Snapfold

How to compress an image to 200 KB or less

Many online forms, job applications and school portals only accept pictures below a size limit such as 100 KB, 200 KB or 1 MB. A photo straight from a phone is often several megabytes, so it needs to be made smaller first.

The three things that make a file smaller

• Dimensions: a picture with fewer pixels is a smaller file. A phone photo is usually far bigger than any screen needs, so scaling the longest side down to 1920 or 1280 pixels saves a lot.
• Quality: JPG lets you trade a little detail for a much smaller file. Moderate quality is usually hard to tell from the original.
• Format: screenshots saved as PNG are often large. The same screenshot saved as JPG can be many times smaller.

Steps

1. Open the Snapfold tools and choose the Compress and resize tab.
2. Add your image and choose a target size, for example "Under 200 KB".
3. Press Compress images. The quality is lowered just enough to fit, and the image is scaled down if that is not enough.
4. Press the yellow Save button. The original stays untouched on your device.

Tips

• If the result is still too big, choose a smaller "Longest side" such as 1280 px and try again.
• Text in screenshots can look soft after strong JPG compression. For documents, reduce the dimensions first instead of lowering the quality further.
• Always keep the original file, because compressing again and again lowers quality each time.