Image Optimizer

compress-image

How to Optimize Imagesfor web performance, without sacrificing Quality

Did you realize that optimizing your images before uploading them to WordPress could have a huge impact on the speed of your website?

When making a blog for the first time, many new bloggers upload images without making them web-friendly. These large image files make your website less responsive.

You can address this issue by employing Image optimizationbest practices in your daily blog routine.

Within this article in this article, we will show you how to optimize your photos for better web performance without losing quality. We will also discuss automatic image optimization plug-ins designed for WordPress that will make your life easy.

Since this is a thorough guide on image optimization for the web we've created an easy-to-follow table of content:

• What is image optimization? (optimized as opposed to unoptimized)
• Why is image optimization crucial? What are the benefits?
• How to preserve and optimize images for web performance?
• Best image optimization software and tools
• The best Image optimization extensions for WordPress

What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs Unoptimized Images)

Image optimization is a process of saving and sending images with the smallest dimensions without diminishing the overall quality of images.

Although the process may sound complicated the process is actually fairly easy today. You can make use of one of the many image optimization plugins and tools to automatically compress images by up to 80% , without any noticeable loss of image quality.

Here's an example of an optimized against unoptimized image

Like you see when optimized properly the same image can be 75% smaller than the original without any loss of quality.

How does Image Optimization work?

In simple words in simple terms, image optimization utilize compression technology , such as "Lossy" and "Lossless" which help to reduce the overall file size without any noticeable loss in quality.

What does it mean to optimize Images?

If you've ever been given an offer to optimize images through your WordPress hosting provider or the speed test tool, then all it means is that you have to decrease the size of your images 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 images, below are the most significant ones to be aware of:

• Website speed faster
• Improved SEO rankings
• Higher overall conversion rates for sales and leads
• Less storage and bandwidth (which can lower hosting costs as well as CDN cost)
• More efficient backups for websites (also decreases the cost of backup storage)

Apart from video, images are the next heaviest item that a website page can host. From the HTTP archives, the images account for in the average 21% the total weight on a web page.

We know that websites with fast speeds get higher rankings on search engines (SEO) and are able to achieve better conversion rates and image optimization is something that every website needs to do in order to grow online.

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

According to a Strangeloop study, a one-second delay in the speed of loading your website could cost you 7% of revenue, 11 percent less pageviewsand a 16 percent reduction in customer satisfaction.

If these aren't enough reasons to speed up your website then you should know that search engines like Google also offer preferential SEO treatment to faster loading websites.

By optimizing your web-friendly images you will be able to improve the speed of your website and 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 most important factor in an effective optimization of images for optimization on the web is to strike the perfect ratio between the smallest size of the file and acceptable image quality.

The three elements which play an integral part in Image optimization are:

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

By selecting the most suitable combination of all three, you can shrink your image's size by as much as 80 percent.

Let's examine each of these in more detail.

1. Image File Format

The majority of website owners believe that the only three image formats that really have any significance is JPEG, PNG, and GIF. The right choice of format is essential to image optimization.

To keep things simple To keep things simple, you should use JPEGs when you want to use images or photos with lots of colors, PNGs when you want simple images or when you require transparent images. You can also use GIF to only use animated images.

For those who don't know the difference between each file type, PNG image format is uncompressed , which means it is a higher quality image. The downside is that file sizes are considerably larger.

However, JPEG is a compressed file format which slightly reduces the quality of images to provide a significantly smaller file size.

While GIF only uses 256 colors as well as lossless compression that is why it is the ideal option for animated images.

On WPBeginner we make use of the three formats of images based on the type of image.

2. Compression

The next step is image compression which plays a huge part for image optimization.

There are different types and levels of image compression that are available. the settings of each will differ based on the compression tool you choose to use.

Most image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo and others are equipped with built-in image compression capabilities.

You can also save images as normal and then utilize a web tool such as TinyPNG or JPEG Mini for easier image compression.

Although it's quite manual These two methods permit you to compress images prior to uploading them to WordPress as well, which is what we do on WPBeginner.

There are a number of well-known WordPress plugins, such as Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer, and others that can automatically compress images when you upload them for the first time. A lot of beginners and even large corporations use these image optimization plugins due to their ease of use and convenient.

We'll discuss more details about these WordPress plugins in the following article.

3. Image Dimensions

Normally when you download a photograph from your phone or digital camera, it is an extremely high resolution and big file dimensions (height and wide).

The majority of these photos have the resolution of 300 DPI and sizes that range from 2000 pixels and even more. The high-quality photos are perfect for desktop or print printing. They're not suitable for use on websites.

Sizing down the dimensions of files to something more manageable can significantly reduce the size of the image file. Simply resize images by using an image editing software on your computer.

In this case, we optimized an image to have 1.8 Megabytes in size as the original file size The image has a 300 DPI resolution, and dimensions of 4900x3200 pixels.

We chose jpeg format for higher compression and changed dimensions to 1200x795 pixels, and it reduced the file size to 103KB. That's 94% less than the original file size.

If you're aware of the three most important aspects of image optimization now let's have a look at various images optimization tools available to website owners.

Best ImageOptimization Tools and Programs

As we've mentioned before, most image editing software come including image optimization and compression settings.

In addition to the editing software for images, there are other effective and free image optimization tools that you can utilize to make your images more attractive for the websites (with only one or two clicks).

We suggest making use of these tools to improve images before uploading them to WordPress, specially if you are an perfectionist.

This method can help you save disk space on your WordPress hosting account and guarantees an image that is fast and of the top quality, as you manually examine each image.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a premium software with the capability of saving images optimized for the web. Simply open your image and click"File >> Save for Web" or "File >> Save for Web" option.

This will open an additional dialog box. To the right, you can select different image formats. For JPEG format, you will see different quality options. When you select your options, it will also provide the file's size on the bottom left.

GIMP

GIMP is a no-cost and open source alternative to popular Adobe Photoshop. It is a tool to improve your image to be used on the internet. The downside is that it's not as straightforward to use as some other options listed on this list.

In the beginning, open your image in GIMP then click the File > Export As option. This will display the dialog box for saving your file. Make sure to give the file a different name, then click the export button.

Then, you will be presented with options for exporting images. For jpeg files, you can select the compression setting to reduce file size. Finally, click on"export" to save your optimized file.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a no-cost web application that utilizes a lossy compression process to decrease its size PNG files. All you have to do is go to their site and upload your pictures (simple drag and drop).

They compress the image, and give you a download link. You can also use their sister web site called TinyJPG that allows JPEG Image compression.

There is also an extension for Adobe Photoshop which is what we utilize as part of our image editing process since it blends the best of TinyJPG with TinyPNG within Photoshop.

For developers, they offer an API that converts images in a way that is automatic, and for beginners , they have an WordPress plugin that will automatically perform the conversion for you (more on this in the future).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini utilizes lossless compression technique that significantly reduces the size of images without affecting their perceptual quality. You can also evaluate the quality of the original image and the compressed image.

The web version for free and then purchase the software to run on your personal computer. They also offer a paid API that can automate the process in your website's server.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is an Mac tool that lets you the compression of images with no losing any quality. It works by identifying the optimal compression parameters and removing unnecessary color profiles.

Windows Alternative to this Trimage.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

We believe that the best way to make your images more efficient is to do this prior to uploading them to WordPress. However, if your site is the site of multiple authors or you require an automatic solution you can try an WordPress image compression plugin.

Below is a list of the top WordPress image compression plugins:

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

Utilizing any Of these WordPress image optimization plugins can help you make your website faster.

Final Thoughts and Best Practices for Image Optimization

If you aren't saving images that are optimized for web, then you should start doing it immediately. It's going to make a big improvement in the speed of your site and your visitors will appreciate it.

Not to mention, faster websites are better for SEO, and you'll likely experience an increase in your search engine ranking.

make use of this tool convert to png