SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

  • Design
  • Showcase
  • Inspirational
  • Tutorials
  • CSS
  • Resources
  • Tools
  • UX
  • More
    • Mobile
    • Usability
    • HTML5
    • Business
    • Freebies
    • Giveaway
    • About SpyreStudios
    • Advertise On SpyreStudios
    • Get In Touch With Us

How to Reduce Image File Size for Your Website: Best Image Compression Tools

August 28, 2018 by Alex Fox

Images are an enormous part of the modern online experience. To use them effectively, you’ll need to know how to reduce image file size for your website.

As average connection speed has increased, images have become less of a deadly burden on page load times. With the bandwidth sufficient to push a huge amount of content to a single user, a web server can serve images just as fast as clients can download them. At this point in the technological development of the internet, images provide more value than they reduce usability. It’s no surprise to see that images make up a huge part of social media, news stories, personal websites, corporate websites, and e-commerce sites. A web page without some kind of image is vanishingly rare. Even if it’s an image associated with an advertisement instead of the content, just about every web pages has an image on it.

That said, there is still a restriction on images: mobile connections. Users don’t want to download huge image files to display on a small screen, especially over a metered data connection. So while desktop users might have all the bandwidth they could ever hope for, mobile users are still sucking through the straw of over-the-air data connections. Any web developer worth their salt knows that mobile users comprise a huge portion of web traffic to a site, and in some cases even constitute the majority of users. So designing a site that doesn’t take their needs into account is both inconsiderate and behind the times.

The upshot is that reducing image size when saving images for the web is still of significant importance to web developers. Whether you use a backend service to automatically compress images before they’re served or you compress the images before dropping them on to your server, you’ll need to take care with image compression. Over-compress the image, and you’re looking at a grainy, artifact-filled mess. Under-compress the image, and you’re using up bandwidth that you don’t need. Find the right balance and discover how to reduce image file size correctly using the tools below.

ImageOptim

how to reduce image file size imageoptim

The first-line option for image compression for any developer should be ImageOptim. This macOS desktop application compresses JPGs, PNG, and SVG image files. Uniquely, it offers a wide selection of compression algorithms, allowing developers to hand-tweak image quality until it meets the necessary threshold. If you don’t want to be bothered with complex image compression programs, use ImageOptim. Just drag images on to the icon, wait a minute, and blammo: images are ready. If you’re on Windows (poor sods) or Linux, alternatives to ImageOptim are also available.

JPEGmini

JPEGmini desktop app compresses JPEGs highly effectively. It sports an attractive modern interface and provides and effective image compression algorithm. Unique among the items on this list, JPEGmini also offers to resize files during compression. The app works best with very large JPEGs, exceeding one or two megabytes. For smaller file sizes, little compression is achieved. The program is built for photographers who want to compress images before posting online, so it does best with high-resolution, detailed images from quality sensors. The main downside is the lack of compatibility with any other image type. However, for high-quality images, nothing is better than JPEGmini. Users can find a Mac and PC version, as well as plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom.

TinyPNG

save images for the web tinypng

This in-browser web tool, TinyPNG, will work with both JPGs and PNGs. The free version will compress any file below 5 MB, and it can simultaneously compress up to 20 images per cycle. Refreshing the page resets the cycle, allowing for another 20 compressions. Image size reduction often exceeds 50 percent, and compression speed is faster than most other available tools. It’s not uncommon to see reductions as much as 90 percent with especially inefficient starting files. Power users can bypass the web interface via the API, building your own tools that use the compression algorithm on the backend. If you’re married to Photoshop for image processing, TinyPNG provides a $50 plugin to port the functionality into Photoshop’s interface. TinyPNG Pro ($25 per year) removes the limitation on image count and file size, and heavy users of the API (greater than 500 images/month) pay a bulk rate based on the number of images processed each month. It’s a favorite of our writers, and worth the money.

Compressor

save images for the web compressor.io

Like TinyPNG, Compressor is an in-browser tool made for shrinking files. It accepts JPGs and PNGs as well as GIF and SVG files, with a limit of 10 MB. It also offers a little more control: users can choose between lossy and lossless compression. Unfortunately, you can only upload one photo at a time, and its compression is not as powerful as TinyPNG’s algorithm. It does producer slightly higher quality images, but you’d really need to be zooming into 100 percent to notice the difference.

Kraken

save images for the web kraken.io

Kraken is a professional tool for users that need the greatest control and the highest volume. There is a free version that you can try out, and even that is surprisingly feature-rich. This includes an expansive pane of expert settings for well-versed users, including quality levels, metadata management, and even chroma subsampling method selection for JPGs. Users looking to get the full experience with Kraken Pro also get but image resizing, import from URL and full-page compression, full API access, WordPress and Magento plugins and Kraken cloud storage. Plans run from $5 to $79 per month, depending on your volume of megabytes compressed. The free version is limited to 1 MB, but all the image compression tools are still fully functional.

If you’re interested in optimizing your websites’ presentation, you might be interested in the following posts:

How to Optimize, Compress, and Save Images For the Web

Creating Smooth User Pathways With Your UX

How To Use Google’s Material Design On Your Own Site

Filed Under: Tools, Uncategorized Tagged With: images, layouts, photoshop, web design

Recent Posts

  • What Factors Determine the Best Digital Marketing Agency?
  • 31 Fresh Design Elements for Spring and Easter
  • 10 Templates for Music Concert Flyers
  • How to Build a Web Scraper Using Node.js
  • Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2022

Archives

  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008

Categories

  • Accessibility
  • Android
  • Apps
  • Art
  • Article
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • Bootstrap
  • Business
  • CSS
  • Design
  • Development
  • Ecommerce
  • Fireworks
  • Flash
  • Freebies
  • Freelance
  • General
  • Giveaway
  • Graphic Design
  • HTML5
  • Icons
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Infographics
  • Inspirational
  • Interview
  • Jobs
  • jQuery
  • Learning
  • Logos
  • Matrix
  • Minimalism
  • Mobile
  • Motion Graphics
  • Music
  • News
  • Photoshop
  • PHP
  • Promoted
  • Rails
  • Resources
  • Showcase
  • Tools
  • Tutorial
  • Twitter
  • Typography
  • Uncategorized
  • Usability
  • UX
  • Wallpapers
  • Wireframing
  • WordPress
  • Work

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

SpyreStudios © 2022