Export As and Save for Web do the same job differently. Both have settings that quietly inflate your exports if you leave them at the defaults.
File → Export → Export As gives you format, quality, output dimensions and metadata options in one place, and writes a clean file. Save As is for working files — it preserves things a web page has no use for.
Export As has its own image-size fields. Set the pixel dimensions you actually need rather than exporting at full canvas size and resizing later — you get one resample instead of two, and a sharper result.
JPEG quality 75–85 for photographs. Set Metadata to None, which removes camera data, GPS coordinates and editing history. Tick Convert to sRGB so colours look the same in a browser as they do on your canvas.
Save for Web (Legacy) still has the best feature for this: a 4-up view showing the original beside three settings with file sizes. Use it when you are unsure how far you can push a particular image.
Save As is designed to preserve your work. Depending on the format it can retain layers, alpha channels, colour profiles, thumbnail previews and the full editing history — none of which a web page uses, all of which occupy bytes.
Export As writes a flattened file with only what the format needs. For anything leaving Photoshop for the web, that is what you want.
Photoshop's default is often to include copyright and contact information, and it is easy to end up exporting the full EXIF block from the camera original — model, lens, exposure, timestamps and, if the photograph was geotagged, coordinates accurate to a few metres.
Setting Metadata to None removes it. On a small image the byte saving alone can be several per cent, and the privacy benefit matters if the photograph was taken somewhere you would rather not publish.
Keep metadata deliberately when you need the copyright fields — stock submissions and press work usually require them.
If your document is in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB and you export without converting, browsers that ignore the embedded profile will render the colours wrong — usually flat and undersaturated.
Tick Convert to sRGB for anything going on the web. Keep the wider gamut for print work, where the printer's workflow expects it.
For a folder of images, record an action containing your export step and run File → Automate → Batch over the folder. Image Processor (File → Scripts → Image Processor) is simpler still and handles resizing and format conversion across a whole folder in one dialogue.
If you do not have Photoshop to hand, the bulk compressor on this site does the same job in a browser with no installation.
Menu names and options move between releases. If a step below does not match what you see, the underlying capability is usually still there under a nearby name — and the browser tool on this page works identically on every version.
These run in your browser on any device, so nothing is uploaded and there is nothing to install.
Shrink JPG and JPEG photographs with a quality slider or an exact target size.
Open the toolTypically 25–35% smaller at matched quality. The standard web win.
Open the toolOne setting across a whole folder, processed in parallel, downloaded as a ZIP.
Open the toolStrip GPS coordinates, camera model and timestamps before you publish.
Open the toolQuestions
Every answer below is present in the page source, expanded, so it can be read without opening anything.
Export As for everyday work — it is current, faster and handles modern formats including WebP. Save for Web (Legacy) is worth opening when you want its 4-up comparison view, which shows the original beside three settings with file sizes attached.
75–85 for the web, with 80 as a sensible default. Above 90 the file grows quickly for differences you will not see on a screen. Reserve 90 and above for images that will be printed or edited further.
Usually one of four things: using Save As instead of Export As, exporting at full canvas size rather than display size, leaving quality above 90, or including metadata. Fixing all four typically halves the file before you change anything else.
For anything going on the web, yes. Browsers that ignore an embedded wide-gamut profile will render the colours flat and undersaturated. Keep Adobe RGB or ProPhoto for print work.
Recent versions can, natively through Export As. Older versions need a plugin. WebP is typically 25–35% smaller than the equivalent JPEG at matched quality.
File → Scripts → Image Processor is the simplest route, handling resizing and format conversion across a folder in one dialogue. For more control, record an action and run File → Automate → Batch.
From the blog
More background from the blog.
Quality 80 is not 80% of anything. It is an index into a quantisation table. Measured on one photograph: dropping from 100 to 90 removes 77% of the file and 4.2 dB of fidelity; dropping from 40 to 30 removes 17% and costs almost as much.
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Resize before you compress. Measured on one photograph: half the width at quality 80 produced a 16.4 KB file, while full width at quality 40 produced 20.6 KB and looked far worse. The order of operations matters more than the settings.
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A photograph from a phone can carry the coordinates of the place it was taken, the camera serial number and the exact timestamp. Removing that data is straightforward. Removing it carelessly rotates your photos sideways.
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