How to Reduce HEIC File Size (Without Ruining Your Photos)
HEIC is already efficient, so shrinking iPhone photos is mostly about resolution and format. Here's what actually works for email, uploads and saving storage.
Recent iPhones take 24- and 48-megapixel photos, and even efficiently compressed HEIC files can reach several megabytes each. That's a problem when an email has an attachment limit or an online form only accepts files under 2 MB. Here's how to make photos smaller in a way that still looks good.
Why HEIC files are hard to compress further
HEIC already uses modern HEVC compression. Re-saving a HEIC photo at a slightly lower quality gains little, and converting it to JPG at the same resolution usually makes it larger. To really reduce the size you need to reduce the amount of information: fewer pixels.
Step 1: Reduce the resolution
A 24 MP photo is about 5712 × 4284 pixels — far more than any phone or laptop screen can show at once. Downscaling has a dramatic effect:
| Long edge | Megapixels (4:3) | Share of 24 MP |
|---|---|---|
| 5712 px (original) | 24.5 MP | 100% |
| 4096 px | 12.6 MP | 51% |
| 2560 px | 4.9 MP | 20% |
| 1920 px | 2.8 MP | 11% |
| 1280 px | 1.2 MP | 5% |
File size falls roughly in line with the pixel count. For sharing and viewing on screens, 2560 px keeps photos sharp; 1920 px is plenty for websites and messaging.
Step 2: Choose the right format
- JPG — maximum compatibility; the right choice for email and forms.
- WebP — usually smaller than JPG at the same visual quality; ideal for websites.
- PNG — lossless and large; avoid it for photos you need to shrink.
Step 3: Pick a sensible quality
After resizing, quality has a smaller but useful effect. Balanced (around 80) is hard to distinguish from the original for most photos; Low is fine for thumbnails and previews.
Doing it in one step
The HEIC compressor combines all three: it resizes to 2560 px by default, uses Balanced quality and shows the before-and-after size of each photo. Everything happens in your browser, and you can remove location data at the same time — sensible when you share photos publicly.
Reducing storage on your iPhone instead
If the goal is freeing space on the phone rather than sharing, converting isn't the best tool:
- iCloud Photos → Optimize iPhone Storage keeps full-resolution originals in iCloud and smaller versions on the device.
- Keep High Efficiency enabled in Settings → Camera → Formats; switching to JPG makes new photos larger.
- Review bursts and duplicates — iOS lists duplicates in the Utilities section of the Photos app.
Always keep the original of photos that matter. Downscaled copies are great for sharing but you can't recover detail that has been removed.
Need to understand the quality trade-offs in more depth? Read how to convert HEIC without losing quality.