Fit photos under Gmail and Outlook attachment caps

Get the photos through Gmail, Outlook and the 2 MB form

Updated 6 September 2026

Gmail's common send ceiling is still 25 MB for everything you attach. Go over it and Gmail swaps the files for a Drive link. Crush can make a still smaller. It cannot raise the cap and it cannot send the email.

What 25 MB actually measures

Google's help for sending attachments: if total attachment size is greater than 25 MB, Gmail adds a Drive link instead of keeping the bytes in the message. That is the sum of every file on the draft. MIME encoding inflates binaries by roughly a third. A 22 MB folder can fail as mail.

Outlook and many Microsoft 365 tenants sit around 20-35 MB. Visa and school portals often say 2 MB or 10 MB per file and mean it.

A photo is not a PDF

Crush does not open PDF. A photograph of paper saved as JPEG belongs here. Face on a 2 MB form: max width 1200, JPEG 80. Do not JPEG a screenshot of a thread — that is the quality page.

Six steps

1. Weigh the draft

Add the sizes. Write the cap down. Smaller is not a setting.

2. Same device

Do not mail originals to yourself first. Tool: homepage. Buttons: How to.

3. JPEG unless the form named another type

Embassy uploaders still reject WebP.

4. Cap the long edge, then 75-85

Resize beats quality 20 at full resolution.

5. Leave headroom for MIME

If four photos still sum to 30 MB, drop the long edge again or split across two messages.

6. Keep the camera original

Canvas drops GPS. Closing the tab stores nothing.

What will not help

Renaming .jpg to .zip.
Attaching the ZIP plus the originals.
Looping Crush on the same JPEG.
Chat recode: WhatsApp guide.
Safari blob: iPhone guide.

Related: Open the compressor · How to · Use cases.

FAQ

When should I pick WebP instead of JPEG?

WebP (lossy) usually beats JPEG at the same visual quality because it spends bits more efficiently on edges. Use WebP when the destination actually accepts it: modern Chrome, Edge, Firefox, recent Safari, and most current CMSs. Use JPEG when you are sending to a printer portal, an old Outlook client, or a form that still rejects .webp. Lossless PNG remains the right pick for screenshots, logos with hard edges, and anything that must survive many re-exports. Crush lets you try the same source at JPEG 80 and WebP 80 and compare the two file sizes before you commit to a ZIP.

Can I resize and compress in one pass?

Yes. Set a max width, a max height, or both. Crush keeps aspect ratio and fits the image inside that box (it does not stretch). This matters more than the quality slider for 12-megapixel phone photos headed to WhatsApp, a slide deck, or a product grid that only shows 800 CSS pixels. Encoding a 4000-pixel JPEG at quality 80 still wastes bytes if you display it at 640. Leave both fields empty to keep the original pixel size. Crush will not upscale a small image to “fill” the box.

Gmail turned my photos into a Drive link. Did Crush fail?

No. Gmail does that when the message attachments go over about 25 MB in total. MIME encoding also inflates the files. Cap width, encode JPEG 75–85, add the new sizes, and leave headroom. Crush does not send mail and does not create a Drive link. Details: the email guide.

Should I pick WebP for WhatsApp or for a visa form?

Usually no. Many chats and almost all bureaucratic uploaders still want JPEG. WebP is the smaller file on a modern website that already serves WebP. If the destination list says .jpg, obey the list. Compare one hero on the quality page before you batch.