Who needs 200 KB
At 200 KB the question stops being “will the face be recognisable” and becomes “how much detail can I keep”. That's the budget for:
- Website images — a blog header, a product photo, a gallery image. Every kilobyte is downloaded by every visitor, often on a phone connection, and the largest image on a page is frequently what decides how fast the page appears to load.
- Upload portals with a roomier limit for photos or scans — permit and visa systems, insurance claims, university applications that want a clear copy of a certificate.
- Marketplace listings where buyers zoom in, and you want them to see the item rather than compression blocks.
How big a photo fits
Two hundred kilobytes is 1.6 million bits. A typical phone photo at a clean quality fits at roughly 2,000 to 2,700 pixels on the long side — wide enough to fill most laptop screens. For a page on your own website you often want less: if the image is shown at most 1,200 pixels wide, set Longest side at most to 1,200 (or 2,400 if you want it crisp on high-density “Retina” screens). The photo then fits at a higher quality and the file may come out well under 200 KB, which is better still.
Detailed scans and certificates
For a document that must stay readable — a certificate with a seal and small print, a page of an ID, a multi-column form — 200 KB is usually enough to keep it at a size where the fine print survives, as long as the photo of it is flat and evenly lit. Zoom into the result before uploading: the quality verdict measures compression damage, not whether a 7-point line of text is still legible.
For your own website: JPEG or WebP?
This tool makes JPEGs, which every browser, form and editor accepts. Lossy WebP or AVIF would usually be smaller again at the same look, but the WebP this site's engine makes today is lossless — great for graphics and screenshots, but for a photo it is usually larger than a good JPEG. Until a lossy encoder is added, a well-compressed JPEG is the honest choice for photos here. For graphics with flat colour, try WebP or PNG and compare the sizes.
Under 200 KB already?
If your original JPEG is already under the limit, the page says so — you may not need to compress it at all. Compressing it again would only cost quality. The result, when you do need it, is a JPEG with no EXIF data, so a photo of your home or office doesn't publish its location along with it.
Other sizes: 100 KB, 50 KB, or any number with compress to KB. To change dimensions without a size target, use the resizer.