Как сжать изображение до 10 KB

To compress an image to 10 KB, crop it tightly, shrink it to about 200-300 pixels wide, and save it as a JPG at around 60-70% quality. A signature or thumb impression on white paper usually lands between 4 and 10 KB that way. Do it free with the free image resizer and the free image compressor, which shows the exact size before you download. Nothing is uploaded and there's no sign-up.

A 10 KB limit is one of the tightest you'll meet. It mostly appears for signatures, left thumb impressions and handwritten declarations on recruitment and exam forms, and sometimes for very small photos. At this size, the quality slider alone won't save you: a phone photo of a signature is often 2-4 MB, roughly 300 times too big. Cutting pixels does nearly all the work.

Step 1: Start with a clean, high-contrast image

The less "stuff" in the picture, the fewer bytes it needs.

• Signature: sign with a black or dark blue pen on plain white paper. Photograph it in daylight with no shadow across the page.
• Thumb impression: press your thumb on an ink pad, roll it gently onto white paper once, and let it dry. A clear, unsmudged print compresses far better than a blotchy one.
• Tiny photo: stand against a plain light wall. Background detail costs bytes you don't have.

Grey paper, shadows, lined pages and table edges all add detail the compressor has to store.

Step 2: Crop to the ink

Open the free image cropper and choose Free. Drag the box so it hugs the signature or thumb print with just a small white margin. If the form gives a shape (for example, a signature box that's wider than tall), crop to roughly that shape. Click Crop image and download.

A signature photo is often 90% empty paper. Cropping it away can cut the file size more than any other step.

Step 3: Shrink the pixels

Open the free image resizer, choose Pixels, keep Lock proportions ticked, and type a width:

What you're uploading	Width to try	Typical JPG size at 60-70%
Signature	200-300 px	4-10 KB
Thumb impression	150-250 px	4-10 KB
Face photo	140-180 px	6-10 KB

If the form states exact pixels, such as 140 × 60 for a signature, type those instead. Click Resize image and download. These are starting points: a bold, simple signature needs fewer bytes than a long one with many loops.

Step 4: Compress and read the size

Open the free image compressor and drop in the resized image.

1. Under Save as, choose JPG. PNG keeps every pixel and is rarely small enough for photos; it can sometimes work for a pure black-on-white signature, but JPG is the reliable choice.
2. Move Quality to about 70% and click Compress image.
3. Read the size under the file name, such as "48 KB → 7.9 KB". Under 10 KB, the tool shows one decimal place, so you can see exactly how close you are.
4. Still over? Change the quality to 60% (the results clear, so click Compress image again). Below about 50%, ink edges start to look blocky; go back to Step 3 and make the image narrower instead.

Aim for 9 KB, not 9.9

Sites don't all count kilobytes the same way. Some treat 1 KB as 1,024 bytes, others as 1,000. A file shown as 9.9 KB here is about 10,138 bytes, which is over a 10,000-byte limit. Aim for around 9 KB and you're safe either way.

When the form also sets a minimum

Many forms give a range, such as "4 KB to 12 KB" or "10 KB to 20 KB". A file that's too small is rejected just like one that's too big. If yours is under the minimum, don't raise the compressor's quality: it never returns a file bigger than the one you dropped in (it says "kept as is"). Instead, go back to the free image resizer and make the cropped original a little wider, then check the size. Our guide on increasing an image's size in KB covers this in detail. Always use the exact range and pixel size from the official notice; each recruiter and exam sets its own, and they change between years.

Does black and white help?

Only a little. You can turn a signature black and white with the free photo filters (Mono, or the Black and white slider), but the saving at this size is small. Narrower pixels and a tight crop make far more difference. A black-and-white photo of your face is also often against the rules; most forms ask for a colour photo, so check before you try it.

Compress an image to 10 KB: a worked example

A typical signature, start to finish:

1. Phone photo: 4,000 × 3,000 px, 2.8 MB.
2. Cropped tightly to the ink: 1,600 × 600 px.
3. Resized to 260 px wide: 260 × 98 px.
4. Compressed as JPG at 70%: around 6-9 KB. Done.

Each image is different, so treat the numbers as a guide and trust the size the compressor shows.

Related limits

For a little more room, see compress an image to 20 KB or to 30 KB. For exact pixel sizes on signatures, read resizing a signature for online forms. To understand why pixels matter more than quality, see image KB vs pixels.

Do it now

Crop to the ink, resize to about 250 px wide, then open the free image compressor, choose JPG and lower the quality until the size reads about 9 KB. It's free, and your signature never leaves your device.