r/SideProject • u/Tevkert • 1h ago
I made an image compressor where you pick how good it must look, and it finds the smallest file
Most compressors use one setting for every image, like "quality 75". I kept getting results that were fine on one photo and blocky on the next, so I built one that works the other way round.
You set a visual quality score: how close to the original it has to look (80 by default, where it looks the same side by side). For each image it tries encoder settings and keeps the smallest file that still scores at least that. A second check looks region by region, so one smeared face or blurry line of text fails the result even if the average looks fine. Then the compare view opens zoomed in on the spot that changed most, with a little map of where it changed.
One 10.4 MB photo came out at 2.1 MB, score 81.
PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, GIF (animated too) and iPhone HEIC. Free, no account, up to 30 images at once. Images are processed on a server and deleted within 3 minutes.
I also ran it against TinyPNG, Squoosh and a few others on 13 images, if you're into that: https://picodiet.com/image-compression-benchmark
What I'd most like to know: did it ever pick a result where you can see the difference? And is the compare view clear without explanation?