Short version: open the free tool, drop your file, download the result. Nothing is uploaded.
Steps
- Open the free WBS Image Compressor.
- Leave it on Quality at about 75, choose JPG under Format, and type 2048 in Max width.
- Drop all the photos at once (up to 20 free). The table shows each new size and the total saved.
- Download the smaller copies and attach those instead of the originals.
How big can an email be?
Gmail lets you attach up to 25 MB per message and offers a Google Drive link for anything bigger. Many other providers are in the 20 to 25 MB range, and the receiving server may have a lower limit than yours. Attachments also get about a third bigger when they are encoded for sending, so leave room.
What the settings do
- Max width 2048 px is still sharp on a laptop or phone screen and on a standard print, but has about a third of the pixels of a 12 MP phone photo.
- Quality 75 is hard to tell apart from the original at normal viewing size.
- Together, a typical 3 to 5 MB phone photo usually drops to a few hundred KB, so ten photos fit in one email with room to spare.
When not to shrink
If the person needs the full-resolution file (for large prints or editing), send the originals with a cloud link instead. Compression makes new copies and never changes your originals.
Bonus: no location data
Compressed copies are re-encoded, which drops the hidden EXIF data, including the GPS location many phones record. (If a photo is already smaller than the result would be, the tool keeps the original as it is, so use the GPS removal guide if that matters to you.)
More free guides
- Compress an image to 100 KB
- Photo and signature under 20 KB or 50 KB for forms
- Compress an image for Discord
- Convert WebP to JPG
- Convert WebP to PNG with transparency
- Remove GPS location from photos
- Merge PDF files
- Split a PDF or extract pages
- Save each PDF page as a separate file
All tools: WBS Tools · All apps: Wood Between Studio apps