Compressing photos without uploading them

Documents are usually the files people worry about, and photos are usually the files that give more away. A phone photo often contains EXIF data: the camera model, the exact time, and — if location services were on — the coordinates where you stood. Resizing it on a server uploads that alongside the image.

What compression actually is

Two different jobs get called the same thing. Resizing changes the pixel dimensions, which is what makes a 12 megapixel photo suitable for a web page. Re-encoding throws away detail the eye is unlikely to miss, at a quality setting you choose. Both reduce the file size, and both can be done in the browser, because browsers already know how to decode and encode images.

Why re-encoding is a privacy feature

When a browser draws an image onto a canvas and exports it again, the metadata does not automatically come along. The new file is pixels plus a fresh header, not the original container with its EXIF block intact. That is not a promise the site makes — it is a consequence of the method. If you specifically want the location data kept, you have to work harder to keep it.

Doing it on this site

1. Open Image compressor.
2. Drop in one photo or fifty. They are read in the tab, not sent.
3. Set the quality, or the target size, and watch the before-and-after numbers.
4. Download individually or as a set.

The trade-offs, honestly

• Old phones are slower. Encoding a batch of 40 photos in a tab is real work. A server would finish first.
• No AI upscaling, no magic. Local tools do arithmetic, not inference. If you need a model that invents detail, you are asking for something else, and it usually needs a big machine.
• Very large or unusual formats may not decode in every browser. The tool says so instead of quietly failing.

The one habit worth keeping

Strip before you share. A photo resized in the browser has lost its coordinates on the way out, which is usually what you want before posting a picture of your street. If the file matters enough to compress, it matters enough not to hand to an unknown server first.