The most common file-size cap on web forms, application portals and CMS upload fields.
Target: under 500KB
500KB is one of the most common upload limits you'll run into — job application portals, government forms, WordPress media libraries with a size cap, and countless other systems reject anything above it outright rather than compressing it for you.
Getting under the limit almost never means a visible quality trade-off: a well-compressed JPG at 80-85% quality is very often under 500KB even at resolutions well beyond what a web form actually needs to display.
Usually not. Most of the file-size reduction needed to reach 500KB comes from resizing an oversized photo down to a reasonable resolution first — the quality-slider reduction on top of that is often barely visible.
Modern phone cameras shoot at very high resolutions (often 12+ megapixels) with minimal in-camera compression, producing files far larger than almost any web use case actually needs.
Resize to the actual display size first (most web content never needs to be wider than 1600-2000px), then compress at 75-85% JPG quality — that combination clears 500KB in almost every case without visible loss.