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How to Optimize Imagesfor the Web's Performance without sacrificing Quality

Did you be aware that optimizing images before uploading them to WordPress can have a major effect on your website's speed?

When making a blog for the first time, many novices upload pictures without making them web-friendly. Large images can slow your website more slow.

It is possible to fix this issue by applying images optimizationbest techniques in your regular blogging routine.

In this article In this post, we'll teach you how to optimize your images to increase internet performance without losing quality. We will also provide automatic optimization plugins for images. optimization extensions for WordPress that will make your life easy.

As this is a comprehensive guide to image optimization for the web, we have created an easy-to-follow table of content:

• What's image optimization? (optimized images vs. images that aren't optimized)
• What makes image optimization crucial? What are the benefits?
• How do I preserve and optimize images for web performance?
• Top image optimization software and tools
• Best Images optimization plug-ins to WordPress

What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs Unoptimized Images)

Image optimization is the process of saving and delivering images at the lowest possible file size without reducing the overall quality of images.

While it may sound like a complex process, it's actually quite easy nowadays. One of the many image optimization tools and plugins that automate the compression of images by up to 80% without any visible reduction in image quality.

Here's an example of an optimized images versus unoptimized:

This is what you will see. when optimized properly the same image could be 75 percent smaller than the original image without losing any quality.

How does Image Optimization work?

In simple terms, image optimization is achieved by using compression technology such as "Lossy" and "Lossless" which helps reduce the overall dimension of the image file without any loss in quality.

What does it mean to optimize Images?

If you've ever received a recommendation to optimize images through your WordPress hosting support or by a speed test tool, then it 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 images, below are the top ones that you should know:

• Faster website speed
• Improvements in SEO rankings
• Higher overall conversion rates for sales and leads
• Storage and bandwidth are reduced (which could reduce hosting costs and CDN cost)
• Faster backups of websites (also reduces cost of backup storage)

Outside of video, images are the second most hefty item on a page. From the HTTP archivedata, photos account for about 21% on average of the total weight on a web page.

As we have seen that faster websites rank higher on search engines (SEO) and have better conversions and image optimization is a must for every business website should do for success online.

Now you might be wondering how much of a difference can image optimization really can make?

According to a Strangeloop study, a 1 second delay in loading time for websites will cost you 7% on sales. That's 11% less pages viewed, and 16% drop in satisfaction among customers.

If none of these reasons are enough to speed up the loading time of your site, then you should know that search engines such as Google also provide SEO preferential treatment to faster-loading websites.

That means that by optimizing your web-friendly images that you can boost the speed of your website and increase 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 successful photo optimization in order to optimize web-based performance, is to find the best balance between the most compact file size and acceptable quality of the image.

Three factors that play a crucial importance 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)

If you choose the best combination of the three you can cut down your image's dimensions by up to 80%.

Let's go over each of them in greater detail.

1. Image File Format

For most website owners, the three primary images file formats that actually need to be considered can be described as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Choosing the right file type is essential to image optimization.

To make things easy In order to keep things simple, use JPEGs to create images or photos with lots of colors. PNGs for basic images or for transparent images, and GIF to only use animated images.

For those who don't understand what the distinction is between each kind, the PNG format is uncompressed which means it's a superior quality image. The drawback is that the file sizes are considerably larger.

However, JPEG is a compressed format, which reduces image quality in order to provide a significantly smaller file size.

Whereas GIF is limited to 256 colors along with lossless compression which makes it the most appropriate choice of animated graphics.

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

2. Compression

The next thing is image compression, which plays an enormous part for image optimization.

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

A majority of image editing tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo and many others have built-in compression tools for images.

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

While it's not the most user-friendly both methods allow you to compress images prior uploading images to WordPress this is the process we employ on WPBeginner.

There are also many popular WordPress plugins such as Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer and many more that automatically compress images once they are uploaded for the first time. A lot of newbies and large companies choose to utilize these image optimization plugins because it's easy and quick.

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

3. Image Dimensions

Normally when you import a picture from your phone , or digital camera, the image has a very high resolution and massive file dimensions (height and width).

In general, these photos have the resolution of 300 DPI and dimensions starting from 2000 pixels or more. These photos of high quality are suitable to print or desktop publishing. They are not appropriate for use on websites.

Reducing file dimensions to something more reasonable can significantly decrease the size of the image file. It is easy to resize images using the software for editing images on your personal computer.

We optimized, for instance, our photo to 1.8 Megabytes in size as the original file size and 300 DPI resolution, and dimensions of 4900x3200 pixels.

We opted for the Jpeg format to allow better compression. We also altered the dimensions to 1200x795 inches, and it reduced the image file size to 103 KB. That's 94% less than the original file size.

If you're aware of the three primary factors that affect image optimization we can take a take a look at various image optimization tools available to website owners.

Best ImageOptimization Tools and Programs

Like we mentioned earlier, the majority of image editing software comes that have image optimization along with compression and image optimization settings.

Outside of the editing software for images, there are other efficient and cost-effective image optimization tools you can make use of to improve images for web usage (with just a few clicks).

We recommend using these tools to enhance images before uploading them to WordPress especially if are the type of person who is obsessed with perfection.

This approach helps you conserve disk space on your WordPress hosting account, and will guarantee speedy images with top quality, as you manually go through every image.

Adobe Photoshop

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

This will open an additional dialog box. On the right, you can select different image formats. If you select JPEG format, you will see different quality options. When you select the quality option it will also indicate the file's dimensions on the bottom left.

GIMP

GIMP is a free and open source alternative to popular Adobe Photoshop. It can be used to make your images more attractive for the web. The downside is that it's not as simple to utilize as other solutions listed here.

First, open your image within GIMP before you can select the File > Export As option. Then, you will be presented with the save file dialog box. Make sure to give the file a different name, and then click an export option.

This will present options for exporting images. For JPEG images, you can select the compression level to reduce the size of the file. Then, click"export" to save your optimized file.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a free online application that utilizes a lossy compression method to minimize their size PNG images. All you have to do is visit their site and upload your pictures (simple drag and drop).

They compress the image and then provide you with the download link. You can also visit their sister websitecalled TinyJPG and TinyJPG for JPEG image compression.

They also have Extensions for Adobe Photoshop that we use for our editing process for images because it brings together the best features of TinyJPG and TinyPNG inside Photoshop.

For developers, they have an API for converting images for them automatically. And for beginners , they have a WordPress plugin that will accomplish the task (more on this in the future).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini utilizes lossless compression method that dramatically reduces the size of images while not any impact on their perceived quality. You can also compare the quality of the original image and the compressed image.

You can download their web version for no cost or purchase the application for your computer. They also have a pay API that automates the process for your server.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is an Mac tool that lets you the compression of images with no sacrificing any quality. It can do this by locating the most efficient compression parameters and getting rid of color profiles that aren't needed.

Windows alternatives to that are Trimage.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

We believe the best method to optimize your photos is to make them optimized prior to uploading them to WordPress. If you have the site of multiple authors or you require an easy solution then you could try the WordPress image compression plugin.

Below is our selection of the best WordPress images compression tools:

1. Optimole is a well-known plugin created by The Team behind ThemeIsle.
2. EWWW Image Optimizer
3. Compress JPEG and PNG images using the plugin developed by the TinyPNG team. It is mentioned above 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 one or all of the WordPress image optimization plugin will help you make your website faster.

Final Thoughts and Best Practices for Image Optimization

If you're not saving images optimized for the web, it's time to do this right immediately. It'll make a significant difference on your site speed as well as your customers will be grateful for it.

Also, faster websites are ideal for SEO, and you'll likely notice an increase in your ranking on search engines.

Make use of this tool convert to png