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How can you optimize Imagesfor the Web's Performance without sacrificing Quality

Did you consider optimizing your photos before uploading to WordPress could have a huge impact on your website speed?

When creating a blog, many beginners simply upload images without optimizing them for web. These large image files make your website slower.

You can fix this by making use of the image optimizationbest techniques as part of your regular blog routine.

With this article, we will show you how to optimize your images for speedier web performance but without sacrificing quality. We'll also show you automatic images optimization software for WordPress that can make your life easy.

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 the definition of image optimization? (optimized contrasted with unoptimized)
  • Why is image optimization crucial? What are the benefits?
  • How to store and optimize images for web performance?
  • Best image optimization tools and software
  • Best photo optimization WordPress plugins WordPress

What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs Unoptimized Images)

Image optimization is a process that saves and delivers images in the smallest possible dimensions without diminishing the overall quality of images.

Although the process might sound complex however, it's really quite simple today. You can use one of the numerous image optimization applications and tools that automate the compression of images by as much as 80% without any noticeable reduction in image quality.

Here's an example for optimizing contrasted with unoptimized images:

It is evident that when optimized properly , the same image can be 75 percent smaller than the original without any degradation in quality.

What is Image Optimization work?

In simple terms images optimization is achieved by using compression technology such as "Lossy" and "Lossless" which helps reduce the overall size of the image without causing a noticeable loss of quality.

What does it mean to optimize Images?

If you've ever received an advice to optimize your images from your WordPress hosting provider or a speed test tool, the only thing it suggests is that you need to reduce the file size of your images by optimizing them for the web.

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

There are many advantages of optimizing your images, here are the top ones to be aware of:

  • Faster website speed
  • Increased SEO rankings
  • Higher overall conversion rates for sales and leads
  • Less storage and bandwidth (which can reduce hosting and CDN cost)
  • Faster backups to websites (also reduces the cost of backup storage)

Beyond video, pictures are the second-heaviest items on a website. From the HTTP archivedata, images make up an average of 21% of the weight of a page's total.

As we have seen that faster websites perform better in search engine results (SEO) and are able to achieve better conversion rates images optimization is a necessity for every website needs to do if they want to succeed online.

Perhaps you are wondering how much of a difference could image optimization can really make?

According to the findings of a Strangeloop study, one-second delay in the speed of loading your website can result in a loss of 7 percent of revenue, 11 percent fewer pageviews, and a 16% less satisfaction from customers.

If that's not enough reasons to speed up the loading time of your site You should be aware that search engines such as Google offer a preferential SEO treatment to faster-loading websites.

By optimizing your website's images it will improve your 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 success in image optimization in order to optimize web-based performance, is to strike the perfect balance between lowest file size and acceptable image quality.

The three factors which play an integral role in the process of 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 choosing the most appropriate combination of the three you could reduce your image size by up to 80 percent.

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

  1. Image File Format

Most website owners will agree that the three primary images file formats that actually have any significance can be described as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. The selection of the proper file type is crucial for image optimization.

To make things easy It is best to use JPEGs for photos or images that have a lot of colors. PNGs to create simple images, or for transparent images. You can also use GIF for animated images only.

For those who aren't sure of what is the difference between each kind, the PNG format is uncompressed which means it's a more high-quality image. The disadvantage is that it's file sizes are significantly larger.

On the other hand, JPEG is a compressed file format which slightly reduces image quality in order to provide a significantly smaller size file.

However, GIF has 256 colors, GIF uses only 256 in addition to lossless compression. This makes it the most suitable choice when it comes to animated photos.

On WPBeginner We use all three image formats based on the kind of image.

2. Compression

Another thing to consider is compression that plays an essential part on image optimization.

There are several types and levels of compression that are available. the settings of each differ based upon the image compression tool that you use.

Many image editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo and many others have built-in features to compress images.

You can also save pictures in normal format and then make use of a website tool like TinyPNG , or JPEG Mini for easier image compression.

Although it's a bit manual These two methods permit the compression of images prior to uploading them to WordPress, and this is the process we employ on WPBeginner.

There are also a variety of popular WordPress plugins, such as Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer and many more that automatically compress images when you upload them for the first time. Many beginners and even large corporations choose to use these image optimization plugins since it's simple to use and is convenient.

We'll talk more about these WordPress plugins in the coming article.

3. Image Dimensions

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

Most often, these images have resolutions of 300 DPI and dimensions starting from 2000 pixels or more. These photos of high quality are suitable for printing or desktop publishing. They are not appropriate for websites.

Reducing file dimensions to something more manageable can significantly reduce the size of the image file. Simply resize images using an image editor software on your personal computer.

In this case, we optimized an image to have 1.8 MB original file size and 300 DPI resolution, and image dimensions of 4900x3200 pixels.

We decided to use the jpeg format for larger compression. The dimensions were changed to 1200x795 pixels, and it reduced the image's size to 103KB. That's 94% less than the original size.

If you're aware of the three most important aspects of image optimization Let's take a review the different image optimization software for webmasters.

Best ImageOptimization Tools and Programs

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

Outside of the image editing software there are other powerful , free image optimization tools that you could utilize to make your images more attractive for the websites (with only one or two clicks).

We suggest using these tools to optimize images prior to uploading them to WordPress especially if are one of those people who are always perfect.

This approach helps you conserve the disk space of your WordPress hosting account, as well as guaranteeing speedy images with top quality, as you manually check every image.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a premium software that comes with the option of saving images specifically designed for the web. Open your image and select"File >> Save for Web" or "File >> Save for Web" option.

This will open an additional dialog box. To the right, you can choose different image formats. If you select JPEG format, you will see different quality options. When you select the quality option it will also reveal the file's size at the bottom left.

GIMP

GIMP is a no-cost and open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It can be used to boost your images' performance for use on the internet. However, it's not as simple to use as the other solutions listed here.

In the beginning, open your image in GIMP then click on the File > Export to option. This will open the save file dialog box. You can give your file a new name and click the export button.

This will show options to export images. For JPEG files, you can choose the compression setting to reduce file size. And finally, click on an export option to download the image you have optimized.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a completely free web application that employs a clever lossy compression technique that can reduce its size PNG files. All you need to do is visit their site and upload your pictures (simple drag and drop).

They will compress the image, and provide you with a download URL. You can use their sister web site called TinyJPG to use JPEG images.

They also have extensions for Adobe Photoshop which we employ as part of our image editing process because it brings together the best features of TinyPNG and TinyJPG inside Photoshop.

For developers, they've an API that allows you to convert images automatically, and for those who are new to the field, they offer a WordPress plugin that will complete the task for you (more on this in the future).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini is a lossless compression technology that reduces the size and size of images without having an impact on their visual quality. It is also possible to compare the quality of your original image with the compression image.

You can try their web version for free or you can purchase the program to run on your personal computer. They also have a pay API that automates the process for your server.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is an Mac program that allows users to compress images without losing any quality. This is done by identifying the best compression parameters . It also helps in getting rid of color profiles that aren't needed.

Windows option to do this would be Trimage.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

The best method to optimize your images is to prepare them before uploading them to WordPress. However, if you run a multi-author website or need an efficient solution you can try a WordPress plugin for image compression.

Here is our list of the best WordPress image compression plugins:

  1. Optimole one of the most well-known plugins created by The people behind ThemeIsle.
  2. EWWW Image Optimizer
  3. Compress JPEG and PNG images with the plugin created by the TinyPNG team. The team is mentioned in the article.
  4. Imagify - a plugin created by the well-known WP Rocket plugin team.
  5. ShortPixel Image Optimizer
  6. WP Smush
  7. reSmush.it

Utilizing any of these WordPress image optimization plugin will help you improve the speed of your website.

Final Thoughts and Best Practices for Image Optimization

If you aren't saving images that are optimized for web, then you should begin doing this right immediately. It's going to make a big impact on the speed of your website and your visitors will be thankful for it.

In addition, faster websites are ideal for SEO, and you will likely see an increase in the search engine results.

Make use of this tool: convert to png

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