Compression Settings
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What Is Image Compression
Image compression reduces the file size of images by removing redundant data (lossless compression) or by selectively discarding visual information that is less perceptible to the human eye (lossy compression). Smaller image files load faster, consume less bandwidth, reduce storage costs, and improve website performance — directly impacting SEO rankings, user experience, and conversion rates.
Google reports that 53% of mobile visitors abandon sites that take more than 3 seconds to load, and images typically account for 50-80% of a web page's total weight. Image compression is one of the highest-impact performance optimizations available.
Compression Types
| Type | How It Works | Quality Loss | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lossless | Removes redundant data without discarding information | None — pixel-perfect | Graphics, screenshots, text images, medical imaging |
| Lossy | Discards visual detail below perceptual threshold | Minimal at high quality settings | Photographs, web images, thumbnails |
| Near-lossless | Applies minimal lossy compression with negligible visual impact | Imperceptible | High-quality web images, product photos |
Format Compression Comparison
| Format | Compression | Typical Savings (vs uncompressed) | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| PNG | Lossless | 50-70% | Perfect |
| JPEG (quality 80) | Lossy | 90-95% | Good — fine for photographs |
| WebP (quality 80) | Lossy | 93-97% | Good — 25% smaller than JPEG |
| AVIF (quality 60) | Lossy | 95-98% | Good — 50% smaller than JPEG |
Common Use Cases
- Website performance optimization: Compress images to improve page load times, Core Web Vitals scores, and SEO rankings
- Email attachment reduction: Reduce image file sizes to stay within email attachment limits and improve delivery speed
- Storage cost reduction: Compress image libraries to reduce cloud storage costs for applications serving user-uploaded content
- Mobile app optimization: Smaller images reduce app download size and improve performance on slow networks
- Social media preparation: Compress images to meet platform size limits while maintaining visual quality
Best Practices
- Target file sizes, not just quality levels — A 200KB hero image at quality 75 may look better than a 500KB image at quality 95 if properly optimized. Focus on the resulting file size relative to visual quality.
- Use responsive images — Serve different image sizes for different screen widths using srcset and sizes attributes. A mobile user should not download a 4K desktop image.
- Prefer modern formats — Use WebP as your primary format (97% browser support) with JPEG fallback. Consider AVIF for cutting-edge optimization.
- Compress before upload, not after — Compressing images before uploading to your CMS preserves the original quality curve. Re-compressing already-compressed images compounds quality loss.
- Automate compression in your build pipeline — Use tools like Sharp, imagemin, or Squoosh CLI in your CI/CD pipeline to ensure all images are optimized consistently without manual intervention.
- Preserve originals — Always keep uncompressed originals. You may need to re-compress at different quality levels for different use cases in the future.
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