How to Optimize Images for Web Performance without Losing Quality 2021

Did you know that optimizing images before uploading them to WP can make a significant difference in the speed of your website?

Many new bloggers only upload photographs without optimizing them for the web when they first start a blog. These huge image files slow down your website.

Use picture optimization best practices as part of your usual blogging activity to correct this.

We’ll show you how to optimize images for quicker online performance without sacrificing quality in this article.

Image Optimization

What is it?

Image optimization is the process of compressing and delivering photos in the shortest file size possible. You can do this while maintaining image quality.

The procedure appears complicated. But it is pretty simple these days. You may automatically compress photographs by up to 80% without sacrificing image quality. You can do this by using one of the various image optimization plugins and tools available.

How does it work?

In layman’s terms, picture optimization uses compression technology. Such as “Lossy” and “Lossless” to assist in reducing file size without sacrificing quality.

What does “optimise images” imply?

If your WP hosting support or a performance test program has ever advised you to optimize images. All it means is that you should lower the file size of your photos by optimizing them for the web.

Importance and benefits of Image Optimization

There are many advantages to optimizing your images. But, the following are the most important ones to be aware of:

• Increased webpage speed
• SEO rankings have improved.
• Sales and lead conversion rates are higher.
• Limited storage and bandwidth (reduced hosting and CDN cost)
• Backups of websites are now much faster (reduced cost of backup storage)

Images are the next heaviest component on a web page after the video. According to HTTP Archive, graphics account for about 21% of the total weight of a webpage.

Image optimization is something that any business website must undertake. Especially if they want to flourish online. We know that fast websites rank higher in SEO and have greater conversions.

You may now be wondering how much of a difference image optimization may make.

According to a Strangeloop study, a one-second delay in website load time can lose you:

• 7% in sales
• 11% in pageviews
• 16% in customer satisfaction

If these reasons are not enough for you to. Know that search engines offer faster-loading websites’ preferred SEO treatment.

This implies that by optimizing your photos for the web, you can enhance the speed of your website. You can also improve your WordPress SEO ranks.

Optimizing images for without losing quality

People will lose interest and go on if your website takes longer than 2 seconds to load. Do you think I’m crazy? Amazon discovered that every second their pages take to load costs them $1.6 billion in sales.

Your website might be downloaded from space satellites. But people want your site to load at the speed of light and are impatient. So, how can you speed up your website without losing sales?

Check that your images aren’t too large!

One of the most crucial aspects of having a fast website is image optimization. The majority of file sizes are made up of images.

High-quality photographs are essential. But enormous images result in massive files, which slow down your site. Even one uncompressed image can substantially slow down your entire site and irritate the SEO gods… Yes, uncompressed photos harm your SEO.

But, there are a lot of techniques to reduce the size of your images without sacrificing image quality.

Resize Images

The first step is to resize the image to the appropriate resolution. If you’re going to use an image as a full-screen backdrop or a hero image. We recommend making it roughly 2000 pixels big. Keep in mind that website content is typically 900–1200 pixels in width when sizing an image for your page.

On a Mac

To adjust the size of your image, go to Preview > Tools > Adjust size.

On a PC

ImageResizer is a useful software that allows you to resize images by right-clicking. After you’ve downloaded and installed the program. You’ll have many options for resizing your photos.

Choose the correct file format

Each file format has advantages and disadvantages. Knowing which one to use can make a significant difference in the performance of your website. Here’s a quick rundown of the three most common picture file types on the web, as well as what they’re best used for.

JPEG

• The most common file type on the internet.
• Because of the large color palette that the format allows. It’s ideal for pictures and complex visuals.

PNG

• High resolution, but with more colors and depth, the file size can quickly balloon.
• Has the ability to deal with transparency (great for logo files).
• Colors in flat patches of color are rendered quite well.

GIF

• The file is really large.
• Animations are allowed.
• Unless you’re making short animations, this isn’t a good idea.

Compress your images

Compression is the second step in image optimization. This method passes your image through an algorithm. The algorithm dramatically reduces the size of your image file. For picture compression, we recommend some online programs. Although they all do the same thing, you may prefer to use one over the other. We suggest you try a few of these!

• TinyJPG | TinyPNG
• Compressor.io
• Kraken
• ImageOptimizer

As a general rule, your image should never exceed 1MB in size. Image file sizes should be in the 70kb-400kb range. (1 megabyte = 1000 kilobytes)

If your image is larger than 1MB when it comes out of the compressor. Check your image size choices or try a different file type (see above). To put things in perspective, the average size of a whole website is only 4MB, so make the most of your limited space.

Use a descriptive filename.

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of using the default file name from a camera or image download (e.g., IMG 1234). But this isn’t a smart idea.

When it comes to SEO, it’s critical to choose relevant keywords. These Keywords will ensure that your site ranks higher in search results. Not only does Google crawl your website’s text, but it also looks for keywords in the file names of your images.

Use a Content Delivery Network to serve images.

Another wonderful option to improve image quality and site speed is to use a CDN to serve your images to a user.

CDNs use a network of globally distributed proxy servers to serve your cached images to users. They use real-time image optimization. They do this by loading images from cache/proxy servers that are nearest to the users.

This provides users with a faster loading experience by relieving your server of the stress of supplying images. CDNs also use device detection to assess the size and type of images shown to different devices.

Incapsula, imgix, and ImageEngine are three content delivery networks to examine.

To optimize your images for the web, consider using vector images.

SVG are visuals that you can scale to any screen resolution without sacrificing image quality. Vector pictures are ideal for the web since they speed up the page load time. You may easily include these as responsive photos on your website.

For detailed visuals such as digital photography and painting, the SVG file format is not suitable. But it is more suited to images with forms, curving lines, and colors (e.g., icons, logos, and illustrations).

Page size and load time are crucial components to user experience. They should be at the top of any website owner’s radar. One of the simplest ways to improve your site’s load time is to focus on image optimization.

The Best Image Optimization Programs & Tools

Most image editing software includes image optimization and compression settings.

There are many free image optimization applications that you may use besides image editing software. This you can do with only a few clicks.

If you’re a perfectionist, we recommend utilizing these tools to improve pictures before uploading them to WP.

Because you carefully check each image. This strategy helps you conserve disc space for your WordPress hosting account. It also ensures the fastest image with the best quality.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a paid program. It includes a feature that allows you to save images that are optimized for the web. Simply open your image and select “File » Save for Web” from the menu.

This will bring up a new window. On the right, you may choose from a variety of image formats. Different quality settings are available for the JPEG format. When you choose your selections, the file size will be displayed on the bottom left.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program is an open-source and free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. You can use it make your photos web-friendly. The disadvantage is that it is not as user-friendly as some of the other options on our list.

To begin, open your image in GIMP and then choose File » Export As from the File menu. The save file dialogue box will appear as a result of this action. After that, click the export button and give your file a new name.

This will bring up options for exporting images. You can choose the compression level for jpeg files to reduce file size. Finally, save the optimized image file by clicking the export option.

TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a free web software. It reduces the size of your PNG files using a sophisticated lossy compression approach. You simply need to go to their website and upload your photos (simple drag & drop).

They’ll compress the image and send you a link to download it. TinyJPG, their sister website, you can use it to compress JPEG images.

They also have an Adobe Photoshop extension. You can use these in our image editing process because it combines the best of TinyPNG and TinyJPG inside Photoshop.

They have an API for developers to convert pictures automatically. They also have a WordPress plugin for beginners that can do it automatically (more on this later).

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini employs lossless compression. This decreases the size of images without compromising their perceptual quality. You can also compare the original image’s quality to the compressed image’s quality.

You can either use their free web version or buy the program for your computer. They also offer a premium API that allows you to automate the procedure on your server.

ImageOptim

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ImageOptim is a Mac tool. It finds the ideal compression parameters and removes redundant color profiles. This reduces photo size without sacrificing quality. Trimage is a Windows counterpart to this.

Best Image Optimization Plugins for WordPress

We feel that optimizing your photographs before submitting them to WP is the best way to go. If you have a multi-author site or need an automated solution. A WP image compression will be helpful.

Listed below are some of the best WP image compression plugins:

• Optimole – The team behind ThemeIsle created Optimole, a popular plugin.
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• EWWW Image Optimizer
• Imagify: It is a plugin developed by the well-known WP Rocket plugin team.
• WP Smush
• reSmush.it
• WP Smush

You can speed up your website by using any of these WordPress image optimization plugins.

Conclusion

If you’re not already saving photographs that are optimized for the web. You should start today. It will make a significant difference in the speed of your site, and your users will appreciate it.

Not to mention, quicker websites are better for SEO. So your search engine ranks will likely improve.

Aside from image optimization, employing a WP cache plugin and a WPss CDN are two things that will assist you in speeding up your website.

Or, you may utilize a managed WordPress hosting service. This frequently includes both caching and a CDN as part of the package.

We hope you found this post useful in learning how to optimize photos in WordPress.