This image quality reducer does the opposite of most compressors: it lowers image quality on purpose. Drop a JPG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF into the box above, pull the slider below the default quality of 80, and the file comes back smaller with visibly less detail than the original. No signup, no floor on how low you can push it: up to 25 MB a file, 30 files a batch, free.
Most of this site is built around the opposite goal, getting a file smaller without anyone noticing. This page is for the times a worse looking file is the correct output, and tools that stop at quality 80 get in the way of that. The demo image on this site goes from 497 KB to 214 KB as WebP at quality 80, a 56.9 percent cut with nothing you can see gone. Push the slider well past that point and the size keeps falling, and so does the sharpness. For the general case of shrinking a file without that tradeoff, read the guide to compressing images without losing quality.
How to use the image quality reducer
Drag the file onto the box above, or click to choose it, then drag the quality slider down from 80 and watch the preview and the new file size change together. When it looks the way you want, or hits the size you need, download it. Nothing installs: the re-encode runs in your browser, and what the tool does to your file is stated plainly rather than left a black box.
Every step down the slider trades a little more visible detail for a smaller file. Re-encoding the same image again, at a different quality or format, never costs you anything, so it is fine to overshoot, look at the result, and dial back. Most files finish before the rest of this page has loaded.
Who actually wants a worse looking file
A front end developer building a blur-up placeholder, the tiny, deliberately rough version of an image that loads first while the full one streams in behind it. A designer who needs to show a client or a QA reviewer what a photo will actually look like after a platform recompresses it hard, instead of describing it in words. Anyone previewing a file for a slow connection or a data-capped device, where the real question is not whether it looks perfect but whether it loads at all. Someone recreating the blocky, degraded look of a heavily recompressed image on purpose, for a design reference or a rough aesthetic. None of that is a mistake. It is a specific, intentional use of the one slider everyone else is trying not to touch.
What changes as you push the slider down
Quality is not locked to the default of 80. Every step down trades visible detail for a smaller file, and the curve is not linear: the first steps cost you almost nothing you can see, the last ones cost you everything. Here is what each band does to a typical photo.
| Quality setting | What you see | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| 80 (default) | Identical to the original at normal zoom | Everyday sharing, most upload forms |
| 50 to 60 | Slight softening in fine detail, rarely visible on a phone | Thumbnails, previews, tight size caps |
| 20 to 30 | Visible blocking on hard edges, banding in skies | Lazy-load placeholders, low-bandwidth previews |
| Below 20 | Heavy blocking, smeared color, fuzzy text | A deliberately degraded look, stress-testing a design |
PNG stays lossless wherever you put the slider, so a PNG will not get worse this way. To degrade one on purpose, convert it to JPEG or WebP first, then pull the quality down, since those are the formats that actually throw detail away as the number drops.
What the reducer will not do
It does not resize or crop. The quality slider changes how much detail survives the encode at the pixel count you already have; it does not change the width or height. If you need a smaller placeholder with fewer pixels, not just a rougher version of the same pixel count, resize the file before you bring it here, since resize is not built into this tool yet. There is also no auto target-size mode: you set a quality, look at the result, and adjust, the same as every other page on this site. That is slower than typing a target number, but it never guesses wrong about which detail to keep.
What it costs and where the limits are
Nothing, to start. The image quality reducer is free with no account, giving you 25 MB per image and 30 images a batch, repeatable as often as you want, with no per-image fee anywhere. A free account adds a running total of 100 images a month and a usage dashboard. If you are generating placeholders in bulk or from your own build step, Pro is 12 dollars a month flat.
| Plan | Per image | Per batch | Monthly cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| No signup | 25 MB | 30 images | none applied |
| Free account | 25 MB | 30 images | 100 images |
| Pro, 12 dollars a month | 50 MB | 100 images | 10,000 images |
Re-compressing a file you already dropped in, at a different quality, never counts twice. Full tiers are on the pricing page, and you can point your own build code at the same engine through the API reference.
What happens to your file after you upload it
It gets deleted. Every file also has its EXIF data, the hidden metadata a camera writes in including GPS coordinates, camera model, and timestamp, stripped by default no matter which quality you pick. Files dropped into the browser tool are removed within an hour by a sweep that runs every 15 minutes, and the only way to reach one before that is a signed link that expires on its own in 15 minutes. There is no public bucket, and nothing you upload here is used to train a model or looked at by a person.