Image optimisation is one of the essential tasks for improving website functionality and search engine optimisation. Images can drastically slow down a website, particularly if you’ve uploaded a 1920 x 1280 image but you want it displaying as 400 x 300 – your website has to do some work to make that happen which increases server response times.
Then there’s the actual file size. Each 600kb image puts more strain on the server but if you can compress them down to under 100kb, you’ll reduce those page loading times.
The good news is that it is possible to quickly and easily optimise your images before you upload them to WordPress which is what I recommend, but there are plugins that will do some optimisation for those already uploaded. If you have the time, I urge you to optimise and re-upload all images on your website for best results, but when time is short a plugin can make a positive difference.
How optimising images can be a RIOT
Ok, I hear ya, enough of the puns already!
I’m talking about a free Windows tool I use to optimise images called RIOT – Radical Image Optimization Tool. I do use Photoshop and Illustrator on the occasion I need to make a background transparent or some other refinement to an image, but for changing dimension size, stripping metadata and compressing file size, RIOT can do it all in less than a minute.
Oh, and it has a handy batch compression tool which compresses an entire folder full of images in one go, useful when your images just need to be reduced for filesize.
And did I mention RIOT is completely free to download?
Once you’ve downloaded the program and opened it up, you’ll see something like this.
I personally have the mode set to manual as I prefer to keep the original file format, but you can try the automatic mode if you prefer.
Now all you need to do is drag and drop the image into the first box that you want to optimise. If the image is a large one, you’ll get a notice like this asking you if you want to resize it, in most cases the answer is going to be ‘yes’. This will then take you to the screen where you can enter the desired dimensions.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be taken back to the compression screen which shows the before and after compression for the image. You can see straight away that the original, resized image filesize is 755.74 KiB and the compressed image has been massively reduced down to 38.35 KiB. You’ll also notice that the images look identical – there is no loss in quality from compressing the image.
When you’re happy with it just click on ‘Save’, choose a keyword relevant filename to give Google a bit more information about the image, and job done!
How to use the batch compression tool on RIOT
If you have a folder full of images to compress on RIOT, simply click on the batch tool and you’ll be taken to this screen.
Click on ‘Add images’ and you just need to select the folder with the images in and select the ones you want to compress (shift and A pressed together is a shortcut to select all of them). Set the folder you want to save the compressed images to in the bar at the bottom (it is recommended to use a new folder) and press start.
How to optimise existing images using a WordPress plugin
WordPress plugins can be useful for optimising existing images on a website and automatically optimising the ones you upload. I use the free version of Smush – you don’t really need to use the premium version in my opinion. While there is a limit on how many images can be compressed at one time with the free version (fifty at time of writing this blog), just run it multiple times until they’re all done (you might need to come out of that page and back in again).
Smush will scan your media library for image files and tell you how many there are, just hit the bulk smush now button to get started. You need to leave the page open while it works so go and make a cup of tea and relax for the five minutes or so that it takes.
In the future, whenever you upload an image to WordPress, Smush will automatically optimise it!
And that’s it, all you need to know about optimising images for a WordPress website for free. I hope you’ve found this blog useful, let me know if you have and make sure you share it with someone else who could benefit from it.
