How to shrink photos for an email
- Drop all the photos in at once — the resize is already set to 1600px on the longest side, which is plenty for viewing on any screen.
- Leave quality at 80%, or switch to a target size if you need to hit a specific number.
- Download everything as a ZIP and attach it, or grab the files individually.
Resizing to 1600px and compressing at 80% typically takes a batch of phone photos down by 85–95%, which turns an email that bounces into one that sends instantly.
Common attachment limits
- Gmail — 25MB per message. Larger files get converted to Google Drive links automatically.
- Outlook.com — 20MB for standard attachments.
- Corporate mail servers — often 10MB, sometimes as low as 5MB, and the limit applies to the whole message.
Two things make these limits bite harder than they look. First, the cap covers the entire message, so ten photos share one budget. Second, attachments are encoded for transport, which inflates them by roughly a third — a 20MB batch of files can arrive at the server as around 27MB and be rejected by a 25MB limit.
The practical takeaway: aim for comfortably under the stated cap rather than right at it.
Resizing matters more than quality
People usually reach for the quality slider first, but dimensions are the bigger lever. File size scales roughly with the number of pixels, so halving the width and height cuts the pixel count to a quarter — a much larger saving than any quality adjustment, and far less visible.
A modern phone photo is often 4000 pixels wide. Nobody reading an email needs that: a laptop screen is around 1500 pixels wide, and the photo will be displayed smaller than that inside the message. Resizing to 1600px throws away detail the recipient was never going to see.
Keep the full-resolution originals if the photos matter — compress copies for sending.
When to send a link instead
If you're sharing dozens of photos, or the recipient needs print-quality originals, a cloud storage link is the better answer. Compression is the right tool when the recipient just needs to look at the images, which covers most email.
Nothing is uploaded
Everything runs inside your browser. This matters more than usual for email attachments, which are often personal photos, scanned paperwork, or work documents you'd rather not hand to a free web service. Nothing is transmitted, and the tool keeps working if you go offline after the page loads.
Frequently asked questions
How small should photos be for email?
Aim for under 1MB each, and keep the whole message comfortably below the limit. Resizing to 1600px at 80% quality usually lands well inside that.
Can I compress a whole folder at once?
Yes. Drop in as many images as you like and download the results together as a ZIP.
Will the recipient notice the difference?
On a screen, almost certainly not. Resized and compressed photos look the same at normal viewing sizes — the difference only shows if they zoom in or print.
Does this change my original photos?
No. The originals on your device are untouched; the tool produces new compressed copies for you to download.
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. Compression runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent to a server.