3 Methods to optimize your images for the web

Images add plenty of value to a website. Photos can make the difference between potential customers who choose to buy your products or not. Images help put a face to your brand or website. They help tell your story.

The only downside to using photos is that they are usually heavy files. If you’re uploading images straight from your camera, then your photos are going to contribute to your website’s slow loading times.

Since we’ve already established that photos are very important to sites, then you’re left with very little choice – either remove your photos or optimize them. Surely, you’re not going to choose the former since optimizing images is relatively easy.

Here are 3 of the best methods to optimize your images for the web:

Resize your photos

You don’t need high-resolution photos for your website. If your images are anything above 2,000 pixels, then you should be optimizing them. This is because most computer screens only have a 1080p resolution, which effectively means 1920×1080 pixels. If your photos are larger than that, then you’re just wasting your bandwidth.

To resize your photos, you can use a photo resizing tool like PicResize (http://www.picresize.com) or download an app like FastStone (http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm). Once you’ve resized your photos, you can then upload them to WordPress.

Use the appropriate file type

There are many different file types for various images. Some are suitable for the web, while others are better suited for print. For web images, the 3 most popular image file types are JPG, PNG, and GIF.

JPG images are lossy compressed file formats that work great for photographs like the ones you take with your camera. PNG is a lossless compression file format that is great for graphics and images that require some transparency in them. GIFs, on the other hand, are also lossless compression files and are often used in memes. However, the quality isn’t so great since it is limited to 256 colors.

Use an image compression tool

Image compression won’t change your photo’s dimensions, but it’s going to reduce the file size considerably. What it does is it strips your images of unnecessary metadata and additional color profiles which don’t add to the image’s quality. 

A tool like TinyPNG (https://tinypng.com) is a great option. Alternatively, if you’re on WordPress, you can also use a plugin like WP Smush (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit) which works in the background and automatically compresses all image files uploaded to your website.