Image Optimization is an important aspect of blogging; it involves choosing a file format that suits the website’s needs. Every image has different needs, even the images on the same website have different requirements.
Through this article, we will explore how we can choose the best image format for a WordPress site.
Significance of choosing the Correct File Format:
As many people visit websites using their mobile devices, sometimes there are network issues and not everyone has access to unlimited data and the FuP limit. Also, Google penalizes the pages that take a long time to load.
We are mentioning this because irrelevant images and images with inappropriate size cause this delay in loading the page.
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Importance of Choosing the Optimal File Size:
We should also consider the image concerning the rest of the webpage; with that, we can choose the optimal file size. The size of a webpage is staying around 2MB; we should take care that the images are less in size, so the site is fast.
JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) was designed for photographs. It is the standard file format for many phones and cameras.
JPEG has some advantages:
- JPEGs may contain millions of colors which is why they generate clear images
- The size of the file is relatively small
- It is supported on many browsers
JPEG Compression
To keep the size small, JPEGs do compression but leads to some loss of data.
We should never recompress an image that was already compressed because that leads to distortion and leads to bad quality.
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JPG vs. PNG
JPEGs are not a good choice for images that have high contrast which is why the screenshots with texts having JPEG format tend to be blurry.
JPEG is the best image file type for photographs without texts. E.g.: highlighting professional photography, large images.
PNGs
PNG’s is very useful due to its lossless compression algorithm which means that we do not lose data if we compress the image; the image is recreated without compromising with the quality. PNGs preserve even the minute detail in an image; even the text is clear. As they do not lose a lot of data, they generally have a large file size.
Unlike JPEG, PNG supports transparency. Not only can we create a logo file having a transparent background, but also create advanced transparency gradients.
WebPs
WebPs are a combination of PNG and JPEG; most importantly, it is an open-source format.
WebP is the best way to obtain optimizing images. Sites such as eBay and YouTube have started using it to improve their site’s performance.
There are two variations in WebP images. One is called WebP; this employs lossy compression. This is like the JPEG version of the WebP format. When we create a lossy WebP, we have an option to choose the compression rate.
The second version is the WebP Lossless which is like the PNG version of WebP. We get a file with a large size, but the data is intact.
Both the WebP formats produce images that have compact size when compared to the JPEG and PNG counterparts.
Browsers like Firefox, Safari do not support WebP. This would be the only limitation of WebP.
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A Guide to Increase the Speed of a WordPress Site:
While using the images on a website, we do not have to compromise on the number of images or the quality of images; the best approach is to choose the appropriate file format that will enable us to serve the purpose.
WordPress helps us in the image optimization department by compressing the images automatically, but in fact, it is not very efficient. For that reason, we can use a dedicated tool such as Smush Pro. It saves a lot of time and delivers images quickly.
Bottom Line – Hire Experts like SlashMonk:
We can surely say that WebP is our top priority among other image file formats but if you still want to stick to conventional JPEG or PNG images, there are also some plugins to compress your images on WordPress. Namely, reSmush.it, EWWW Image Optimizer, Short Pixel Image Optimizer, etc.
You can always rely on the team of SlashMonk for issues related to image compression or slow website; we will get everything sorted for you!