
It's designed to compress your images just until the point of the image having quality loss. You might be wondering why JPEGMini did not compress the control image at all. Want to see what each compressed image looks like? View the gallery below and click a thumbnail to view the images larger.
SMUSH VS TINYPNG PRO
JPEGMini Pro Pricing: Save 20% using the code scottwyden ImageOptim
SMUSH VS TINYPNG OFFLINE
We also tested two offline compression apps, which many photographers utilize in their workflows. Learn about WPCompress Offline Compression Apps
SMUSH VS TINYPNG PROFESSIONAL
JPEGMini Pro which is extremely popular among professional photographers, and ImageOptim which is 100% free to use. We also looked briefly at two offline desktop apps, for fun. Although it's not popular, as it's new, the price makes it worth investigating. From what they're advertising the plugin will remain free. **** We tested this brand new plugin in its beta stage. The version we tested is disallowed on many managed hosting environments, including WP Engine. The standard version was tested, but a cloud version also exists with additional features and reduced server load. *** The plugin is available in two versions.
SMUSH VS TINYPNG FULL
** Optimus will only compress up to 100kb without paying, so we could not use our control image at full size. * Smush will not compress the full-size image without paying, or offer common features without paying so we could not fully test this plugin Some plugins will overcompress but with an acceptible degradation. But some plugins have a habit of re-compressing the image files, in turn ruining the visual aesthetic of the photo. Many photographers already go through an image optimization and compression process when they save their photographs from Photoshop or Lightroom. We also include EXIF stripping as a factor of our comparison because we believe that EXIF should be retained in all images for SEO purposes. To determine precisely what parts of the control image changed from compression we used this tool.


We also kept all the image optimization plugins set to their default settings in order to keep a level playing field. So we wound up creating a development site on a high-end cloud server.īefore uploading images we disabled the built-in WordPress image compression by using this plugin. However, it turned out that some of the plugins we tested required a live server on the Internet. We initially started testing locally, using Local by Flywheel. This photograph was picked as the control on purpose, to cover a wide variety of items that photographers would look for in a compressed image file. It's a professional wedding photograph which shows a bride and groom, movement, high contrast, a lot of color, skin, and texture. We started with what we are calling the "control" image. The goal was for a well-compressed image with minimal to no quality degradation. But we want to point out that the test's goal was not for SEO specifically, although it was a factor in the comparison. So we decided to run some official tests to determine what our preferred and recommended image optimization plugins are.įor the tests, we focused on a variety of factors, which we will get into shortly. We're often asked for our recommendations for image optimization plugins.
