Give it a number — 20 KB, 50 KB, 100 KB, anything — and get your photo back just under it, at the best quality that fits: the tool walks a quality-then-dimensions ladder, shows every attempt, and never pretends an impossible target succeeded.
How to compress an image to a KB target
- Drop your image (JPG, PNG, or WebP — output is always JPG).
- Set the target or tap a preset: 20 / 50 / 100 KB.
- Compress, check the attempt log, download the verified file.
The passport-photo problem
These caps live on the forms that matter most: exam registrations wanting a photo “20 KB to 50 KB”, visa portals capping documents at 100 KB, job sites rejecting anything over 200 KB. A phone camera produces 3–8 MB — a hundred times over budget — and guessing your way down with a generic compressor means upload, reject, retry. This tool aims at the number directly: quality drops first (photos tolerate a lot before it shows), dimensions shrink only when quality alone can’t get there, and the search stops the moment the file fits.
Reading the attempt log
Every rung it tried is listed with the size it produced — “quality 70% → 84 KB, quality 60% at 90% dimensions → 47 KB ✓”. That’s your receipt that the result is the best your cap allows, and your diagnosis when a target is genuinely out of reach (the fix is usually to crop to just the subject first, which spends your KB budget on what the form actually needs). No hard target? The plain compressor with its live slider is simpler; exact pixel dimensions instead of file size is the resizer’s job.
Common size caps
Three caps cover most upload forms. Once your image is loaded, tap a preset — or open the tool with one already selected: 20 KB, 50 KB, 100 KB.
20 KB — photo and signature pairs
The tightest cap real forms enforce: exam registrations and government portals that want a photo and a signature, each under a hard per-file limit. Those forms display images at a few hundred pixels, and a 400 px JPG at moderate quality lands well inside the budget — the rejection loop comes from feeding in a 4000 px camera photo and hoping quality reduction alone will do it. Signatures are the easy half: white paper and pen strokes are what JPEG compresses best, so crop tightly and spend nothing on margins. A detailed document scan can’t survive 20 KB; if that’s what you have, the portal almost certainly meant its photo field.
50 KB — passport, visa, and ID photos
The number visa portals, ID applications, and registration systems ask for most. Crop first: a head-and-shoulders crop puts the budget into your face rather than the background — the biggest quality win available. Direct digital photos beat photographed prints, plain backgrounds beat busy ones, and even lighting compresses better than harsh shadows. Phone portraits start at 3–8 MB, so expect the search to step dimensions down toward the few hundred pixels portals actually display.
100 KB — profile photos, listings, page speed
The generous end: roughly a 1000 px image at good JPEG quality, larger than a profile slot, a marketplace thumbnail, or an email signature will ever render — so the ladder usually stops at its first or second rung with dimensions untouched. It is also a sensible per-image budget for fast web pages; for a whole folder, the bulk resizer handles the dimension side in batch.
Private by design
ID photos, signatures, and document scans are exactly what these portals ask for — and exactly what shouldn’t transit anyone’s server. Every attempt in the search runs on your device; nothing is uploaded or kept.