The images story
A problem that still pervades even with today’s high speed internet connection is the slow loading of some web pages. There are numerous reasons for you to experience this but we will tackle one of the most common cause for slow downs, the images. Chances are if the website is slapped dashed with tons of media and images then it will take a long time to load completely. You see, you just can’t embed or encode large files into your web page without incurring some sort of repercussions. Larger files will take longer time and so high definition images that come with a hefty size will understandably load longer. For you to completely remove this problem here are a few tips in order to negate any problems that come with high quality images.
1. Crop the Image
Cropping involves the removal of some of the portions of the image in order to reduce its size. More importantly, this is used when you want to remove only some parts of the picture but retaining its original dimension. This feature is mainly used for aesthetically purposes only though and not to actually resize the image file.
2. Resizing the Image
Different from cropping, resizing the image is the best solution for reducing the image’s file size while not removing portions of the image. Always keep in mind that some monitors cannot properly display the correct size for some with higher dimensions. The solution most people use for this little problem is to scale the images but that would mean the chances for longer load time, this is where you use resizing in tandem with scaling.
3. Try Different Image Formats
Different image formats offer various levels of quality and image size. Try experimenting which type of format can give you the best quality and least file size for your web page and use that. The most popularly used format is obviously the Jpeg format, it only take up little space and can have really decent image quality. There are other formats that you use, like I said just experiment on which one would work best for your page.
4. Trim down the Quality
This is the most commonly used method for optimizing images for your web page. Simple and quick, you can downsize the quality to as low as 70% without incurring any noticeable drop in image quality. You can do this to all image formats as well, like Jpeg and Png while for gif images you need only to scale the colour palette down.
5. Input the Dimension
Another simple way to fix your image to the best quality is by setting the height and width attributes of the image before uploading them. You can reduce the dimension but not affect the quality. View your web page and determine the correct size for your images to be displayed properly. It is simple and fast and for most occasions rewards you with a quick page load.
6. Use the CSS
The best thing you can do to accurately optimize your images is to use the CSS to manually affix and customize your web page. CSS can let you edit fonts, colours and background in order to give you the reigns to customize everything to satisfy your vision. CSS in conjunction with the other methods can easily give you a smooth flowing website that loads instantly.
For websites that use only a few images in their pages, you can skip on optimizing the image files as the server will not have to use more resources in loading everything in your site. Slowdowns due to image files are mainly the result of poor encoding or rushed work.
