JPEG is the format most photographs already arrive in, and most of them are far larger than they need to be. Output is preset to JPG below, so what comes out is the same format you put in — only smaller.
Output preset to JPG at quality 72 — a good default for photographs.
A camera or phone writes JPEGs at a very high quality setting, because at the moment of capture it has no idea what you will do with the file. It has to assume you might print it, crop into it heavily, or edit it repeatedly.
Almost nobody does any of those things. The photo goes on a website, into an email, or onto a social platform, where it is displayed a fraction of the size and re-encoded anyway. The quality the camera preserved for you is simply never seen — you are paying for it in bandwidth and page speed and getting nothing in return.
The quality slider on a JPEG encoder is not a percentage of anything meaningful. It is a dial on how aggressively fine detail is discarded, and the useful range is narrower than people expect.
The difference between 95 and 75 is usually invisible on screen and often halves the file. The difference between 75 and 55 is usually visible and saves much less.
Worth being clear about this, because it is a real limitation rather than a detail. JPEG is lossy, and every save throws information away permanently. Compressing a JPEG that has already been compressed compounds the damage — the artefacts from the first pass become part of the image the second pass tries to preserve.
One recompression from a camera original is fine and is what this page is for. Repeatedly compressing the same file, or compressing something already squeezed by another platform, degrades it visibly. Work from the largest, cleanest version you have.
For a website, WebP wins — typically 25–35% smaller at matched quality, and supported everywhere that matters.
JPG wins on universality. It opens in everything, on any device, in any application, with no thought required. For email attachments, files handed to clients, print workflows, or uploads to platforms whose format support you cannot verify, JPG is the format that never causes a problem.
If the destination is your own website, convert to WebP instead. If it is going to another human, stay with JPG.
JPEG is inherently lossy, so some information is always discarded. In practice, a quality setting of 75–85 is visually indistinguishable from the original at normal viewing sizes while cutting the file size substantially.
For web photographs, 65–75 is the practical range and is the default here. Use 75–85 when the image needs to look its best, and reserve 90+ for images you intend to edit again.
Yes. Every JPEG save discards information permanently, so repeated compression compounds visible artefacts. Always work from the largest, cleanest original you have rather than from an already-compressed copy.
WebP is 25–35% smaller for the same quality and is the better choice for your own website. JPG is more universally supported, so keep it for email, client deliverables and platforms whose format support you cannot verify.