A 100KB limit is generous — use it well
A limit of 100 KB is common for visa applications, online passport renewals, e‑commerce product photos and profile pictures. At 100 KB a JPEG can keep a lot of detail: a 1600‑pixel‑wide photo at good quality usually fits comfortably. Our compressor first checks whether your image already fits at high quality; if it does, you get it straight away with no unnecessary loss.
How the compressor works
The tool decodes your image in the browser, redraws it on an HTML canvas and encodes it to JPEG at different quality levels. It uses a binary search — seven quick attempts are enough to find the best quality within less than one percent. If even the lowest acceptable quality is too large, the image is scaled down by just enough to fit. Transparent PNG areas are filled with white, because JPEG does not support transparency.
JPEG vs JPG — is there a difference?
No. JPG and JPEG are the same format; the shorter extension comes from old versions of Windows that only allowed three letters. Any website that accepts JPEG accepts JPG and vice versa. Read more in our guide JPG vs PNG vs WebP vs AVIF.
When to choose a different target
- Signatures and thumbnails: 20KB
- Standard application photos: 50KB
- Any other limit, for example 30KB, 150KB or 2MB: custom size
- The form requires a minimum size: increase image size in KB