At a time when internet browsing on smartphones is becoming the primary way people browse the web worldwide, it is more important than ever for webmasters to pay particular attention to their website's loading speed. According to a recent survey on users' preferences, it appears that they are now very picky about the loading speed of the pages they visit. If a page takes more than 3 seconds to display, more than 45% of users will leave the page by the 4th second…
While many factors must be considered for optimal loading speed, both for your visitors and for the search engines indexing your site, the most important is undoubtedly the size of your images, which should be lightweight for fast loading. But compressing an image is a complex art: you must absolutely take into account the file size but also its quality, which must be preserved.
Fortunately, tools are available to help you compress an image compress without degrading its quality, and consequently that of your pages. Whether online or integrated into a creation platform, these tools, free or paid, are among the most effective currently available. Don’t waste time looking for them—Codeur.com has grouped them for you below.
Compress an image online: the 9 essential tools
Open to the general public and mostly free, tools for compressing an image online are often the first that come to mind for many webmasters. For many, they are even the only ones they use because of their quick access and the professional results they can achieve for free.
However, tools to compress an image on WordPress or PrestaShop do exist, as we detail later in this article. But before we get to that, discover below the 9 online tools you need to know to compress an image.
1. Compressor
Free, online and intuitive, Compressor is a benchmark in the field of image compression. It supports four formats (JPEG, PNG, GIF and SVG) and lets you obtain a high-quality, lighter photo in just a few clicks.
→ Also discover 6 online photo editing tools
2. Optimizilla
The tool's interface Optimizilla is extremely simple. You can upload and compress up to 20 photos at once. However, only JPEG and PNG formats are accepted. After compression, you can even compare the images to make sure the quality meets your expectations.
3. Compress JPEG
Compress JPEG is a second Optimizilla. It offers the same features, except that, as its name suggests, it only accepts JPG or JPEG images.
4. GIF Compressor
With GIF CompressorThis is in the same family as Optimizilla and Compress JPEG, except here we reduce GIFs. You can also upload up to 20 at once.
→ 7 tools to create GIFs online
5. I Love Img
More comprehensive than the other tools presented, I Love Img it allows you to crop, resize, and compress your images. You can work more on your visual before reducing its file size, without affecting quality. Supported formats are JPG, PNG, or GIF. You can upload multiple photos from your computer or a Dropbox folder.
6. ezGIF
As its name suggests, ezGIF is a tool entirely dedicated to animations. It allows you to create, optimize, or resize a GIF. You can also edit animations, add text or adjust the playback speed.
Finally, if your GIF file is too large to be uploaded to your site or social networks, you can compress it without altering its quality.
7. TinyJPG or TinyPNG
These two similar platforms, which feature a very cute panda as a mascot, let you compress your photos to JPG or PNG. With a single click, you get high-quality visuals that are much lighter.
8. Jpeg.io
Very comprehensive, the tool Jpeg.io accepts almost all photo formats: JPG, PNG, GIG, BMP, PSD, TIFF… However, as soon as you upload an image to compress it, it outputs it in JPG format. You will have no other choice. That said, nothing prevents you from converting it again afterward.
9. Kraken
Simple and effective, Kraken lets you choose the compression: Lossy, Lossless, and Expert. You can therefore select maximum compression with a slight loss of quality, or a lower compression that preserves the sharpness of your photo. Decide based on your needs!
Compress an image on WordPress: the 4 tools to know
With its four available image sizes, WordPress is rather behind current user expectations and needs when it comes to creative freedom. Yet it has for several years offered plugins compatible with its creators to allow them to compress an image without having to look for an online image compression solution. If the list of available plugins is long, four stand out in particular for their professionalism.
1. Imagify
Imagify is a free WordPress plugin that will save you a considerable amount of time. Rather than reducing your photos one by one, this extension offers to compress them all at once. Of course, if you only want to reduce some of your visuals, the tool lets you select them beforehand. You will also have a choice of compression strength: Ultra, Aggressive, or Normal. Imagify then displays your statistics so you can see the size saved after compression.
2. WP Smush
With more than one million active users to date, WP Smush is the most well-known compression and optimization tool for WordPress. Compatible with multisite, it’s available in a free version and a paid version at $49 per month. Note that the free version does not allow lossless compression, unlike the paid one. You also get a "lazy load" option and the ability to optimize up to 50 images at once. Finally, you can resize images (set maximum width and height parameters) and quickly identify images that are slowing down your site.
3. ShortPixel
Offering to resize and compress your images without any loss of quality, ShortPixel is an essential tool for compressing images on WordPress. Running automatically and very quickly, it stores your original images in a separate folder and lets you compare the original file with its compressed version to see the difference in quality and size. Available in free and paid plans, it offers a free plan for 100 compressions per month, then scales its pricing from $5 to $30.
4. EWWW
100% free, EWWW offers optimization for JPG, PNG, GIF and PDF files. There are both lossy and lossless compression options; the main advantage of EWWW is that there are no limits on the number of images you can upload. Moreover, the free version of EWWW performs optimizations on your own web server, while all other tools use external servers. That’s a plus for privacy-focused sites. Be aware, however, that you may still risk overheating your server if you try to compress too many images at once.
Compress an image on PrestaShop: the CDN option
A popular platform, PrestaShop is unfortunately lagging when it comes to offering free modules that can compress an image. The few that exist all offer subscriptions whose prices are not very attractive compared with WordPress plugins or online image compression tools. Fortunately for webmasters wanting to improve their site performance, the platform provides a CDN (Content Delivery Network) tool.
Simply defined, this tool serves your media content from a server other than your own. While that may seem irrelevant to some, it offers several advantages for a webmaster: reducing the load on your server, parallelizing requests which speeds up page display, and for an international site, choosing a server whose physical location is closest to your target audience.
To use this feature, you must first enable CCC. To do so, go to the “Media Server” page.
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Find in this article other tools to compress an image or files !
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