What you can fit in 500KB
Half a megabyte is generous for a single image. A JPG photo of about 2000 by 1500 pixels, or even a little larger, usually fits at a quality where compression is very hard to see. That makes it suitable for photos people will look at closely, such as listings for homes, cars and products.
Many forums, community sites and help desks also cap attachments around 500 KB, so this target helps you share a clear photo without being turned away.
Full-width website images under 500KB
Banner and hero images on websites are often displayed at 1920 pixels wide or more. Keeping them under 500 KB helps the page appear quickly on phones. Upload the image, keep the 500 KB target and choose WebP if your site supports it. WebP usually stores the same picture in fewer bytes, so it may come in well under the limit at high quality.
Check the darkest and smoothest areas, such as skies and shadows, with the compare slider. Banding shows up there first.
500KB, 1MB or 200KB?
Choose 500 KB when the image is the main thing on the page. Choose 200 KB or less for images inside articles and lists, where many images load together. Choose 1 MB when you need to keep most of a phone photo's resolution, for example to let someone zoom in or print it at home.
How to compress an image to 500KB
Upload the photo and the 500 KB target is preselected. PNG, HEIC and TIFF uploads are saved as JPG by default. You can choose WebP instead; PNG output would ignore the target. The tool encodes at a high quality and works down until the file fits, keeping the original dimensions whenever it can. The results panel shows the new size, the dimensions and how much smaller the file is.