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I'm going to get a passport photo taken at a studio with a high-end DSLR camera for LinkedIn. The photographer said that it would be in .TIFF and at the least (15+mb).

I would like the original but also would want to resize the image and upload it to LinkedIn since I believe they have a limit on the size of the image. Most of the image editing software I see only offers the ability to resize images by resolution and not by the file size.

I basically want a software/website that allows me to type in any desired smaller file size (e.g 15MB to 9MB). Is this possible?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Do you plan to do this thousands of times? If not then it's trivial to spend 5 minutes reducing the resolution or quality until you get an acceptable looking image. Why would you want software to guess and potentially produce a bad result? Here are LinkedIn's exact specifications: linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/4981/…. If you shrink any jpeg down to their recommended 1584 (w) x 396 (h) then you would be hard-pressed to hit that 8MB ceiling. \$\endgroup\$
    – MonkeyZeus
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 13:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MonkeyZeus That "recommended" size is for the "Background photo". The "profile photo" (which the OP would seem to be referring to) simply states that it should be "between 400 (w) x 400 (h) pixels and 7680 (w) x 4320 (h) pixels." \$\endgroup\$
    – MrWhite
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 16:15

4 Answers 4

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You can use ImageMagick:

convert original.tif -define jpeg:extent=9MB output.jpg

And quoting one of the comments:

IrfanView will allow you to do it, for those on Windows who are afraid of the command line

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    \$\begingroup\$ Pretty much any image software will do it. I doubt anyone would even need to download anything new. The size really doesn't have to be accurate, just 'under xyz'. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 15:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Tetsujin, not exactly, my favorite software (XnView MP) do not have such option (or at least I am not aware of) \$\endgroup\$
    – Romeo Ninov
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 16:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ tbh, I've never heard of it, but their web page says, "XnView MP supports more than 500 image formats (including Multipage and animated still formats APNG, TIFF, GIF, ICO, etc..) and export to about 70 different file formats." One would imagine they haven't left .jpg off that list ;) \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 16:22
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    \$\begingroup\$ Yep, this is (for me) very powerful software. But some functions are very limited... On Save as you can define quality, but not the size. Same when you try to resize the image \$\endgroup\$
    – Romeo Ninov
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 16:25
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    \$\begingroup\$ But I suppose the size requirement will be fulfilled by reducing the jpeg quality, performing a more lossy compression, while preserving the image pixel dimensions. That may or may not be what the OP wants (it introduces artifacts). The OP wasn't entirely clear but I think they are fine with reducing resolution as such; it's just that they wish to target a certain size with the operation. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 14:08
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Late Edit
Let me qualify this 'simple' solution by saying that such as LinkedIn, same as any other social media site, will not care a jot what size an image is, so long as it falls over and under certain sizes in [mega]bytes [& possibly over or under a certain size in pixels]. They're not photographers or graphic designers, their interest is simple repeatable presentation in a massive multi-user environment.
They will even quite likely crop &/or re-compress behind the scenes to fit their own ideals. All you need to do as a user is give them a small-enough file to start from. You don't need to tweak to any kind of exact file size.

Save [export] it from any graphics/photo app as a JPG or PNG.

I tested a 180 MB 16-bit TIF file. (Saved as an 8-bit TIF this would be only ~23 MB, which is what I imagine your photographer will be supplying.)

It saved to a 6.5 MB JPG, even at 100% quality [same size, no other adjustments]. Reducing that to just a 'high' quality got it down to 1.3 MB. This would be more than sufficient quality for such as LinkedIn.

As an 8-bit PNG (which is a lossless format), it was 8 MB.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I agree. For this specific scenario, a target file size is not really critical. Just save the TIFF as JPEG and see what it gives you. If this is still too large for practical purposes, then try resizing before exporting - the image doesn't need to be any larger than the largest display it will be viewed on (i.e. a height of 1080 pixels is plenty adequate). \$\endgroup\$
    – osullic
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 11:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ 8-bit PNG from 16-bit TIF is not exactly lossless. Still, more than good enough. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mołot
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 23:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ I’m assuming they will deliver 8 bit as they said 15 MB \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 5:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ A passport jpeg image will likely fit typical maximum image file sizes. The resulting file size is a function of the jpeg compression factor (i.e., the jpeg "quality" -- higher compression, lower quality) and the size in pixels. A pragmatically used picture (print, view in its intended size) for all practical purposes will be fine at 300 pixels per inch; a passport photo is only 1x2 inches, so it will be fine at 300x600 pixels or so, which is rediculously small by today's standards. For typical photos the jpeg quality can be fairly low as well (80?) without creating inacceptable artifacts \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 14:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Peter-ReinstateMonica - that may depend on which country's passport you wish to apply for ;) A UK passport image must be at least 600x750px [there is no maximum size], & between 50KB & 10 MB. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Apr 24, 2021 at 10:50
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You can do this easily with LViewPro, a photo editing application written for Windows. One version now commonly used was originally written in 1996 for Windows 95, but works perfectly in Windows 10 64bit even though the software is 32 bit. The LViewPro photo-editor is freeware, just search for it and download. To use LViewPro, start the application, simply import your file, and in the Edit dialogue select Resize. When you do this, the dialogue box will show a New size/Current size ratio frame; make sure the Preserve aspect ratio box is checked, and select the new size of your file in a dimension-scaled percentage of the original. You can see the results in the editor before saving, or undo/redo and rescale to a different size. Remember, the file size in megabytes of the resized file will be the original file size scaled by the square root of the ratio you choose. For example, dimensional rescaling an original file to 50 percent will result in a new file size that is 25 percent of the original. The reason for this is obvious, with a bit of thought; each linear dimension of the original photo is rescaled to 50 percent of the original, meaning the rescaled photo has one-fourth the area, namely one fourth of the size of the original. Save the new file under a different name, say, 'blah-blah_rescaled-by-x-percent' so that your original is preserved. You can compress your file if you wish to reduce its size further without loss of resolution.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Per your description, it would seem the software you propose doesn't actually do what the OP requested which is to resize by selecting the output file size (in MB). While you can get there indirectly, it isn't quite what was requested. \$\endgroup\$
    – Eric S
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 22:00
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Usually, when one creates, saves or converts an image, they choose the image format, geometric size (in pixels, width and height), color scheme and depth, compression type and settings (the amount of detail alowed to get lost) and that's it.

The file size is not usually set, it emerges from the image content and settings.

Of course, one can play with these settings and tweak them until the file size becomes acceptable. Maybe there is a software that can be made to tweak the compression settings for you for a given size.

Pretty much ANY image manipulation software can rescale and convert an image. Even a recent version of MS Paint (Windows built-in) can do the trick.

For linkedin purposes, TIFF format in particular is not good. You want to save the image in JPEG or PNG format - and if you are not in a photomodel/actor/the likes business, no one will make a difference for anything above 1/4 of megabyte photo.

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