Image Optimizer

compress-image

How to Optimize Images for the Web's Performance without losing Quality

Did you consider optimizing your photos prior to uploading them to WordPress can have a major impact on the speed of your web site?

When the time comes to start a new blog most beginners upload their images without optimizing them for the web. These large image files make your website's performance slow.

This can be fixed by using the image optimization best techniques as part of your normal blog routine.

With this article, we'll help you learn how to improve your image for faster internet performance without losing quality. We will also present automatic picture optimization plugins for WordPress that will simplify your life.

Since this is a thorough guide on image optimization for web so we've put together an easy to follow table of content:

• What's an image optimization? (optimized vs unoptimized images)
• Why is image optimization important? What are the advantages?
• How can I organize and save images for web performance?
• Best image optimization software and tools
• Best photo optimization extensions for WordPress

What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs Unoptimized Images)

Image optimization is a process that saves and delivers images with the smallest image size, while not diminishing the overall quality of the image.

Although it sounds like a complicated process It's actually very simple today. You can use any of the many image optimization tools and plugins that automatically compress images by up to 80% , without any noticeable degradation in image quality.

Here's an example for optimizing and unoptimized image

You can observe, if optimized properly the same image could be 75% smaller than what it was originally, but without any degradation in quality.

How does Image Optimization work?

In simple words images optimization works by using compression technologies such as "Lossy" and "Lossless" which helps reduce the overall dimension of the image file without any loss in quality.

What is it to Optimize Images?

If you've ever received an advice to optimize your images from your WordPress hosting team or the speed test tool the only thing it suggests is that you need to reduce the size of your photos by optimizing them to be used on the web.

Why is Image Optimization Important? What are the Benefits of Image Optimization?

While there are many benefits of optimizing your photos, here are the top ones to be aware of:

• Website speed faster
• Increased SEO rankings
• Higher overall conversion rate for leads and sales
• Lower storage and bandwidth (which can lower hosting costs as well as CDN cost)
• Faster website backups (also reduces cost of backup storage)

In addition to video, images are the second-heaviest items on a page. As per HTTP archives, photographs comprise about 21% on average of the total weight on a web page.

Because we know that fast websites rank higher in search engines (SEO) and are able to achieve better conversion rates in terms of image optimization is a requirement for every business website must do when they want to achieve success online.

Now , you might be wondering what impact does image optimization actually can make?

According to the findings of a Strangeloop study, a one-second delay in loading time for websites could result in a loss of 7% or sales. Additionally, it can result in 11 percent fewer pageviews, and 16% reduction in customer satisfaction.

If none of these reasons are enough to speed up your website, then you should know that search engines like Google also provide SEO preferential treatment to sites that load faster.

That means that by optimizing your images for the web you will be able to improve speed of your site as well as increase WordPress SEO rankings.

Video Tutorial

If you'd prefer written instructions, just keep reading.

How to Save and Optimize Images for Web Performance?

The key to an effective Image optimization that is optimized for performance on websites is to find the optimal compromise between the least file size and acceptable image quality.

The three elements that play an important part in images optimization are:

• Image file format (JPEG vs PNG vs GIF vs tiff )
• Compression (Higher compression = smaller file size)
• Image Dimensions (height and width)

When you pick the appropriate combination of all three, you can cut down your image's size by up to 80 percent.

Let's take a look at each of these in more specifics.

1. Image File Format

The majority of website owners believe that the three primary images formats that really should be considered comprise JPEG, PNG, and GIF. The selection of the proper file type is crucial for image optimization.

To make things easy In order to keep things simple, use JPEGs for photos and images with lots of colors. PNGs for straightforward images or when you need transparent images. You can also use GIF for animated images only.

For those who don't know what is the difference between each type, the PNG image format is not compressed which means it's an image of higher quality. image. The drawback is that the file sizes are much larger.

However, JPEG is a compressed file format , which can slightly diminish image quality in order to create a significantly smaller size file.

And GIF only uses 256 colors as well as lossless compression that makes it the ideal choice to use animated pictures.

On WPBeginner We employ the three formats of images based on the type of image.

2. Compression

The other thing is image compression, which plays a major role for image optimization.

There are several types and levels of compression available. Settings for every will differ depending on the compression tool you employ.

The majority of image editing software like Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo and others include built-in compression tools for images.

You can also save images as normal and then use a web application like TinyPNG and JPEG Mini for easier image compression.

Though it's a little manual but these two techniques allow you to compress images prior to uploading images to WordPress, and this is what we do on WPBeginner.

There are many well-known WordPress plugins like Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer and many more that automatically compress images after you upload them for the first time. A lot of newbies and large corporations are using these images optimization plugins since it's simple and simple.

We'll discuss more details about these WordPress plugins later in this article.

3. Image Dimensions

Normally, the moment you import a picture from your phone or digital camera, it has an extremely high resolution and the dimensions of the file are large (height as well as width).

In general, these photos have a resolution of 300 DPI and dimensions starting from 2000 pixels and up. High-quality photos work well for print or desktop publishing. These images are not appropriate for websites.

Reducing file dimensions to something less limiting can drastically reduce the size of images. Resize images with an image editing program on your personal computer.

For instance, we optimized an image to have 1.8 Megabytes as its original file size and 300 DPI resolution, and image dimensions of 4900x3200 pixels.

We decided to go with the Jpeg format because of greater compression. We also changed the dimensions to 1200x795 inches, and it reduced the image's size to 103 KB. That's 94% less than the size of the original file.

Once you've mastered the three main factors involved in image optimization and image optimization, let's take an in-depth take a look at various images optimization tools available to website owners.

Best ImageOptimization Tools and Programs

As we have mentioned previously, most image editing software come featuring image optimization and compress settings.

Outside of the image editing software there are several other useful and powerful image optimization tools that you can make use of to improve images for web usage (with just two clicks).

We recommend making use of these software tools to optimize images before you upload them to WordPress particularly if you are a perfectionist.

This strategy helps you save some space within your WordPress hosting account and also guarantees your image is the most speedy and has the top quality, as you manually review every image.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a premium software that comes with the ability to save images optimized for the web. Just open the image in Photoshop and click on"File> Save For Web "File >> Save for Web" option.

It will open a new dialog box. On the right, you are able to choose various image formats. If you select JPEG format, you'll be able to select different quality options. When you select the quality option, it will also show you the file size at the bottom left.

GIMP

GIMP is a free and open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It can be used to boost your images' performance to be used on the internet. Its disadvantage is that it's not as straightforward to utilize as other options on this list.

First, you need to open the image within GIMP then click on the File > Export as option. This will display the save file dialog box. Create a new name and then hit"Export.

This will display options for exporting images. For JPEG images, you can select the compression level to decrease the size of the file. After that, press"export button" in order for you to save an optimized picture file.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a no-cost web app that uses a smart lossy compression technique that can reduce in size your PNG images. All you need to do is go to their website and upload your photos (simple drag and drop).

They will compress the image and send you a download URL. You can also visit their sister web site called TinyJPG, for JPEG Image compression.

They also have the extension Adobe Photoshop which we use for the image editing process as it is a blend of TinyPNG and TinyJPG in Photoshop.

For developers, they have an API for converting images automatically, and for beginners they have a WordPress plugin that will automatically convert images for you (more on this in the future).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini utilizes lossless compression technology that reduces the size of images but without affecting their perceptual quality. It is also possible to compare the quality of the original image with the compression image.

It is possible to use their online version for no cost or purchase the application for your computer. They also offer a paid API that will automate the process in your website's server.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is an Mac application that allows you to compress images without sacrificing any quality. This is done by identifying the best compression parameters . It also helps in removal of unnecessary color profiles.

Windows alternative to this is Trimage.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

The best method to optimize your images is by doing it before uploading them to WordPress. But, if you're running a multi-author website or need an automated solution, you may want to consider the WordPress plugin for image compression.

Below is our selection of the best WordPress photo compression plug-ins.

1. Optimole an extremely popular plugin created by The company behind ThemeIsle.
2. EWWW Image Optimizer
3. Compress JPEG & PNG images - plugin by TinyPNG team. The team is mentioned in the article.
4. Imagify is a plugin developed by the popular WP Rocket plugin team.
5. ShortPixel Image Optimizer
6. WP Smush
7. reSmush.it

Utilizing one ones of them WordPress image optimization plugins can accelerate your website.

Final Thoughts and Best Practices for Image Optimization

If you're not saving images optimised for web, you should start doing that immediately. It'll make an enormous improvement in the speed of your site and users will thank you for it.

Also, faster websites are excellent for SEO and you'll probably see an increase in your ranking on search engines.

use this tool >> convert to png