How to compress an image without losing visible quality
Most photos are much heavier than they need to be. A picture straight from a phone or camera often weighs 3 to 8 MB, while the same picture shown on a screen looks identical at a few hundred KB. Compressing an image means removing information your eyes will not miss: tiny colour variations, invisible detail, and hidden data attached to the file.
Plume keeps the original format by default. A JPG stays a JPG, a PNG stays a PNG, so nothing breaks in the place where you use the image. You choose the level of compression:
- High quality: a light touch, for photos you want to print or keep.
- Balanced: the best compromise for most uses, usually a much smaller file with no visible difference.
- Smallest: for when size matters more than detail, such as a form with a strict upload limit.
Each file shows its size before and after, so you can try a setting and change your mind before downloading.
Which image formats can you compress?
Plume handles the formats you are likely to meet every day:
- JPEG (JPG): the classic photo format. Plume uses MozJPEG, an encoder known for producing smaller JPGs at the same visual quality. See the dedicated page to compress JPEG files.
- PNG: used for screenshots, logos and images with transparency. Plume can reduce the number of colours (lossy) and then optimise the file without loss. More on the PNG compression page.
- WebP and AVIF: modern web formats that are lighter than JPG for the same quality.
- HEIC / HEIF: the default photo format on iPhone. Plume can read these files and save them in a more common format. If you only need a JPG, use HEIC to JPG.
Want to change format while compressing? The image converter lets you pick JPG, PNG, WebP or AVIF as the output.
Your photos stay on your device
Unlike most online tools that upload your files to a remote server, Plume does all the work inside your browser, thanks to a technology called WebAssembly. Your images are never sent anywhere. Once the page has loaded, you can even turn off your connection and keep compressing.
This matters for personal pictures: ID card scans, family photos, pictures of documents. There is no copy of them on someone else’s computer, no waiting for an upload, and no download from a server afterwards.
Plume also removes EXIF metadata by default. Photos from phones often carry the date, the phone model and sometimes the exact GPS location where they were taken. Removing it protects your privacy when you share an image. The orientation is kept correct, so your portrait photos do not end up sideways.
Reduce image size for e-mail, websites and forms
Most mail services cap attachments at around 20 to 25 MB in total (Gmail allows 25 MB, Outlook 20 MB). Five photos straight from a phone can already go over. After compression, you can usually send many more in one message.
Websites and blogs
Heavy images are one of the main reasons a web page loads slowly, especially on mobile. Lighter images make pages faster for visitors and are a good habit for search engines. If your images are too wide, combine compression with the resize tool.
Online forms and portals
Many administrative sites, job boards and rental platforms refuse files above 2 to 5 MB. The “Smallest” preset is made for those cases.
Compress many images at once
You can drop dozens or hundreds of images in one go. There is no daily limit on the number of files and no account to create. Plume processes them one after another on your device, and you can download everything as a single ZIP file.
The only real limit is your device’s memory. A recent computer handles large photos and big batches without trouble. A phone works too, but is happier with smaller files and smaller batches. If the page slows down, simply process your images in a few rounds.
The result is free, with no watermark and no ads. You get your own images back, only lighter.