How to use the Image Compressor for Portfolios
- Add images to compress. Drop a batch onto the box (up to 100 at a time), paste with Ctrl+V, or click to browse. A sample painting is loaded so you can see the result first.
- Pick a preset or set your own. Tap Portfolio site, Behance / ArtStation, Email attachment or Etsy listing, or choose a Format, drag Quality and set Resize — maximum long side. Sizes update live as you drag.
- Inspect at real size. Switch Inspect to 100% or 200%, drag the image to pan (or use the arrow keys), and slide Split to compare the original with the compressed version pixel for pixel.
- Check the savings. The tiles show the selected file; the table lists every file with before and after sizes, the percentage saved and final pixel dimensions. Click a file name to inspect it.
- Download. Download this image saves the selected file, Save in each row saves that one, and Download all (ZIP) packs the batch. File names get the long side added, such as
painting-2560px.webp.
How big should portfolio images be?
Big enough to look sharp on the screens your clients use, and not a pixel more. A 24-megapixel camera or scanner file is 6000 × 4000 px. Resized to 2560 px on the long side it becomes 2560 × 1707 — just 18.2% of the original pixels, or about 5.5 times fewer — yet it still fills a 1280-pixel-wide layout on a 2× retina display at full sharpness.
Those spare pixels cost real time. A portfolio page with twenty unoptimized 8 MB photos weighs 160 MB; visitors on mobile data will leave long before the last image appears. Google’s Core Web Vitals include Largest Contentful Paint, and on a portfolio page the largest element is almost always an image.
Resizing does most of the work; the format does the rest. Google’s published comparison found WebP files 25–34% smaller than JPEGs of equivalent quality, and every current browser displays WebP. Both are lossy: they throw away detail the eye is least likely to miss. JPEG works in 8 × 8 pixel blocks and many encoders store color at half resolution in each direction, which is why saturated red linework on blue can look fuzzy at low quality.
The tool re-encodes every file through a canvas in your browser, so nothing is uploaded. That process also strips metadata — EXIF camera data, and GPS coordinates that can reveal where a phone photo was taken — after applying the photo’s rotation so nothing comes out sideways.
JPEG, WebP, AVIF or PNG?
| Format | Transparency | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| JPEG | No | Email, print labs, old upload forms | Blocky gradients below quality 70 |
| WebP | Yes | Your own website, most modern platforms | A few upload forms still refuse it |
| AVIF | Yes | Smallest files for sites you control | Few browsers can create it yet — the button is crossed out where unavailable |
| PNG | Yes | Pixel art, flat logos, screenshots with text | Paintings and photos get bigger, not smaller |
When you save a transparent image as JPEG, the tool fills the empty areas with the color you choose under Fill transparent areas with — white by default.
What the presets do
| Preset | Format | Quality | Long side | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio site | WebP | 80 | 2560 px | Retina-sharp at 1280 px wide, small enough for fast pages |
| Behance / ArtStation | JPEG | 90 | 3000 px | Both sites make their own display copies, so give them clean input |
| Email attachment | JPEG | 75 | 1600 px | A whole set fits under Gmail’s 25 MB attachment limit |
| Etsy listing | JPEG | 85 | 3000 px | Etsy recommends at least 2000 px on the shortest side; 3:2 photos land exactly there |
Images smaller than the limit are never enlarged. For prints, skip this tool entirely and check the pixels you need with the DPI & Print Size Calculator.
Tips from practice
Inspect the hardest area, not the middle. Fine hatching, skin gradients, a clear sky and red-on-blue edges show compression first. Pan to them at 200%; if they survive, the rest of the image will.
Never compress a compressed file twice. Each JPEG save throws detail away again. Keep your full-quality master and export fresh copies from it whenever a platform needs a new size.
Quality numbers aren’t portable. Quality 80 here doesn’t match 80 in Lightroom, and Photoshop’s JPEG dialog uses a 0–12 scale. Judge by eye at 100%, not by the number.
Use PNG for pixel art — and nothing else. Lossy formats smear hard pixel edges into colored halos. For paintings, PNG only makes files heavier.
Watermark first, compress last. Add your mark with the Watermark Adder, then compress, so the text isn’t softened by a second round of compression.