WordPress and the mira.cx platform has great automatic tools for resizing images. So uploading a speaker image for example will automatically create various image sizes for different purposes. However we recommend you only upload image sizes that you need on the site – rather than uploading very large files. You rarely need large images (e.g. 3M) on the web. The advantages of minimising file size before uploading are:
- Speed of upload for administrators
- Reduction of disk space used
- More usable “large” image size
As professional designers, we tend to use Adobe Photoshop.
However not everyone has access to Photoshop software let alone being confident in successfully utilising it. Taking this into consideration we have tried and tested an online image resizer and compressor which makes editing imagery for web and social media a doddle.
The free online image resizer and compressor gives you scope to crop and resize any image to the exact pixels or proportion you specified and reduce the file size significantly without losing quality. And its FREE.
We took the high quality image with a specification of 5472 x 3648px at 300dpi. File size at outset = 15.4MB. Our intention was to prepare the image for use as a full width hero image on a website as a working example.
- The first action after uploading the image was to set the desired crop of the image suitable for its intended application. For the intended application the image would be best viewed in a horizontal format across the full width of the page. Using the click and drag option it was easy to select the area of the image and CROP accordingly.
- Next step, Utilising action 4 ‘Resize your image’ to reduce the image width down to 2000px. The maximum width needed to display on a widescreen desktop display. By keeping the aspect ratio selected, the image depth auto adjusted in pro with the width adjustment.
- The final step was to optimise the image. We used a normal compression as follows;
Not forgetting to select RESIZE IMAGE to apply all the actions.
- The final outcome cropped, resized and compressed the image. Reducing the overall image file size from 15.4MB down to 465.4KB
- Additional options included image rotate, image background options for example transparent setting etc and output file format such as JPEG, PNG etc.
Our Final Image quality was uncompromised and best suited for web.
