Getting a good photo at 50 KB
Fifty kilobytes is enough for a clear, recognisable portrait if the image is sized appropriately. A full-resolution phone photo is around 12 megapixels; a typical application photo only needs about a third of a megapixel. This tool handles that automatically, but you will get a better-looking result if you prepare the photo first:
- Crop to the face and shoulders with the crop tool, using a 1:1 or 4:5 ratio depending on what the form asks for.
- Resize to the requested dimensions with Resize Image, if the form specifies them.
- Compress here to get under 50 KB with the highest possible quality.
Why photos compress differently
JPG compression stores smooth areas cheaply and detailed areas expensively. A portrait in front of a plain light wall might be 30 KB at 800 × 800 pixels, while the same framing in front of foliage or a patterned curtain could be twice that. Low light also adds sensor noise, which looks like fine detail to the encoder and inflates the file. A well-lit photo against a plain background will look noticeably sharper at the same file size.
What the tool does behind the scenes
The image is decoded and rotated to the correct orientation in a background Web Worker. It is then encoded repeatedly with MozJPEG, using a binary search to find the highest quality setting that fits within 50 KB. If even a low quality is too large, the image is scaled down using high-quality Lanczos resampling and the search is repeated. Metadata, including GPS location from your phone, is removed, which also saves a few kilobytes.
Mixed batches
If you are preparing photos for several people, for example a family visa application, add them all at once. Each is compressed to fit within 50 KB on its own merits, and you can download them together.
Need a different size?
For signatures and tiny thumbnails, use compress to 20 KB. If your form allows up to 100 KB, choose that for a sharper photo.