Shoaib Khan Khattak
on
November 6, 2020

How to optimize images on your website?

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Do you know how to optimize images on your website to improve the speed and performance of your website?

One of the main factors that affect your site performance is the speed of your site. And you just have to know which factors are affecting your site speed.

To load your site faster and improve the performance of your site, you must use optimized images on your site. The loading speed of your site will increase the number of visitors on your site and optimized images increase your page speed.

In this article, I will discuss the basics of image optimization methods. So I will try to make it a full guide by Applying different changes.

Things we are going to discuss:
  1. What is image optimization?
  2. Different formats of image.
  3. How to optimize images?
    1. Optimization tools and techniques
    2. Optimization in WordPress using Plugins
  4. Importance of optimization of images
  5. Compression between optimized and not optimized images.

What is image optimization?

Basically, image optimization is the reduction of image size. Reduce the image size as low as possible. The use of optimized images reduced the size of the page. And the size of the page affects the page speed.

Acutely in image optimization, you have to reduce the size of images by reducing dimensions, file format, size, and resolution.

Optimal images is always be the major factor for your site.

Let start with a small compression I will show you the optimized and unoptimized images:

This image is optimized and size 252 KB (258,367 bytes)

unoptimized image
optimized image

This image is unoptimized and size 1.75 MB (1,839,519 bytes ).

PNG image
unoptimized image

This a simple optimized image you can see that image is reduced by almost 1.5 MBs.

Different formats of image:

Image format also affects image optimization. Some format gives you high-resolution pictures but not the optimized one. Some give you an optimized image that has less size and good resolution also.

There are different types of image formats. Here we discuss different formats of images and also discuss which one image format is optimal and have a better choice than the other one on the website.

Some papular formats of images Like PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, SVF, WebP, and others. Some formats are better for optimization and some are not good for optimization.

PNG:

PNG stands for “Portable Graphics Format”. It is one of the latest image formats.

PNG is a lossless data compression format that was created to replace GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). PNG format is open and there are no copyright limitations. PNG format is also used for transparent background images.

PNG transparent image
PNG transparent background image

JPG:

JPG is the most used format. In the digital market, JPG is one of the common and used formats. This is a compressed image format used for digital images.

JPG is mostly used format in digital cameras and the internet. it is an optimized image format with less data loss.

JPG image

GIF:

This is one of the most common low quality used format. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. Basically, you will find short videos in gif format. GIF is a slide show of images in low graphics.

GIF IMAGE
GIF File

WebP:

WebP is one of the new formats in the digital market. WebP stands for Web Picture format. This format provides you lossy and lossless quality. This format also supports transparency.

Here I added a WebP file.

I will discuss some common and popular formats here you can check about others also. These formats are very important with respect to optimization.

How to optimize images?

Now we have to know how to optimize any image. The image that is good for our website and which didn’t affect your page size and speed much.

To optimize images there are many ways and methods. You can optimize images before and after uploading images.

We will discuss all methods and tools here which are used for the optimization of images.

To achieve a good site speed and performance you have to reduce the page size of your website and to reduce page size you have to reduce the content size that you added. Video and image files are the most important files which need optimization on your website.

Best Tools and Programs use to optimize images:

These tools and programs are used to optimize images before uploading them to the site. This is a good practice to use an optimized image on your website. we can call it pre-image optimization.

Here we discuss some tools and programs using those you can do image optimization before uploading images on site. There are a large number of other tools as well but we discuss some of them here.

  1. Abode Photoshop
  2. Pixler
  3. Tiny PNG
  4. Compress Now
  5. Resize Photos

Abode Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is an advanced photo editor. This is used to edit photos and images. Adobe Photoshop is available for windows and macOS.

This is one of the most popular and used photo editors. This is a premium tool that is used for image optimization in the digital market mainly on websites.

Adobe Photoshop allows you to compress, resize, change image format and you can do many more things with this tool.

Abode Photoshop

Pixlr

Pixlr is an online editor. This online photo editor makes it easy to edit images. This editor has a large number of features for its users. You can easily edit your picture using this image editor.

This is an online editor so it also does not need any space to store it on your local computer. You can crop, resize, change the format, change transparency, and can do many more.

Here i will show you how to optimize image using this online editor.

You can optimize your image by resizing, changing the format, reducing quality, etc. Here I show you some techniques to reduce the size.

Let me show some option for the image optimization in pxlr.

You can easily resize images in pxlr it will reduce the image size and make the image optimized.

image size

You can change the image format and the quality of the image. The image below shows you the quality ratio that you want to keep for your image.

pxlr image compression

Tiny PNG

Tiny PNG is an online image compressor that compresses the image and reduced image size to a minimum to make your website fast.

Tiny PNG uses smart lossy compression to reduced the image size. Ting PNG only keeps that byte which is useful and removes all useless.

PNG is useful because it’s the only widely supported format that can store partially transparent images. And Tiny PNG also reserve this format.

I will show you the Tiny PNG compression process:

Visit there official website and select the file need to compress.

Tiny PNG

You can see the compression and can download the compressed.

You can see the compression and can download the compressed.

On your screen, you can see the difference between the compressed and uncompressed images.

Compress Now

Compress Now is another image compressor tool available online. Just upload your JPG, PNG, or GIF file and you can download the compressed file.

Compress Now allows you to compress files according to your choice. Just upload your image optimize it and download it.

The process of optimization using compress now is very simple. You need to follow these three steps to compress any image.

Select images from your desktop computer or device. Or just drag and drop files to the drop area.

Select images from your desktop computer or device. Or just drag and drop files to the drop area.

Select a compression level (%), then activate the compression with the button.

Select a compression level (%), then activate the compression with the button.

Download compressed images one by one or get the ZIP files.

Download compressed images one by one or get the ZIP files.

In this image compressor you can select 10 images at a time

Resize Photos

Resize Photo is another image compression tool. This image compression tool allows you to compress the image by resizing it and by changing the image type.

Resize Photo allows you to resize image according to your requirement and change the image type to JPG, GIF etc. any.

Process of optimization of image in Resize Photo is very easy.

Just select the image you want to compress.

Just select the image you want to compress.

Resize the size of the image and you can change the image type. This thing will do image optimization for you. you can download the optimized image now.

Download image

These are some image optimization process to optimize images before uploading. This is an optimal method to optimize images. This will save your space on the server as well as reduce the page size and improve page speed as well.

Optimization in WordPress using Plugins:

WordPress is a popular CMS use to manage websites. In WordPress, you can manage your website even without a computer background. For WordPress, we have a large number of Plugins and themes which you can use to manage your website content.

WordPress has many free and paid version of plugins and themes.

No matter your website is managed on WordPress or not. But page speed is always a core factor for your site. And without page speed, your SEO will not as effective for your site. And with optimizing your page size you cant reduce page speed.

And your page size depends upon your images. You must optimize images t reduce page size and increase page speed and rank your site.

WordPress has many image optimization plugins that automatically done image optimization.

WordPress Image Optimization Plugins:

  1. ShortPixel Image Optimizer
  2. Optimole
  3. Imagify
  4. WP Compress
  5. Smush Image Compression and Optimization
  6. Compress JPEG & PNG images

Here we have some WordPress image optimization plugins but there are a large number of more plugins that you can use for image optimization.

ShortPixel Image Optimizer:

ShortPixel is an image optimization plugin. ShortPixel image optimizer reduced the size of your image on the website without losing the quality of the images.

ShortPixel start comperssion of your image when you install and get an API from the short pixel. This is one of the wells know image optimizer for WordPress. Shortpixel has free and paid versions for image optimization.

In the free version of the short pixel, you can optimize only 100 images if you want to optimize more images you have to buy a paid version. ShortPixel done three types of optimization lossy, lossless, and glossy.

ShortPixel Image Optimizer:

Optimole:

Optimole is a new image optimization plugin. This plugin Automatically compresses, optimize, and serve scaled images along with next-gen WebP all from CloudFront CDN. Also, help in lazy loading.

Optimole is one of the easy and fast image optimization plugins. Optimole Plugin done the image optimization on the cloud so no slow down during the optimization process.

Just install this plugin and activate it. after this get the API key by signing up and optimize your images.

Optimole:

Imagify:

Imagify is also an image optimizer. Imagify is an image optimization plugin by WP Media. Imagify optimize images of your website using three types of algorithms.

The first one is Normal, a lossless compression algorithm. In this optimization, the quality of the image remains the same there is no effect or loss of bytes in the image. The image quality won’t be altered at all.

Aggressive is a lossy compression. This type gives you more compression but the quality may be less than that.

Ultra, our strongest compression method using a lossy algorithm. In this, you should lose the quality but will get the full optimized image.

Imagify:

WP Compress:

Another image optimizer plugins WP Compress also compress, resize and reduce the size of your images on websites to load the website fast and improve site performance of your website.

Just install the WP Compress plugin and provide access to the key. For key, you have to create an account on their plat from. Click here for the platform.

WP Compress:

Smush Image Compression and Optimization:

Smush is one of the popular image optimization plugins. That can resize, compress, lazy load your images on the website. Smush image optimization improve your page speed.

Smush optimized your website image by using these main functions like Lossless compression, Lazy load, Bulk Smush, Resizing images, incorrect image detection, and have many more features like that.

Smush Image Compression and Optimization:

Compress JPEG & PNG images:

This plugin mainly optimized JPEG and PNG images on your website. This plugin is by the TINY PNG an image compression tool. we discussed this tool above in the tools section.

Compress JPEG and PNG reduce the size of the image by compressing them. This is one of the fast plugins for PNG and JPEG image optimization.

This plugin has some brilliant features like automatic compression of new images, Backgroud optimization for images, Easy for bulk optimization, and many more.

Compress JPEG & PNG images:

Importance of optimization of images:

After knowing about these methods to the optimized image. Now I would tell you what is the benefit of optimizing images? Image optimization is very important for any website.

Image optimization is important for all WordPress and nonwordpress website. Here I will discuss some important factors on which image optimization effects.

  1. Improve Page Speed
  2. Improve SEO rank
  3. Improve User experience

There are many other things on which image optimization effects but here we discuss these which are I think the most important.

Improve Page Speed:

Whenever you want to improve the performance of your site the first thing is to do is improve the page speed. And you know if your page size is high your page speed should be high as you have a 2.3MBs of a page on your site.

Obviously page speed of that page should be slow that will damage your site performance.

But you know the image has a great impact on the size of the page. More than 50% of the page size is due to the high sized images.

So if you want to reduce the page size you must have to reduce the image size. you can use the pre-optimization or post-optimization method.

Improve SEO Rank:

Do you know your page speed also effects the SEO rank of your site?

More your page speed is more your site rank. This thing also increases the User experience that improves the rank of your site. Due to image optimization, you can achieve a good page speed as I stated above.

When your page size is less than your page speed is high and that thing improves your SEO ranking also.

As you have a quick load website people also suggest you others on different platforms than this thing will also help you to improve the rank on different platforms.

Improve User experience:

What a basic user need when it come to any site?

A user always wants a quick response from the site he visits. The fast loading website attracts more users and visitors.
And when you have an optimized image then the site should load fast because of less size.

Do you know Google also likes the sites which load fast and other search engines as well? So keep the size low to increase the interest of your visitors.

This thing also enhances more users to your site weather from any search engine or any personal recommendation. Because if someone likes your site he/she will recommend your site whenever anyone asks him for help.

READ: HOW TO INSTALL WORDPRESS WITH OPENLITESPEED

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