Image bitmaps (.JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, etc…) usually take up the bulk a web page’s size. Our sites are designed to serve the smallest images needed to the user and lazy loads them (only loading them when the user scrolls to the image. This reduces load times greatly. While the server will transpose image dimensions, reducing their size, it cannot compress the image. This is were we have to do a little work make sure that a page loads as fast as possible.
APPS
Image optimization can be accomplished though Photoshop’s “Save for Web” or “Image Processor” dialog, but for ease, we’ve found the following apps work well:
ImageOptim
optim
This app works well for reducing the size of about any image though compression. It will not change the resolution of the images. Simply drag and drop images into the app, and let it work it’s magic.
ImageOptimize
We use this app to shrink and compress an image. If your images need their resolution reduced, this is the program to use. Except in very rare cases, no images on your site longest side will be over 2500px. The general rule is to reduce the longest side to 2048px. This can be accomplished through Optimize Images’ Custom size dialog.
squoosh
While the previous apps are only available for Mac, Squoosh can be accessed via any web browser regardless of OS.
