How to Batch Resize Photos for a Website (Without Photoshop)
By the UtilityNest team · · 5 min read
You finally photographed the new range for your little online shop: 36 ceramic mugs on a nice linen backdrop. You upload them, open the shop page on your phone, and wait. And wait. Each photo is 4000 pixels wide and almost 4 MB, and the page is trying to download all of them at once.
Camera and phone photos are far bigger than any website needs. Shrinking them is the single biggest speed win for most small sites, and you do not need Photoshop or a plugin to do a whole folder at once.
The short version: drop the photos into the Batch Image Resizer, choose Fit inside a box of 1600 x 1600 pixels, set the format to WebP at quality 80, and click Resize. Download everything as one ZIP.
What size do website photos need?
A photo only needs to be about as big as it is displayed, with a bit extra for sharp high-resolution phone and laptop screens. Rough guide:
| Where the photo goes | Long side |
|---|---|
| Full-width banner or hero image | 1920 to 2560 px |
| Product photo with zoom | 1600 to 2000 px |
| Blog post image | 1200 to 1600 px |
| Thumbnails and grids | 600 to 800 px |
Shop platforms often publish their own recommended sizes; if yours does, use that.
A worked example: 36 product photos
36 photos, each 4000 x 3000 pixels, about 3.8 MB each: roughly 137 MB in total.
- Drop them all into the Batch Image Resizer (it takes up to 200 at a time).
- Mode: Fit inside a box, 1600 x 1600. Each photo becomes 1600 x 1200, keeping its proportions.
- Leave Don't enlarge on, so any smaller photos are not blown up.
- Format: WebP, quality 80. File name suffix:
web, somug-01.jpgbecomesmug-01-web.webp. - Click Resize, then Download all as a ZIP.
Photos like these typically come out at a couple of hundred KB each, so the whole set lands somewhere under 10 MB. That is more than 90% lighter, and on a phone screen nobody can tell the difference.
36 photos, 4000 x 3000, about 137 MB. The shop page takes ages on mobile data.
36 photos, 1600 x 1200 WebP, under 10 MB in total. Pages appear almost instantly.
The resize modes, in plain English
- Fit inside a box: no photo gets bigger than the width and height you set, and proportions are kept. The best default for websites.
- Exact size: every image ends up the same dimensions, which shop grids love. Choose Crop to fill to trim evenly from the center, a border to keep the whole picture, or stretch (avoid it; it distorts mugs into vases).
- Set width or Set height: fixes one side and works out the other.
- Percentage: scales everything by the same amount.
Want a perfectly even square grid? Use Exact size, 1200 x 1200, with Crop to fill. Check a couple of results: if a product is off-center and loses its handle, crop that one by hand in Crop Image instead.
Why WebP?
WebP files are usually 25 to 35% smaller than a JPG of similar quality, and every current browser displays them. If your shop platform or website builder accepts WebP uploads, it is an easy extra saving. If it does not, pick JPG at quality 80 to 85 instead; you still get the big win from resizing.
Already resized and just want to convert? Convert to WebP shows the size saved for every file and a total for the batch.
File names that help
A suffix such as web (the default is resized) keeps resized copies apart from your originals. Leave the suffix empty to keep the original names. If two files end up with the same name, the ZIP numbers them so nothing is overwritten. While you are at it, renaming IMG_4471 to something like speckled-mug-blue before uploading helps both you and search engines.
Keep your originals
Resizing throws pixels away for good. Keep the full-size originals in a separate folder, so you can make print materials or a bigger banner later. The resizer never touches your original files; it creates new copies.
Privacy and limits
Everything runs in your browser, one image at a time, so a slow internet connection does not matter and nothing is uploaded. HEIC photos from an iPhone are converted automatically. Very large batches use more memory, so on a phone, groups of 20 to 50 photos work best.
A quick checklist before you upload
- Open two or three of the resized photos at full size and check they are sharp and the right way up.
- Look at the total size of the ZIP. For a page of a few dozen product photos, single-digit megabytes is a good place to be.
- Check that your platform accepts WebP. If uploads fail or images look odd, redo the batch as JPG; it only takes a minute.
- After uploading, open the page on your phone over mobile data, not Wi-Fi. That is how most of your visitors will see it.
Many shop platforms also make their own smaller copies of every image you upload. That is fine: starting from a sensibly sized photo means those copies are made faster and look better than ones squeezed down from a 4000-pixel original.
Quick answers
Will resizing make my photos blurry?
Shrinking keeps them sharp. Enlarging cannot add detail, which is why "Don't enlarge" is on by default.
Does it remove the camera metadata?
Yes. Converted files do not keep EXIF data, which also removes any GPS location.
Can I do Instagram squares at the same time?
Yes. Choose Exact size and pick the Instagram square preset with Crop to fill.