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How to Optimize Imagesfor High Performance on the Internet without Losing Quality

Did you consider optimizing your photos before uploading to WordPress can have a massive impact on the speed of your website?

When starting a new blog, many beginners simply upload images without optimizing them for web. Large image files can make your website slow.

You can solve this problem by applying optimization of images. optimizationbest practices in your regular blogging routine.

With this article In this post, we will show you how to optimize your images to improve websites without sacrificing quality. We will also present automatic image optimization extensions for WordPress that can make life easier.

Since this is a thorough guide on image optimization for the web We have designed an easy-to-follow table of contents:

• How do you define image optimization? (optimized and unoptimized images)
• What makes image optimization crucial? What are the benefits?
• How can I conserve and optimize images for web performance?
• Best image optimization software and tools
• The best image optimization tools for WordPress

What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs Unoptimized Images)

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

Although the process might sound complex although it's actually quite simple nowadays. It is possible to use one of the numerous image optimization programs and tools to automate the compression of images by up to 80% without any visible diminution in quality.

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

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

What is Image Optimization work?

In simple words the simplest way to describe it is that image optimization uses compression technology such as "Lossy" and "Lossless" which can reduce overall file size without any noticeable loss in quality.

What does it mean to Optimize Images?

If you've ever been given the suggestion to optimize your images through your WordPress hosting service or the speed test tool what it all means is that you should reduce the file size of your images by optimizing them for 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 that you should know:

• Website speed faster
• Improved SEO rankings
• Higher overall conversion rate for leads and sales
• Storage and bandwidth are reduced (which will reduce hosting and CDN cost)
• Backups on websites are faster (also decreases the cost of backup storage)

Outside of video, images are the second-heaviest items on a webpage. According to HTTP archives, images comprise approximately 21% of the weight of a page's total.

As we all know that sites that are fast get higher rankings on search engines (SEO) and have better conversion rates images optimization is a must for every business website must perform in order to grow online.

Now , you may be wondering how big of a difference could image optimization actually create?

According to an Strangeloop study, a 1 second delay in the loading of websites can cost you 7% of revenue, 11 percent less pageviews, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

If this isn't enough of a reason to speed up the loading time of your site then you should know that search engines like Google are also giving preferential SEO treatment to faster loading websites.

That means that by optimizing the images you upload for web that you can boost the speed of your website as well as boost 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 successful photo optimization that is optimized for performance on websites is to find the perfect equilibrium between the lowest file size and acceptable image quality.

Three factors which play an integral influence on 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 right combination of these three, you can cut down your image's dimensions by up to 80 percent.

Let's go over each of these in more details.

1. Image File Format

For the majority of website owners, the only three image formats that really count can be described as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. The right choice of format is crucial in image optimization.

To simplify things, you want to use JPEGs for images or photos filled with colors. PNGs for simple images or for transparent images. You can also use GIF to only use animated images.

For those who don't know the differences between each file type, the image format PNG is not compressed which means it's a more high-quality image. The disadvantage is that it's file dimensions are larger.

However, JPEG is a compressed format that can reduce the quality of images to create a significantly smaller size file.

Whereas GIF is limited to 256 colors in addition to lossless compression. This is why it is the ideal option with regard to animation images.

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

2. Compression

The following thing to consider is image compression, which plays a significant part for image optimization.

There are many types and levels of image compression that are available. the settings of each depend on the image compression software you are using.

The majority of image editors, including Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo and many more have built-in features for image compression.

You could also save your images in the normal way and then use a web tool such as TinyPNG or JPEG Mini for easier image compression.

Though it's a little manual These two methods permit you to compress images prior to uploading them to WordPress which is the process we employ on WPBeginner.

There are many well-known WordPress plugins, such as Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer and others that automatically compress images when they are uploaded for the first time. Many newbies, and even larger companies prefer using these images optimization plugins because it's easy to use and is convenient.

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

3. Image Dimensions

Normally when you import a photo from your phone or digital camera, it comes with an extremely high resolution as well as large file dimensions (height and wide).

In general, these photos have a resolution of 300 DPI and sizes that start at 2000 pixels up to. High-quality photos work well for desktop publishing or printing. These images are not appropriate for use on websites.

Making the file's dimensions more reasonable can significantly decrease the size of images. Simply resize images using an image editing program on your personal computer.

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

We decided to use the jpeg format for greater compression. We also changed the dimensions to 1200x795 pixel, and it decreased the image file size to 103KB. That's 94% less than the size of the original file.

Now that you've learned the three main factors involved in image optimization We'll take a to look into various image optimization techniques for website owners.

Best ImageOptimization Tools and Programs

As we said earlier, the majority of image editing software comes complete with images optimization along with compression and image optimization settings.

Beyond the image editing software, there are many powerful , free image optimization tools you can make use of to improve images for websites (with just few clicks).

We suggest using these tools to enhance images before uploading them to WordPress particularly if are one of those people who are always perfect.

This strategy helps you save the disk space of your WordPress hosting account, as well as guaranteeing the fastest image and the best quality since you manually go through each image.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a premium software that comes with a feature to save images that are optimized for the web. Open your image and select"Save for Web. "File >> Save for Web" option.

This will open up a new dialog box. On the right, you will be able to set various image formats. For JPEG format, you will see different quality options. Once you've selected the options the program will indicate the file's dimensions in the lower left.

GIMP

GIMP is a free and open source alternative to popular Adobe Photoshop. It can be used to optimize your images for use on the internet. However, it's not as straightforward to implement as other solutions on this list.

In the beginning, open your image in GIMP then click the File > Export As option. This will open the save file dialog box. Create a new name and then hit"Export Now.

It will open image export options. When you export JPEGs, you can choose the compression setting to reduce file size. Then, click the export button to save the optimized image file.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a free web application that utilizes a lossy compression process to decrease sizes of PNG images. All you need to do is go to their website and upload your pictures (simple drag and drop).

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

There is also one extension that works with Adobe Photoshop that we use to complete our image editing process because it brings together the best features of TinyPNG and TinyJPG in Photoshop.

For developers, they offer an API to convert images automatically, and for novices, they offer a WordPress plugin that can automatically convert images for you (more on this in the future).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini utilizes a lossless compression method that dramatically reduces the size and size of images without having an impact on their visual quality. You can also test the quality of the original image and the compressed image.

You can try their web version for no cost or buy the program for your computer. Additionally, they offer a paid API to automate processes of your web server.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is a Mac utility that permits you to reduce images, without sacrificing any quality. It does this by finding the best compression parameters , and removing unnecessary color profiles.

Windows an alternative is Trimage.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

We believe that the most effective method to optimize your photos is by doing it before uploading them to WordPress. However, if your site is an online site with multiple authors or require an easy solution you may want to consider an 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 people behind ThemeIsle.
2. EWWW Image Optimizer
3. Compress JPEG & PNG images with the plugin created by the TinyPNG team. It is mentioned above 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 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're not saving images optimized for the web, then you must begin doing the task now. It'll make a massive difference on your site speed as well as your customers will appreciate it.

Furthermore, faster websites are great for SEO and you will likely see an increase in the search engine results.

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