Guide

How to Compress PNG Files (When JPG Is Not an Option)

PNG is lossless: there is no quality slider. So what can you actually do when a PNG is too large?

1. Question the format first

If the image is a photograph, PNG is the wrong container - a photo that is 4MB as PNG is often 300KB as JPG or WebP with no visible difference. Screenshots, logos and UI graphics, however, genuinely belong in PNG.

2. Reduce the color palette

Most screenshots use a few hundred distinct colors, not 16.7 million. Reducing the palette (color quantization) can cut file size by half or more with no visible change.

3. Scale down

A retina screenshot at 2x can often be halved in dimensions and still look crisp in its final context.

4. Strip metadata

PNG files can carry text chunks and metadata. Re-encoding drops them.

If none of this reaches your target size, the image is simply too detailed for PNG - convert it to WebP and you will usually get there immediately.