Since images are important elements of websites these days, use of visually stunning and compelling images can dramatically double website visits. Use of optimised images in your WordPress site can result in both, improve website speed and as well as you can be found on Google image search if ALT tag is used precisely.
You can improve your WordPress website loading time significantly by reducing the file size of images and by reducing the resolution to what is required. For those who have just started up with WordPress and having little less technical knowledge, we have listed below few worthy and approved WordPress Image Optimisation Plugins for enhancing your WordPress website overall quality and speed.
WP Smush.it
Let’s begin the list with one of the popular image optimisation plugins, WP Smush.it gives you an ability to utilise image optimisation either in bulk or individually.
With this plugin you can compress various image formats including JPEG, GIF and PNG.
While pro version of WP Smush.it can enable you compress images up to < 5mb and with free version you can compress images which are sized < 1mb.
Both the versions are adequate to maintain the quality of compressed image and since it is recommended by Site Performance Tool GTmetrix.com, it is worth investing in it.
CW Image Optimizer
CW Image Optimizer is another WordPress plugin which lets you automatically optimise your website images as you upload. This will also optimise the images which were added in past.
Since it uses the Linux image optimisation program (littleutils) which means your images will never leave your server. As installing littleutils can be tricky this is why this plugin is for noobs. It is so easy to install and can deliver unharmed images with exact quality.
EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimisation automatically optimises the images as they are uploaded to website. It can also optimise the previously uploaded images.
This plugin can be run on your own server that means you no longer have to wait for the third party servers to process the request which results in faster loading website.
EWWW Image optimisation can handle various image formats such as PNG and JPG and you are able to optimise images in bulk as well as individually.
Hammy
If you believe in adaptive design concept, then you might need to invest efforts using Hammy. This plugin will take your website images and regenerate plenty of smaller sized images so that when a visitor visits your website they can have enhancing viewing experience.
This can provide better and faster experience, especially for mobile users.
Hammy only works for images used within posts and pages, not custom post types.
PB Responsive Images
Responsive websites are evidently very important in today’s digital era which is flooded with devices of multiple screen sizes and images need to be nicely visible on all of them.
In order to get the best result, your content as well as images should be adhering to responsive website development structure. This is where PB Responsive Images comes into the play. It will reformat all images of website according to standard CSS media queries and SLIR query pairs, giving you more flexibility in the variety of query combinations.
Moreover, with this plugin you will get ability to customise the media queries used per image, per post and per layout.