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Home » Internet » Blogging » Image Compression JPEG Tools for Web

Image Compression JPEG Tools for Web

September 1, 2014 by Jack Zimmermann 3 Comments

Test Image 3
There are several JPEG image compression tools available that takes a jpeg file and reduces the size of the photo without altering the quality. But which one works best for posting images on a website? I was curious, so I took the tools I usually use and put them through the compress photo function. All applications tested claims not to lower the quality of the image. I’m concentrating on testing jpeg files here, and do a followup article later with results for optimizing PNG files.

The images and source

I exported all the pictures from Adobe Lightroom 4 as jpg with a quality setting of 80, which is the one I usually use when uploading to my blog, Flickr or 500px. I’m not a big fan of jpeg artifacts, but you could get away with much lower quality setting depending on the picture. I tried to take different kind of images, where some contain a lot of details, and other with less, to see what kind of effect that has on the image compression result.

Applications tested

JPEGmini Logo

JPEGmini

Download on the Mac App StoreJPEGmini is an excellent image compressor application on Mac OS X. This is a tool primarily for compressing large size images and does a fantastic job of it. I’ve included lower resolution pictures just out of curiosity. And it seems like it’s a good match for some smaller images as well. But if you have to send large photos with the quality of the original still intact, this is the obvious choice.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is a popular (and free) image optimizer for Mac OS X. It handles JPEG, PNG and GIF files. By utilizing several Open Source programs like PNGOUT, AdvPNG, Pngcrush, OptiPNG, JpegOptim, jpegrescan, jpegtran, and Gifsicle it has lots of muscle for jpeg compression.

For Microsoft Windows users, there are similar apps, like RIOT, but I haven’t tried it. YMMV[1].

EWWW Image Optimizer

A WordPress plugin that automatically compresses uploaded images. It has a lot of settings for optimizing the compression. This plugin is for those who host their server because you need to be able to install all the Linux commands requirements for the plugin. It uses jpegtran, OptiPNG/PNGOUT, and gifsicle for compression.
There is an alternative for those who don’t have shell access and the ability to install the extra software needed on the WordPress server. It’s called smush.it! But it sends all the images to Yahoo for compression, and there’s been a lot of problems getting it to work reliably.

1024 pixels long side image

Application image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg image5.jpg
Original 380792 161510 132392 123245 197888
EWWW Image Optimizer 324341 123691 102321 96509 164443
ImageOptim 340203 131281 110674 98442 168892
JPEGmini 220070 102092 110793 67766 135362

1024px diagram image

Results in reducing image size

Here you can see the power of JPEGmini in action. As you can see, the size of the first large image is almost cut in half using JPEGmini. In all pictures except image3, which is mostly white background, JPEGmini is the clear winner. On image3, EWWW Image Optimizer wins with about 8kb.
JPEGmini were designed to compress the size of high-resolution pictures, but it still holds up well with images meant for web publication.

800 pixels long side image

Application image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg image5.jpg
Original 246413 108951 93432 79577 140135
EWWW Image Optimizer 200660 77190 67975 57967 109215
ImageOptim 209333 81782 73269 58811 111842
JPEGmini 156679 72347 74017 48642 100789

800px-diagram

Results in reducing image size

Now the results are closer, with JPEGmini still maintains a lead, depending on the complexity of the image.

500 pixels long side image

Application image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg image5.jpg
Original 117143 61239 52093 42607 81325
EWWW Image Optimizer 80807 34950 31212 24862 52324
ImageOptim 83693 36650 33322 24978 53557
JPEGmini 79119 46833 47006 32246 59335

500px diagram image

Results in reducing image size

With images in the 500-pixel range, now the choice of tools is between EWWW Image Optimizer and ImageOptim. There’s a difference of a couple of bytes to EWWW Image Optimizer’s advantage.

300 pixels long side image

Application image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg image5.jpg
Original 63066 39997 32361 28174 51919
EWWW Image Optimizer 30174 15916 13631 11270 23749
ImageOptim 31132 16512 14179 11270 24324
JPEGmini 53339 34004 30457 23878 43501

300px diagram image

Results in reducing image size

Now EWWW Image Optimizer and ImageOptim is the definitive choice. The difference is negligible between them, but a small advantage when compared to EWWW Image Optimizer. The similarities in results are not surprising because both utilities use the same engines, just with minor tweaks in the settings.

200 pixels long side image

Application image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg image5.jpg
Original 37058 26619 21480 20152 33332
EWWW Image Optimizer 14506 8640 7206 6507 12730
ImageOptim 14824 8845 7289 6507 12945
JPEGmini 31885 23651 20515 18083 29266

200px diagram image

Results in reducing image size

This confirms earlier findings, which JPEGmini works best with higher resolution images. EWWW Image Optimizer still wins over ImageOptim, but with just a couple of hundred bytes or they are the same size.

Conclusion

If you are about to upload sizeable high-quality photographs to your website or a photo sharing site, you can’t beat JPEGmini. The compression results are fantastic with no visible artifacts. It’s a steal and an essential tool for anyone dealing with photographs. It allows you to email a full res photograph from a high-end camera without losing image quality. And it saves bandwidth when uploading pictures to online services.

ImageOptim is an excellent standalone application for Mac OS X and its free! So this is the goto application if you’re compressing smaller jpeg, png or gif images. Drag and drop the picture, and you’re done. It’s an excellent choice if you can’t install EWWW Image Optimizer, or going to use the images for something else than publishing to a WordPress site.

But for publishing smaller images to your website if it’s running WordPress and you’re allowed to install software on the server, EWWW Image Optimizer is the way to go. All you have to do is to upload your image to WordPress, and EWWW Image Optimizer automatically compresses the pictures for you. And it works wonders with PNG images as well. It even has a bulk compress command for compressing photos uploaded before you installed the plug-in.

Images used for the test

portrait photo
Test Image 2
Image of floating orange
Test Image 3
Global knife cutting tomato photo
Test Image 4
photo of CandleMass singer
Test Image 5

  1. Your Milage may Vary.  ↩

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Blog, Blogging, Web, Wordpress

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Comments

  1. chetan says

    September 14, 2014 at 11:48 CEST

    After gathering all the feedback, I did a research of my own. Compress.Photos did a pretty amazing job for me. Here are my findings. I can

    share the original picture used if anyone requires. Hope it helps you guys

    Comparison of Best Image Compressors on Internet

    http://imgur.com/gallery/imljywd

    Reply
  2. Donald says

    June 29, 2015 at 12:44 CEST

    On this site you can optimize JPEG for web, compress, resize, delete EXIF without compression and make jpeg progressive. Some link: http://imgonline.com.ua/eng/compress-image.php

    Reply
  3. Mike Sider says

    July 26, 2018 at 17:24 CEST

    I think a lot depends on if you want to compress images via a lossy algorithm or not. For most web pages, a lossy algorithm works as long as it preserves the quality of the image. I usually run all my images in batches via https://imageresize.org/compress-images before uploading to WP.

    Another useful tip is to resize/crop your images which can save a lot of file-size. For example, there is never a good reason to upload a 20-megapixel image to your blog! No one is going to zoom an image that much. It is safe to resize all your images to 1200px and that should eliminate compression needs most of the time.

    Reply

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Portrait of Jack Zimmermann I'm a Swedish computer old timer hacking away on computers since 1979. I'm a total Apple and Linux gear head. Right now, I'm really into electronics. [Read More]

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