Now that Full HD screens have become a working minimum standard, and even in cheap smartphones with cameras at least five megapixels, it’s easy to forget how important image size is on the web. When someone is building a website, it is incredibly important to consider bandwidth.
While one large, high-resolution image may not be a problem on a modern broadband connection, filling your site with high-quality resources can make browsing a real hurdle. In addition to this, you also have to pay for the bloated hosting costs!
It’s not just webmasters who deal with oversized images. If you’ve tried to email someone multiple photos, the overall size of the email can be shocking if you have to send ten or twenty images. This is why the online image optimizer is your best friend when you want to upload, post or post images.
These are four of our favorite online image optimizers with a bonus offline feature for when the internet goes down but your timing doesn’t care! Also, be sure to read our previous post on other ways to reduce image size.
Photo test preparation
Before we move on to each image compressor, I want to tweak how we ran our test. This is not very scientific or broad; it’s just a series of compressions with different compression engines, and that’s it.
To show the difference the file format has in terms of compression, we used a JPG image and a PNG image. Sometimes you can better compress the image if you save it in a different format. JPG images are best for images of “real” people, places, things, etc.
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PNG images are best for icons, text, Windows desktop screenshots, etc. Here is our original JPG image (91KB):
And here’s our original PNG image (26KB):
Crack a
The best thing about Kraken.io is that it gives us a reason to shout, “Let the kraken out!” every time we use it, but other than that, this is one of the fastest solutions we’ve tried, and pretty easy to use.
There are several paid product tiers, which differ mainly in how many gigabytes of data you can process per month. The free, fast web interface doesn’t let you resize images or use other “professional” features, but it’s a simple drag and drop tool that we could understand in just a few seconds.
Best of all, you can queue multiple files at once for fast batch processing.
You can also easily import images from Google Drive or Dropbox with just one click. In our test, Kraken reduced the size of our JPG image by about 15% (78KB) and our PNG by about 61% (10KB).
Here is a JPG image after we released the kraken:
There is some loss in quality, but the image still looks pretty good and your website will become more optimized through optimization. Here is the PNG image after compression:
The quality of the compressed PNG is almost the same as the original, so I like to make the most of the PNG format due to its ability to compress a lot without much loss in quality.
Use Kraken.io on kraken.io .
Compressor
The compressor promises to dramatically reduce file size. In some cases, up to 90%. While most images do not have this performance, Compressor is a good choice if you prefer absolute file size to fine image details.
The interface is attractive and easy to use. It’s also nice that you can save the image directly to your Google Drive or DropBox without first downloading it to your computer. However, the disadvantage is that only one image can be processed at a time.
Using Compressor on our test image, there was indeed a very dramatic 28% reduction in the JPG image size (66KB).
For the PNG image, he reduced the image size by about 67%, down to 8KB. This is very close to what Kraken was able to do.
So how much has this affected image quality? Here is a Compressor version of the JPG for comparison.
As you can see there is a lot of noise added to the image. So this is the best file size, but with lower quality. You will have to try your images on different sites to find one that strikes a good balance between significant size reduction and image quality.
The PNG image from the compressor looked exactly like the image from Kraken, so I won’t include it here.
Use Compressor.io on compressor.io
Optimizela
Optimizilla scores instant attraction points for its healing talisman, but it also promises a balanced approach to image optimization. In addition to this, you can queue up to twenty images. Optimizilla also has a very powerful interface.
Optimizilla allows you to set individual quality levels for your images. You can easily adjust this using the slider and then also preview the resulting image compared to the original.
This means you don’t have to re-upload the finished file until you’re happy with the quality.
By default, JPG file size is reduced by 23% (70KB). The JPG size is larger than the compressor but smaller than the Kraken. The quality is much better than the compressor and comparable to the Kraken.
PNG was reduced by 64% and was again almost indistinguishable from the original. It also looked the same as all the other compressed versions so far.
You can use Optimizilla at imagecompressor.com
Smaller image
ImageSmaller is another good online compression tool that delivers decent results even if you’re limited to only processing one image at a time.
In our case, we got an impressive 54% reduction in file size for our JPG with a decent loss in quality. The image still works if you post it online or for causal purposes, but there is too much noise to use it in any other way.
Again, PNG was reduced by about 65% and was exactly the same as the other results.
Offline alternative: RIOT
While all four Image Optimizers require a working internet connection, this is not always possible. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have a standalone app as a backup or in circumstances that make online optimization far from ideal.
Perhaps you need to process a large number of images, or you don’t want to download certain images for privacy reasons.
Whatever the reason for using an offline client, we especially like RIOT or the Radical Image Optimization Tool . This free software can do almost anything, but it is also quite easy to use.
Has an interesting automatic suggestion mode. Just drag and drop the image and it will suggest a suitable compression level.
Using automatic adjustment, we get a 28% reduction in image size (66 KB). Here is an image after RIOT processing. As with the compressor, the size is smaller but the noise level is very high.
Another thing worth mentioning about RIOT is that the software comes with a batch conversion mode. That way, you can queue as many images as your computer can handle and then just leave it to get busy. A big advantage over most free online solutions!
You can download the RIOT at luci.criosweb.ro/riot/
As easy as 1,2,3
With these image optimization tools, you can speed up your website loading or save web server space or send managed images by email to friends and family.
These overfed images can be quickly and easily scaled down to something nicer. You don’t even need to invest money. Now it’s a good deal, whatever one may say! Enjoy!
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