Compress Image for Email
Short answer
Shrink photos small enough to email below. Most providers cap attachments around 25MB total, and compressed photos send far faster on slow connections.
Drop an image here
or drop your file here.
Nothing is uploaded — it stays on your device.
Runs in your browser — your file is never uploaded.
Add an image, then press "Compress image".
Modern phone cameras produce files that are wildly oversized for email. A handful of photos straight off a recent iPhone or Android can clear 25MB together, which is exactly where Gmail and Outlook stop accepting attachments — and even under the cap, large images make a message crawl on a weak connection.
The Balanced setting is the right default here. It typically cuts a photo by 60–80% while staying indistinguishable on a screen, which is all an emailed photo ever needs to be. Nobody receiving a holiday photo is going to pixel-peep it at 100% zoom.
If you are sending several images, compress each one and watch the running before-and-after sizes; getting each photo to a few hundred KB keeps a whole batch comfortably inside any provider's limit.
How to compress an image for email
- 1Add the photo. Drop it in — it never leaves your device.
- 2Pick Balanced. The default quality level suits email attachments.
- 3Compress. Check the before and after size shown.
- 4Download and attach. Save the smaller file and attach it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the attachment limit for Gmail and Outlook?+
Both cap a single message at around 25MB of attachments. Gmail offers to switch larger files to a Drive link instead, which is worth using for video but unnecessary for compressed photos.
Will the recipient notice the difference?+
At the Balanced setting, almost never on a phone or laptop screen. Only printing or zooming right in reveals the loss, so keep the original if the photo is destined for print.