Shrinking a phone photo to 1MB
A modern phone photo is often several megabytes. A 12-megapixel JPG can usually be brought under 1 MB by lowering the quality alone, so you keep every pixel. Very detailed scenes, such as foliage or crowds, may need a lower quality than you would like, and in that case resizing to about 3000 pixels wide gives a cleaner result.
iPhone HEIC photos are accepted too. They are converted to JPG on the server, rotated upright, and compressed to the target.
How to compress an image to 1MB
Upload the photo. The 1 MB target is preselected, and JPG and WebP files keep their format, while PNG, HEIC and TIFF files are saved as JPG so the target applies. Choosing PNG output would turn the target off, because PNG is lossless. The tool then searches for the highest quality that fits.
The results panel shows the original and new file size and dimensions. Most photos keep their full dimensions at 1 MB.
Choosing between 1MB, 500KB and 2MB
Pick 1 MB when you need to keep a photo large enough to zoom into or print at a small size, but the destination has a limit. For web pages, 500 KB or less loads faster. If a portal allows 2 MB and you want to keep as much detail as possible, use the 2 MB target instead.
Sharing photos by email and chat
Email services limit the total size of attachments, so a few full-size phone photos can fill a message quickly. Compressing each photo to 1 MB lets you attach several while keeping them large enough to view full screen. Chat apps often recompress photos on their own, and sending a file you have already compressed gives you more control over how it looks.