Quality
Find the visual threshold instead of chasing the lowest number
Start near the default and lower quality in small steps. File size often falls quickly before visible damage becomes obvious, then improvements diminish. Portrait skin, skies, smoke, and soft gradients reveal banding; signs, screenshots, and fine branches reveal ringing and block artifacts. The right setting is the lowest one that survives those checks at the size people will actually view.
Dimensions
Resize before heavy compression when the image is physically oversized
A 5000-pixel camera photo does not need to remain 5000 pixels wide for a form field, email preview, or 1200-pixel article column. Reducing dimensions removes pixels the destination cannot display and can save more space than an aggressive quality reduction. Keep aspect ratio intact, avoid upscaling, and retain the full-resolution original for print or future crops.
Batch review
One quality value can produce very different results across a folder
Simple backgrounds compress differently from foliage, fabric, text, or noisy low-light photos. After batch compression, sort attention toward the hardest images rather than checking only the smallest file. Compare original and compressed byte size, open outliers at 100 percent zoom, and recompress individual files when the shared setting is too harsh or too conservative.