Tips on how to save images for websites and improve page load times
Saving high-resolution images for websites is an important task for web developers, designers and content editors. High-quality images are crucial for attracting and engaging visitors, but large file sizes can slow down your website, causing slow loading times and a poor user experience. In this blog post, we will explore some tips and techniques to save high-resolution images for websites while maintaining their quality and keeping your site’s performance at its best.
Choose the Right Image Format
The first step to saving high-resolution website images is choosing the right image format. Three main image formats are used on the web: JPEG, PNG, and GIF. On top of this, Google has also introduced WebP, which is becoming increasingly popular.
- JPEG is the most common image format and is best suited for photographs and images with a lot of colour and detail. In addition, JPEG files are smaller in size compared to other image formats, making them ideal for websites.
- PNG is a lossless image format ideal for graphics, illustrations, and icons. PNG images can have a transparent background and support a higher colour depth, making them a great choice for logos and other graphics.
- GIF is a lossless image format best suited for animations and simple graphics. GIFs do not support a high colour depth, so they are only recommended for photographs or images with a little detail.
- WebP is an image format developed by Google, which supports both lossy and lossless compression. It aims to provide higher compression and quality than older formats, such as JPEG and PNG, with similar or better visual quality. In addition, WebP supports transparency, animation, and ICC profile.
Compress Images
Compressing images is a great way to reduce file size and keep your website fast. Several tools are available for compressing images, including online compression tools like TinyPNG, and offline tools like Adobe Photoshop.
Finding the right balance between image quality and file size is essential when compressing images. Compressing images too much can result in a noticeable loss of quality, while not compressing images enough can result in slow page load times.
Resize Images
Resizing images is another effective way to reduce file size and improve website performance. When you upload an image to your website, you should resize it to the size it will be displayed on the page.
For example, if you have an image that is 1000 pixels wide and will only be displayed at 500 pixels wide on your website, you should resize the image to 500 pixels wide before uploading it.
Use CSS and HTML to Control Image Size
CSS and HTML can be used to control the size of images on your website. You can use CSS to set the width and height of an image, which can help to reduce file size and improve performance.
In HTML, you can use the width and height attributes to specify the size of an image. However, it is important to note that these attributes will not resize the image; they will only affect the size it is displayed on the page.
Serve Images from a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of servers that are used to deliver content to users based on their geographic location. By serving images from a CDN, you can reduce the load on your website’s server, which can help to improve performance and reduce the risk of downtime.
Use Lazy Loading for Images
Lazy loading is a technique that delays loading images or other content until the user scrolls to them. This can significantly improve page load speed and user experience, especially for websites with many images and videos, as only the content immediately visible to the user is loaded initially. The rest of the content is loaded as the user scrolls down the page. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be transferred, thus making the website faster and more responsive.
We hope this provides you with a few ideas on reducing image size and storage space and improving your website’s performance. If you have any questions about this topic or want help with your website, get in touch.