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Choosing the right format is the single biggest factor in how small a file can get without looking worse. JPG (JPEG) uses lossy compression tuned for photographs: it discards detail the eye barely notices, so a photo shrinks to a fraction of its size while still looking clean. That makes it the default for camera photos, product shots, and anything with smooth gradients and many colours.

PNG is lossless and supports transparency. It keeps every pixel exactly as it was, which is ideal for logos, icons, screenshots, and graphics with sharp edges or text. The trade-off is size: a full-colour photo saved as PNG is often several times larger than the same photo as JPG, with no visible benefit.

WebP is a newer format that usually beats both — JPG-like lossy compression plus PNG-like transparency, often 25–35% smaller. The catch is compatibility: a few older programs and some marketplaces still do not accept WebP, so use it where you control the destination (your own website, modern browsers) rather than for uploads to third-party platforms.

• Photos and product shots → JPG (or WebP if you control where it is shown).
• Logos, icons, screenshots, transparency → PNG.
• Your own website with a modern audience → WebP for the smallest files.

Sometimes "smaller" is not enough — you need to stay under a hard limit, like 200 KB for a government form or a 5 MB cap on a marketplace. LiteCompress has a dedicated mode for exactly this. Turn on "Compress to a target size", type the number of kilobytes you need, and the tool finds the highest quality that still fits under your limit. You never have to guess a quality percentage.

If there is no strict limit and you just want a lighter file, pick a compression level instead. "Smaller file" leans toward the lightest result, "Balanced" is the everyday sweet spot where the difference is invisible on screen, and "Best quality" keeps the most detail for printing or archiving.

Two things drive file weight more than anything else: the pixel dimensions and the quality level. A photo straight from a modern phone can be 4000 pixels wide — far more than a web page or a chat ever shows. Reducing the longest side to a sensible value, combined with a moderate quality, is usually enough to cut a multi-megabyte photo down to a few hundred kilobytes.

• Need an exact size → turn on "Compress to a target size" and enter the KB.
• No hard limit → pick "Smaller file / Balanced / Best quality".
• For photos, convert PNG to JPG — often the single biggest saving.
• Check the before/after preview to confirm the quality still looks right.

Every marketplace has its own image rules, and listings that ignore them load slowly, look unprofessional, or get rejected in moderation. The two requirements that matter most are the aspect ratio and the format. Wildberries and Ozon expect tall 3:4 portrait photos; Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress prefer square 1:1; Avito uses 4:3. Most platforms want JPG and a clean, even background so the product stands out.

The fastest way to get this right is a ready preset. In LiteCompress, switch to "For a platform", pick your marketplace, and the correct ratio, size, and format are applied automatically — then crop to that fixed ratio so nothing important is cut off. You do not need to memorise each platform's numbers.

Beyond the rules, a few habits make listings convert better: keep the product filling most of the frame, avoid watermarks or promotional text on the main photo, and process the whole catalogue in one batch so every card looks consistent. A sharp, correctly sized photo is one of the cheapest ways to win clicks.

• Pick the platform preset — ratio, size, and format are set for you.
• Crop to the locked ratio so the product is not cut off.
• Keep a clean background and fill most of the frame.
• Batch-process the catalogue for a consistent look.

Images are usually the heaviest part of a web page — often more than all the text, code, and fonts combined. Compressing them before upload is one of the simplest, highest-impact things you can do for page speed, and faster pages mean lower bounce rates, happier mobile visitors, and a small but real boost in search rankings, since Google uses page experience as a ranking signal.

The first rule is to never serve an image larger than it is displayed. If a thumbnail shows at 400 pixels wide, there is no reason to upload a 3000-pixel original. Resize to the largest size it will actually appear at, then compress to a reasonable quality — 75–85% is usually indistinguishable from the original on a screen.

Modern formats help too. Where your audience uses up-to-date browsers, WebP can shave another quarter off the file size compared with JPG at the same quality. Combine resizing, compression, and a modern format, and a typical photo-heavy page can load several times faster.

• Resize to the maximum display size before uploading.
• Compress to ~75–85% quality — usually invisible, much lighter.
• Prefer WebP where your audience's browsers support it.
• Compress every image, not just the big ones — small savings add up.

"Resize" and "compress" are often used as if they mean the same thing, but they change two different properties. Resizing changes the dimensions — how many pixels wide and tall the picture is. Compressing changes the file weight — how many kilobytes it takes to store — usually by simplifying data the eye does not notice. A photo can be huge in pixels but light in weight, or small in pixels yet heavy if it is saved at maximum quality.

For most everyday goals you want both. Resizing a 4000-pixel phone photo down to the 1500 pixels a marketplace actually uses removes data you will never see, and it does most of the heavy lifting. Compression then trims what remains, squeezing out invisible detail to reach your target size. LiteCompress does both in one step — the compression level and platform presets set sensible dimensions and quality together.

A simple way to think about it: resize first to match where the image will be shown, then compress to hit the weight you need. If a file is still too big after compressing, it is almost always because the dimensions are larger than necessary.

• Resize = fewer pixels (matches where it is shown).
• Compress = fewer kilobytes (removes invisible detail).
• Do both: resize to the display size, then compress to the target weight.