Guide

How to Reduce PNG File Size (When JPG Is Not an Option)

PNG has no quality dial — it is lossless by definition. So reducing a PNG comes down to three moves, in this order.

1. Check that PNG is the right container

PNG belongs to screenshots, logos, icons and graphics with flat colors, sharp edges or transparency. If your file is a photograph wearing a PNG extension, no amount of PNG optimization will save you: converting to JPG or WebP typically cuts 80-90% in one step.

2. Reduce the color palette

A retina screenshot physically contains millions of pixels but usually only a few hundred distinct colors. Palette reduction (quantization) maps them to a smaller set — typically halving the file with no visible change. This is what the PNG Compressor does, and it fully preserves transparency.

3. Scale it down

2x retina screenshots can usually be halved in dimensions and still look crisp in their final context. Halving both dimensions removes 75% of the pixels; combine with palette reduction for the biggest wins. Use the Image Resizer with Keep-Aspect mode.

4. Re-encode to drop metadata

PNG files can carry text chunks and metadata. A fresh encode strips them for free.

If it still will not fit

Some images are simply too detailed for PNG. WebP lossless keeps every pixel and transparency, usually 20-30% smaller than PNG — try PNG to WebP before giving up on quality. Need an exact byte target? Compress Image to 100KB accepts PNG and will quantize-and-scale until it fits. For format context, see the main file-size guide.