Images form a larger part of information communication to the readers. But if not well managed, they could use the entire space available for storage and cause endless user experience challenges.
To make them more presentable, they need to be resized for proper optimization. While this posed a big challenge to store such information, google came up with exceptional next generation image formats. The most popular ones are the Webp and the JPG2 formats.
Webp and JPG2 are both modern image formats that can provide compressed images that are superior, smaller, and rich. They are 26% smaller in size in comparison to the PNGs
Web designers who have adopted these formats have found it easy to store thousands of compressed images in tiny storage space. Since images form an integral part of web design, it is important to look for a way to ensure that they are fully optimized.
The website speed will as well improve without compromising quality altogether. Google has come up with some important suggestions to improve the speed, and below are some of the suggestions.
Automation of Image compression
There are two major ways by which images can be optimized for speed. These include compressing the files and reducing their size.
Compression is one of the easiest ways when the right tools are available. For instance, with a WordPress, its easy to install Imagify, and this will help in compression of the best part of the images at hand. This becomes an automatic compression tool even for future images that one would wish to add in the library.
Serve Images in Next-Gen Formats
While the traditional methods of generating image formats could lose high quality, which relied on JPEG (lossy) and PNG (lossless compression), the current formats can create fast load speeds, and the files can retain the metadata.
On the same note, quality is maintained as the original in comparison to the traditional formats.
Some of the recommended next-generation image formats to give such solutions include the JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and the Webp.
Responsible use of Images
Among the essential tips that every designer ought to adopt is to use minimalistic design, and it will provide greater user performance.
Photographers can use several leverage alternatives for greater user experience. Among them include;
- Using embedded videos rather than the bulky GIFs.
- Use CSS3 to generate alternative image elements.
- By using scalable graphics that use simple designs and logos.
While these methods can be applied, critical path rendering such as caching, minifying, and compressing all the page resources will optimize the images from back to back.
With these amazing tips, it’s important to remember that images are first collected from a JPG and later converted to Webp to ensure proper optimization. There are two ways to convert JPG or PNG images into the WebP format. The most simple one is using an online tools like Converter App. The necessary steps are highlighted below:
Step 1. Submit the web-page image to the online converter of your choice
Step 2. As soon as the conversion is complete, you will be redirected to the download page.
Step 2. A download button will appear. Click the button, and the uploaded files will be downloaded while already converted into the Webp format.
Some of the benefits of converting to Webp images are:
- High-quality images– Since this format uses the latest programs, the results achieved will be of high quality.
- This is a format that has a unique collection of files and images.
- It’s highly confidential that all converted files are deleted from the server as soon as the conversion is done.
If you want to do the conversion on your local desktop PC there is the cwebp tool which is provided by Google.You can download it in a pre-compiled build for the platforms Linux, Windows and MacOS. When using this approach you need to be familiar with the command line interface of your operating system since the tool does not come with a graphical user interface. The main advantage of this approach is that it is ideal for batch conversions.
