResize keeps the quality as high as it can while staying under the limit, and only makes the picture smaller in pixels if it has to.

Tips

If the site also gives exact pixels, such as 800 × 600, use Resize a photo, which sets the pixels and a maximum size together.

Start from the original photo, not a copy that was already squeezed by a chat app. Every extra round of compression costs some quality.

The smaller copy is saved as a new file, so your original stays as it is and you can always go back to it.

Questions and answers

Is 500 KB the same as 0.5 MB?

About, yes. Half a megabyte is 500 KB by the metric count and 512 KB on Windows. SafeResize keeps the file under 500,000 bytes, so it passes both.

Will the width and height in pixels change?

Not unless they have to. If your photo already fits, the width and height stay the same and only the JPG quality goes down. Very large photos are first reduced to 3200 pixels on the longest side.

Can I make it exactly 500 KB?

The tool keeps the file under the limit, not exactly on it. If a form also says "at least" some size, open "More options" and fill in "Must be at least".