What Is the Best Image Quality Setting? The 80% Rule Explained
When you export a JPG, a quality slider asks you to trade file size against fidelity. For nearly every photo, the right answer is 80%. Here's why that number works.
What the quality number actually controls
JPEG quality isn't a percentage of "how good" the image is — it controls how aggressively the encoder throws away detail. At 100%, almost nothing is discarded and files are large. As you lower the number, the encoder simplifies fine detail and colour transitions the human eye is least sensitive to. The art is removing what you won't notice and stopping there.
Why 80% is the sweet spot
Across a huge range of photographs, 80% is where the curve bends. From 100% down to about 80%, file size drops steeply while perceived quality barely changes — you're shedding mostly invisible data. Below roughly 60%, the curve flips: you start seeing real artifacts (blocky skies, haloed edges, muddy gradients) for relatively little extra saving.
80% removes data you can't see. 60% starts removing data you can. That gap is the sweet spot, and it's why the slider above defaults to the high-quality end of compression.
When to break the rule
- Go higher (90–95%) for images with sharp text, fine line art, or that will be edited and re-saved again.
- Go lower (60–70%) for thumbnails, previews, or when a hard file-size limit forces your hand.
- Use the live readout. The tool above shows before-and-after size as you drag the slider — the fastest way to find your own sweet spot for a given image.