70 is a start. Not a law. I say 70 because if you start at 40 the stamp on a shop licence becomes a green cloud and then you redo the whole evening. If you start at 95 the file barely shrinks and you wonder why you opened the tool. Compress Image has a quality slider. You move it. You look at the preview. You look at the size. You stop when both feel ok. That is the whole skill.
Selfie for a college form can go lower. Stamp, small text, hologram look, need more. I keep three habits. Licence and any seal, I try 80. Normal letter photo, 70. Face photo for a portal that only wants to recognise a human, 60, sometimes 50 if they want 50 kb and the face is still a face.
70 is a start, not a rule
Open the tool. Drop the jpg. Move the slider. Download when you like it. File stays in the browser. Not uploaded to our server. Cheap office PC, give it a second. Do not drop a 20 mb photo from a new phone if you can avoid, resize a bit first or the tab gets heavy. There is a 20 mb gate on the site.
Preview is the boss, not the number. 70 on a dark photo is not 70 on a white paper scan. White paper compresses easy. A busy shop board with lots of small letters does not. I have had 70 look perfect on a letter and dirty on a visiting card photo. Same slider. Different picture.
Start 70. If size is already under the portal limit, stop. Do not chase a smaller number for sport. Extra compress after you are under 200 kb only costs the stamp. Portals that say 200 kb, I aim 180. Room for their system to add a header or whatever they do. If they say 50 kb, that is a mean portal. You will live at 50 to 55 on the slider maybe, and the photo will look like 2012. Still, if they insist, they insist.
I check size with File Size Checker after download, because the number in your head and the number on disk can differ after the browser saves. Quick drop. See KB.
PNG logo. Compress image here downloads jpg. A logo with sharp edges may get smudges. For a logo that must stay sharp, this slider is the wrong fight. For a photo of a person or a paper, jpg is the right fight. Portal that wants jpg of a photo, good. Portal that wants a logo, be careful.
Stamp on a licence needs more
Shop licence, GST certificate photo, a circular seal, a small licence number in the corner. Those digits are the reason you are uploading. If 70 eats the last two digits, go 80. If 80 still eats them, 85. If the file is then over the kb limit, crop the table. Do not crop the seal. Crop your fingers, the floor, the extra newspaper under the paper.
I photographed a licence on a newspaper. The newspaper compressed into a grey soup and made the whole jpg noisy. Take the newspaper away. Plain desk. 70 works better on a plain desk.
Hologram stickers. They shine. Phone camera makes a white patch. Compress makes the patch bigger in a ugly way. Tilt the phone a little so the hologram does not flash. Then compress. I wasted four tries on a tilt. Fifth was ok at 75.
Blue stamp on a letter. Pale blue. 60 can wash it. 70 or 80. Look at the preview, zoom if the tool preview is small, or download and pinch on the phone. If you cannot read “notary” or the office name, the clerk cannot.
Aadhaar last 4 digits, if you are allowed to show them. Small. Same rule as licence numbers. Higher quality. Crop extra.
Do not confuse quality slider with resize. Resize changes width in pixels. Resize Image is that. Some portals want 200 kb and also max 200x200 or something. Then you resize first, then compress, or compress then check dimensions. Order depends how fat the original is. A 4000 pixel photo at quality 90 is still fat. Resize the width down, then slider.
Passport size talk. We have a tool where you type px. We do not claim official PSK size as law. Read your portal. Then slider to hit kb.
Selfie for a form can go lower
College portal, exam form, a cheap job site. They want a face in a box. They do not need your pores. 60 is often fine. 50 if they are strict on kb. If the face goes blotchy, come back to 65. I tell students, sit near a window, no filter, no beauty slider on the camera app. Beauty slider plus compress is a wax statue.
Group selfie cropped to one face. The crop is already low detail. Do not go to 40. There is nothing left. 70.
If the form also needs a signature image, treat it like a stamp. Higher. A signature at 40 is a worm. A face at 40 is still a face. Different jobs.
After compress, if you need a pdf of that photo, JPG to PDF. The pdf size follows the jpg size. Slider on the image, not on a magic pdf compress we do not pretend to be Adobe for.
I write the stopping rules on a chit for the intern.
Under limit and readable, stop.
Stamp not readable, quality up, crop the rest.
Only a face, quality down till the kb fits, stop before the person looks ill.
Never 20. I tried 20 for fun on a letter. The page looked like a fog. Do not.
If two photos, do not use the same stop. Licence at 80, selfie at 55. Two downloads. Two names. licence-80.jpg is a ugly name but I know what I did last Thursday.
Last look on a real phone, not only the laptop. Laptop screen is kind. The clerk has a old monitor. If it is ok on my bad office monitor, it is ok. If it is only ok on a fancy phone, raise the quality one step. Then upload. Then do not open the slider again “just to see”. You will download the wrong one. I have. The wrong one is always the fog.