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Jeff Chandler

Optimize Images Via Smush.it

WordPress blog owners can install the free WordPress plugin WP-Smush.it that uses Yahoo’s Smush.it service to reduce the size of images. The plugin works automatically in the background: It sends all uploaded images to Yahoo’s image compression service and uploads that optimized version to the server, instead of the unoptimized original version.

via Reduce Page Loading Time With WP-Smush.it For WordPress Blogs.

Smush.it definitely looks like an interesting service to quickly optimize your page loading speeds with shrunken images. However, it’s a pity you can’t perform a batch optimization for multiple images within the plugin although there is a roundabout way of doing it.

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6 responses to “Optimize Images Via Smush.it”

  1. Adding another WP plugin, along with the added server load, is not necessarily the answer.

    Here’s a simple, offline solution that will work at least as well as a smish.it plugin and perhaps better:

    http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

    RIOT will process your pictures in a number of ways. I use it every day and it’s superior to any software-based processing as I have full control over the quality of the output.

    It also has a batch function to process a folder of pictures at once.

    Don’t add to server load if there’s a good solution offline.

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  2. @DB – This will be something used only on uploads, so won’t be much of a deal because its only you or probably a few others who would use it and that too not all the time. :)

    Although offline solutions can do well for existing uploads and if you always work on the same machine or every author does.

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  3. I’d like to know if any of those solutions or a particular plugin could go through and Smush my images that I use for my theme so I can lower their file sizes even more than they are. That would be a nice optimization technique.

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  4. I’ve been using Smush.it since it launched. Sure, its handy to have images smushed on upload but this assumes that people are using the WordPress media library. I can’t stand all the image rubbish the media library throws into the database & don’t need WordPress messing with my image sizes, so I don’t use it. I’ve got a routine now – create images, send to Smush.it online, let Smush.it optimise the images & zip them, then FTP the zip file up, unzip on the server and its done. Quick, easy, and no reliance on any plugins. Smush.it won’t break when WordPress updates either ;)

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  6. @Jeffro –
    Regarding optimising your theme images

    I’m not sure what the modern equivalent is but Photoshop used to come with a programme called image ready They discontinued that a while back but the part I used was the image compression which optimises images by stripping out extra info.

    The RIOT tool mentioned above by @DB is an image optimiser but doesn’t look like it works on a Mac which is what I mostly use. In my view that makes it anything but simple.

    Regarding Smushit I have 1 client who has been using it for 2+ years as it is a convenient and easy way for her to manage images on her website.

    My first recommendation was that she use Flickr or any number of image projects and link back to them since the original web hosting package had limits to the size of the website as she likes large photos. I still think this is best for most users given that some of them want to display photos at multiple resolution sizes.

    Using FTP I pulled back copies of all photos – optimised the ones being used & reloaded them back up to save server space but time consuming and in the end we just bought more space on the server.

    The other easy thing to do (if you have a good image programme) is to resize large photos down to more manageable sizes. 1200px x 800px might be a good option for most.

    Google Analytics can usually tell what resolution your site users are mostly using so that is a good way to pick a size.

    The real dilemma there is that PhotoShop is quite expensive and even the stripped down Elements version that I use is comparatively expensive for the parts I use.

    For mac users there is a programme called Acorn image editor looks good – although I haven’t tried it myself. There is also a programme called gimp which might work but I couldn’t get part the homepage of that to tell anything useful about the programme and my know of geek lingo is pretty good. Certainly my client wouldn’t understand any of that gimp stuff so Smushit is still the best option for her.

    As for unzipping anything on the server – that is out of the question. I work with FTP & servers everyday and I’ve forgotten you can even do that.

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