Compress Images for an Insurance Claim — Free, Fast & Private
A claim photograph has a job that an ordinary photograph does not: someone who was not there has to be able to see, from the file alone, what happened and how bad it is. That changes how you should compress it.
The advice on most of this site — go smaller, use Smart, prioritise load speed — is wrong here. An assessor looking for a hairline crack in a windscreen, a serial number on a stolen laptop, a water line on a wall or the registration plate of the other vehicle needs detail that aggressive compression removes first. Fine, low-contrast texture is exactly what JPEG discards.
What to protect, concretely
- Registration plates and serial numbers — small high-contrast characters. Legible or not; there is no partial credit.
- Hairline cracks and scratches — thin, low-contrast lines. The first thing heavy compression smooths away entirely.
- Water and smoke staining — subtle tonal gradients, which turn into flat blocks or visible banding when over-compressed.
- Receipts and invoices photographed as proof of value — small print, same treatment as any document: Gentle, high resolution.
The rule that follows: reduce dimensions before you reduce quality, and stop reducing dimensions while the damage still occupies enough pixels to be obvious. 2048 px on the long side is a sensible default. Then zoom into the damage in the compressed copy and confirm it still reads.
Photograph in pairs
A close-up of a dent proves the dent but not the car. A wide shot proves the car but not the dent. Take both for every item of damage — a context shot showing the whole object, then a close shot of the damage itself. The close shot is the one that must survive compression intact; the context shot can take a smaller width without losing its job.
Include something for scale where the size of the damage matters, and photograph in the best light you can get. A well-lit 1500 px photo beats a dim 4000 px one every time, because compression struggles hardest with noise, and low light is noise.
Keep the originals, and mind the metadata
Never delete the originals. Compress copies for the portal and archive the untouched files somewhere safe until the claim is settled. If a claim is disputed, the original file — with its full detail and its EXIF timestamp — is a materially stronger piece of evidence than the version you resized to fit an upload form.
That cuts both ways on metadata. EXIF can carry the date, time and GPS location of the shot, which usually supports your account of events — useful. A compressed copy is a newly written file and does not carry that forward, so if the timestamp matters to your claim, submit or retain the original alongside it and say so.
Portal upload limits vary by insurer and by claim type, so check the figure on the form you are filling in. If your compressed photos are still too large, send fewer better photographs rather than more degraded ones.
Compression runs in your browser here. Photographs of your home, your vehicle and your possessions — and any location data attached to them — are not uploaded to a third-party service on the way to your insurer.
Related: medical documents in the same claim · property photography generally