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Byte budget
Compress an image to under 500 KB
A generous limit, and the first one where you should be thinking about keeping quality rather than scraping under the ceiling. Half a megabyte is enough for a photograph that still prints.
Result
500 KB is a comfortable budget
At the tighter limits the question is how much you have to give up. At 500 KB it is the opposite: a twelve megapixel phone photo will usually come under half a megabyte at a quality that is hard to tell from the original, provided the dimensions come down to something sensible first.
That is why the default here keeps the image as large as the budget allows rather than shrinking it aggressively. Most photographs land between quality 75 and 88, which is the range where JPEG is at its best.
Where this limit comes from
It is the common ceiling for email attachments in corporate systems that cap per-file rather than per-message, for university and grant application portals, and for marketplace listing photos. It is also roughly the point where a page with several images starts feeling slow, so it is a reasonable self-imposed limit for a website even when nothing is enforcing it.
If you need it much smaller
Then the trade changes and you should be reducing dimensions deliberately. Use 200 KB or any size, which lets you type the exact number.
Common questions
Will a 500 KB image still print well?
For a 6 by 4 print, comfortably. For A4 you want the longest edge around 2400 pixels, which the first preset sets, and the result will usually still fit under 500 KB.
Should I use WebP?
If it is for a website, yes: it will be noticeably smaller at the same quality. If it is going into an upload form, an email or a print shop, stay with JPEG, because WebP is still rejected by plenty of systems.
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