How to reduce the image file size using PIL

Question

I am using PIL to resize the images there by converting larger images to smaller ones. Are there any standard ways to reduce the file size of the image without losing the quality too much, lets say the original size of the image is 100KB, i want to get it down to like 5 or 10 KB especially for png and jpeg formats.

Answer 1

A built-in parameter for saving JPEGs and PNGs is optimize.

 >>> from PIL import Image
 # My image is a 200x374 jpeg that is 102kb large
 >>> foo = Image.open("path\\to\\image.jpg")
 >>> foo.size
  (200,374)
 # I downsize the image with an ANTIALIAS filter (gives the highest quality)
 >>> foo = foo.resize((160,300),Image.ANTIALIAS)
 >>> foo.save("path\\to\\save\\image_scaled.jpg",quality=95)
 # The saved downsized image size is 24.8kb
 >>> foo.save("path\\to\\save\\image_scaled_opt.jpg",optimize=True,quality=95)
 # The saved downsized image size is 22.9kb

The optimize flag will do an extra pass on the image to find a way to reduce its size as much as possible. 1.9kb might not seem like much, but over hundreds/thousands of pictures, it can add up.

Now to try and get it down to 5kb to 10 kb, you can change the quality value in the save options. Using a quality of 85 instead of 95 in this case would yield: Unoptimized: 15.1kb Optimized : 14.3kb Using a quality of 75 (default if argument is left out) would yield: Unoptimized: 11.8kb Optimized : 11.2kb

I prefer quality 85 with optimize because the quality isn't affected much, and the file size is much smaller.