Optimize Your Images

Smaller file size means faster loading.

Opinion page by Duane Alan Hahn.

Until 95% of all Internet users have high speed connections, every image on your normal pages should be optimized to the 'edge of ugly.' I don't care if it's a business site or a personal site, unless it's only made for high speed users, images should be as small in file size as possible. Images should also be as small in physical size as possible because the smaller an image is, the smaller its file size will be.

Optimizing images can be fun, it's almost like a game. See how much you can squeeze an image before it looks like it was run over by a truck. There are times when you cannot optimize images that much, such as historical images, but those aren't usually displayed on normal pages. They are often linked to by way of a small thumbnail image which is optimized to the 'edge of ugly.'

Save Time, Space, and Bandwidth

Another reason to optimize your images, besides speeding up your web site and saving storage space, is to save bandwidth. Some people don't have to worry about bandwidth, but a lot of people have a daily or monthly limit, so optimization is important for many. If you have a lot of images on your web site and you shave thousands of bytes off each image, imagine all of the bandwidth you will save.

Resize Before You Optimize

An amazing number of web sites display small images that are actually huge in physical size. For example, some people might take a large 850 x 700 image and resize it to 200 x 165 using HTML code or a WYSIWYG web editor. That's not good. No matter how much you optimize a large image, it will still be too large in file size for a frequently used page such as your main page. It will slow down load time and waste your bandwidth. Why display an image that is 100K or more in file size when it could be between 2K and 15K?

If you want to display a smaller image, resize it first with your favorite image editor. You would then optimize the image and put it on your page. It's not hard to do and you will be making things better for you and your visitors. If you don't have any software that can resize images, try IrfanView. It's freeware.

Keep Copies

Always keep copies of your original images. I also keep copies of any resized and optimized images (in case anything would happen to my web site). I save frequent copies of my images and my web site to CDs for protection and to keep a living record of how my web site has changed over time.