Melt guide

Compress a JPEG on Mac without Photoshop

You don't need a $20/month Adobe subscription to shrink a JPEG. Here are the real options on macOS.

4 min read

You used to fire up Photoshop and hit “Save for Web” without thinking. Now you don’t have Photoshop, you don’t want to pay $20 a month for a Creative Cloud sub just to compress a photo, and you’re staring at a 9 MB JPEG that needs to be under 2 MB. macOS has you covered without Adobe.

Why this happens

Photoshop’s “Save for Web (Legacy)” was the gold standard for two decades because it gave you a live preview at multiple quality settings side-by-side. The thing is, the actual JPEG encoder underneath is libjpeg — the same one that powers every other tool on macOS, including the free ones.

The native way

Three options without installing anything:

Preview. Open the JPEG, File → Export, drag the Quality slider, watch the file size estimate update in real time. The slider is from 0 to 100 — start at 75% and adjust based on the preview.

Quick Action. Right-click the file in Finder → Quick Actions → Convert Image. Pick JPEG and a size. Less control than Preview, but two clicks.

Terminal sips. One line, instant:

sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 75 input.jpg —out compressed.jpg

Add -Z 2000 to also resize. A 9 MB iPhone JPEG drops to around 500 KB at quality 75 with no visible artefacting.

The faster way

For more than one file, or if you want consistent batch settings, Download Melt. $9.99 one-time, no subscription, no Adobe ID.

  1. Download Melt and open it.
  2. Drag the JPEG (or a folder of them) in.
  3. Leave the format on JPEG and pick a quality — 80 is the safe default.
  4. Click Compress. Output saves alongside the originals.

Honestly, the workflow is shorter than opening Photoshop, waiting for the splash screen, and remembering where File → Export → Save for Web went after the last UI redesign.

How much smaller will it really get?

A typical 12 MP JPEG from a modern iPhone at default quality (~95) drops to about 30-40% of its original size at quality 80, and 20-25% at quality 70. A 9 MB photo lands at 1.8-2.5 MB. The visual difference between quality 95 and 80 on a photograph is essentially undetectable without pixel-peeping side-by-side at 200% zoom.

What you give up

You don’t get Photoshop’s split-screen preview. You don’t get the “Save for Web” colour profile dropdown. You don’t get masking, layers, or selective compression. If those matter for your job, keep Photoshop. If you’re just trying to shrink a photo so it fits where it needs to go — you never needed Photoshop for that.

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