Speed Up Blog with Online Image Optimizer

Images usually are the largest component of a web page as they on average make up 62% of a web page size. Larger images correlate with slower web page load time; it creates a bad user experience and will drive them away from your blog.

If you intend to keep your readers, you would want to reduce the file size of images you post on your blog. You can do that in two ways:

• By shrinking the image dimensions (height and width). This can be done using most photo editors.
• By compressing it. Compression reduces the image file size while keeping its dimensions. This is where a tool called image optimizer comes into play.

There are many free online image optimizers out there that do the job, but I prefer the following three. I like them because they let you compare the actual compressed images (for image quality, amount of compression and file size saving for each image) so you can pick which one that works best. You can either upload the image from your computer or enter the URL if it’s available on the web.

Here they are:

Web Resizer

• Supports JPEG, PNG and GIF formats, with the maximum image size of 5MB.
• You can set your desired image quality (in percentage) or compare the image at various quality settings.
• Lets you crop, resize (image dimensions), sharpen, add border, rotate and tint. You can adjust contrast, exposure and color saturation, and convert to monochrome as well.

JPEG Reducer

• Accepts JPEGs and PNGs only, with size up to 1MB.
• Automatically generates  thumbnails as well.

DynamicDrive Image Optimizer

• Accepts JPEG, PNG and GIF formats with size up to 2.86MB. 
• Also converts image format.

Another image optimizer worth mentioning is Smush It. This is a lossless image optimizer tool provided by the people at Yahoo. If you want to reduce the bytes without sacrificing image quality, this is the tool for you. But you won’t reduce much, maybe around 10%.

What is your favorite image optimizer?

Please share with us your favorite online image optimizer in the comments, and let us know why you prefer it over other image optimizers.