Audience: Beginners who feel overwhelmed by photo/digital image compression settings and want simple, safe guidance.

Problem: New users often do not know whether to reduce picture dimension or quality to achieve the desired compression size. Wrong settings may either result in unclear text/face or miss important details.

Summary: Dimension controls how wide and tall the photo is. Quality controls how much detail is kept while saving. For normal photos, reduce dimension to FHD size (i.e. long edge 1920 pixel) in the software is usually safe and gives a big file-size reduction. For documents, screenshots, certificates, or an images with small text, avoid reducing dimension too much because text may become unreadable. For faces or important details, keep enough dimension and reduce quality carefully. A safe starting point is Long Edge: 1920 px and Quality: 80 in most of the cases. more details below…

Dimension or Quality

Image size on disk depends mainly on two things, Dimension i.e. height and width of the photo and Quality i.e. how much detail is kept while saving the image. And image can be a photo, screenshot or a scan.

Reduce dimension when the image is only a photo

If you are sharing the photo to share/upload and NOT planning to print it, keep the Long Edge: 1600 to 1920 pixel. Quality: 70 to 80 % is safe. 70% if the picture doesn’t have small details, 80% otherwise is safe.

What is Long Edge of a photo?

A photo has two parameters: height and width. This is called edges of an image. Longer edge the the edge which is longer than the other. i.e. for portrait photo, the height is longer than the width, so longer edge for a portrait photo is its height.

Why 1600 to 1920 pixel?

This is the approx size of an average size monitor or mobile screen. As of 2026, 50 to 60% monitor sold have long edge 1920. So, your photo will look good on that monitor. There is no benefit of strong size bigger than monitor’s pixel size unless you want to zoom.

Why photos are larger before you compress?

Most phones and digital camera are capable of capturing a huge amount of pixels. It’s required because people print some of those pictures and printer needs a lot of pixel details than a digital screen.

What if I want to save photo for printing?

This is most easiest part in Mass Image Compressor, in right panel when you give dimension settings in the software, select option to set dimension for printing. Then select your desired option from list of Print Size in software and it will automatically set required pixels for an excellent print.

When NOT to reduce dimension

Do not reduce dimension too much when the image contains text. Screenshot, scanned documents, certificates bills, forms, notes, poster with small text are such cases.

Recommended settings

Dimension: Long Edge 2500 to 3000 pixels.

Quality: 60 to 80%. When the image is larger, quality will not affect the text quality.

Use Compression Preview

Click on any image from gallery to come to Compression Preview screen in Mass Image Compressor. Click on Compressed button (placed on top panel in preview screen to see live preview of how your compression parameters (quality/dimension etc.) will affect your output image.