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How to Optimize Imagesfor Web Performance without losing Quality

Did you have the knowledge that optimizing your images prior to uploading them to WordPress will have a huge impact on the speed of your web site?

When making a blog for the first time, many new bloggers upload images without optimizing them for the web. These huge image files make your website slower.

You can address this issue by applying images optimizationbest practices as part of your routine blog routine.

The following article In this post, we'll teach you how to optimize your images to increase web performance without sacrificing quality. We'll also show you automatic images optimization plugins for WordPress that will simplify your life.

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

• What's image optimization? (optimized image vs. unoptimized)
• Why is image optimization important? What are the advantages?
• How do you save and optimize images to improve web performance?
• The best image optimization software and tools
• Top images optimization tools for WordPress

What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs Unoptimized Images)

Image optimization is a technique of saving and sharing images at the lowest possible file size without reducing the quality of the image overall.

Although the process may sound complicated but it's actually fairly simple to do these days. You can use one of the many image optimization software and tools to automatically compress images by up to 80% without any visible loss in image quality.

Here's an example of optimized as compared to unoptimized.

You can observe, if optimized correctly, the image may be 75 percent smaller than the original without any degradation in quality.

How does Image Optimization work?

In simple terms simple terms, image optimization uses compression technology like "Lossy" and "Lossless" that help reduce the overall file size without any noticeable loss in quality.

What is it to optimize Images?

If you've ever been given an advice to optimize your images from your WordPress hosting service or an automated speed test tool that's all it means is the need to reduce the file size of your photos by optimizing them for web.

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

There are many advantages of optimizing your pictures, here are the top ones worth knowing:

• Faster website speed
• Enhanced SEO rankings
• Higher overall conversion rate for sales and leads
• More storage and bandwidth (which can reduce hosting and CDN cost)
• Speedier backups of websites (also reduces the cost for backup storage)

Beyond video, pictures are the next largest item on a webpage. As per HTTP archives, images make up on average 21% of the weight of a page's total.

As we have seen that faster websites get higher rankings on search engines (SEO) and also have higher conversion rates which is why image optimization is something that every business website must do should they wish to make a mark online.

You might be thinking how much difference does image optimization really result in?

According to the findings of a Strangeloop study, a 1/second delay in loading a website will cost you 7 percent on sales. That's 11% less pageviewsand a 16 percent lower satisfaction with customers.

If these aren't enough reasons to speed up your website you need to know that search engines like Google offer a preferential SEO for faster loading sites.

By optimizing the images you upload for web it will improve your speed on your site and improve WordPress SEO positions.

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 picture optimization of web pages is finding the right ratio between the smallest size of the file and acceptable quality of the image.

Three factors that play a crucial role 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 the three you could reduce your image's dimensions by up to 80%.

Let's examine each of them in greater details.

1. Image File Format

For most webmasters, the three primary image formats that truly should be considered are JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Selecting the appropriate file type is essential to image optimization.

To simplify things To keep things simple, you should use JPEGs for images or photos filled with colors. PNGs for straightforward images or for transparent images, and GIF to only use animated images.

For those who aren't aware of the distinction between each file type, the PNG image format is non-compressed, meaning it is a higher quality image. The downside is that PNG file sizes are significantly larger.

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

While GIF only supports 256 colors and lossless compression. That means it is the best choice when it comes to animated photos.

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

2. Compression

The next step is image compression, which plays an enormous role in image optimization.

There are many types and levels of image compression available. Each of the parameters differ depending on the compression tool that you use.

The majority of image-editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo and more come with built-in image compression capabilities.

You can also save images as normal but then you can use a Web tool like TinyPNG , or JPEG Mini for easier image compression.

While it's not the most user-friendly the two methods will allow you to compress your images prior to uploading the images to WordPress which is the method we use on WPBeginner.

There are also several popular WordPress plugins such as Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer and many more that automatically compress images after you first upload them. A lot of novices and even big companies prefer using these image optimization plugins due to the fact that it is simple and efficient.

We will share more about these WordPress plugins in the coming article.

3. Image Dimensions

Normally whenever you import photos from your phone or a digital camera, the image has a very high resolution and big file dimensions (height as well as width).

Typically, these photos have a resolution of 300 DPI with dimensions starting from 2000 pixels and even more. The high-quality photos are perfect for desktop or print printing. These images are not appropriate for use on websites.

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

In this case, we optimized photos with 1.8 megabytes of original file size, 300 DPI resolution, and dimensions of 4900x3200 pixels.

We went with the JPEG format for more compression. We changed the dimensions to 1200x795 pixels. In addition, it reduced the image file size to 103 KB. This is 94% smaller than the original file size.

Now that you've identified the three main factors involved in image optimization Let's take a look at the various image optimization tools for website owners.

Best ImageOptimization Tools and Programs

As we've mentioned before, the majority of image editing software comes including image optimization and compression settings.

Beyond the software for editing images, there are numerous powerful , free image optimization tools that you could apply to optimize images for web (with just few clicks).

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

This strategy helps you save the disk space of your WordPress hosting account, and it guarantee speedy images with highest quality as you manually scrutinize each image.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a premium software that comes with the option of saving images that are optimized for web use. Simply open your image and click on"Save for Web. "File >> Save for Web" option.

This will open a brand new dialog box. On the right, it is possible to select various image formats. For JPEG format, you will see a variety of options for quality. 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 popular Adobe Photoshop. It is a tool to improve your image for the web. The disadvantage is that it's not as straightforward to use as some other methods on this list.

In the beginning, open your image within GIMP and then choose File >> Export to option. This will show the dialog box for saving your file. You can give your file a new name and then click on"export.

This will display options for exporting images. For JPEG files, you can select the compression level to reduce the size of the file. And finally, click on"export button" in order for you to save an optimized picture file.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a totally free web application that utilizes a lossy compression technique to reduce in size your PNG images. All you need to do is go to their site and upload your images (simple drag and drop).

They will compress the image and give you the download URL. You can also visit their sister web site called TinyJPG to use JPEG compressing images.

There is also another extension available for Adobe Photoshop which we use to complete our image editing process since it combines the best of TinyJPG and TinyPNG inside Photoshop.

For developers, they've an API for converting images instantly, while for beginners , they have an WordPress plugin that will automatically do it for you (more on this in the future).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini utilizes lossless compression process that drastically reduces the size of pictures without impacting their visual quality. You can also test the quality of your original image with the compression image.

You can try their web version for free, or purchase the program for your computer. There is also a paid API that can automate the process on your server.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is a Mac utility that permits you the compression of images with no losing any quality, by locating the most effective compression parameters as well as remove unnecessary color profiles.

Windows option to do this would be Trimage.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

We believe the best method to optimize your photos is to prepare them before uploading them to WordPress. However, if your site is the site of multiple authors or you require an easy solution then you could consider using a WordPress plugin for image compression.

Here is our list of the top WordPress compressors of images.

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

Utilizing any ones of them WordPress image optimization plugins can improve the speed of your website.

Final Thoughts and Best Practices for Image Optimization

If you're not saving images optimized for web, then it's time to do so immediately. This will make a major difference on your site speed and your users will be thankful for it.

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

Use this tool to convert to png