Compress Image to 200 KB
Drop any photo, screenshot or scan and it comes back as a JPEG under 200 KB — at the highest quality that still fits. The whole search runs in your browser.
Where 200 KB comes from
200 KB is the document ceiling. It is what portals ask for when the upload is a scanned certificate, a bank statement or a signed form rather than a portrait — cases where somebody has to read the small print at the other end, so the file cannot simply be shrunk until it fits.
What it costs to get under 200 KB
Scanned text is the awkward case for JPEG: the format was built for photographs, and hard black edges on white are what it handles worst, appearing as a faint grey ripple around the letters. 200 KB is usually enough to keep an A4 scan legible at full width, and the search here spends every byte on quality before it touches the resolution, which is the right order for text. If the scan is greyscale to begin with, leave it that way — it will fit far more comfortably than a colour one.
Why this one is different
Hitting an exact ceiling takes eight to ten trial encodes. A hosted compressor pays for every one of them on every visitor, so it guesses a quality once and hands back whatever that produced. This one runs the search properly, because the processor it runs on is yours.
Compress to a different size
Change the format instead
Questions
How do I compress an image to 200 KB?
Drop your images onto the box above. Each one is re-encoded as a JPEG that lands under 200 KB, using the highest quality that still fits, and the row underneath says what quality that was and whether the image had to be resized. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.
My scan came out with grey smudges around the text
That is JPEG ringing, and it is the format rather than the setting. If the portal accepts PNG, use the PNG converter instead — it is lossless and text stays crisp, though the file will be larger. If it must be a JPEG under a limit, scanning in greyscale rather than colour buys back most of the quality.
Can I put several pages in one file?
Not here — each file in, each file out. Drop all the pages at once and take the ZIP; every page will be under the ceiling individually, which is what the portals that ask for 200 KB per page are asking for.
Do my files get uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything happens in this tab. Your files are never sent to a server, which is why this still works if you disconnect from the network after the page has loaded — and why there is no limit on how many you put through it.