#1 WordPress Image Compression Plugin for High PageSpeed Score

What can an image say about a blog?  The featured image itself is the answer.

WordPress sites use a large set of images in their posts. When you write a tutorial or guide, a picture speaks a thousand words. 

Image Quality is important too! If you see a reduction in size, don’t get too overwhelmed.

Lossless Compress is a good idea for an image optimization plugin.

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Lazy Load and Bulk Optimize features are the beneficial features of the Pro version.

Compress Image to a decent size, so it looks good on smartphone, tablet and PC. 

How Image Optimization can help WordPress Blogs ?

1000 posts with an average of 5 images per each article will produce 5000 images.

These can be screenshots or images taken from a DSLR camera.

Each image will produce a pixel size in quantity. Rectangular images are used often in blog posts. 

A 2048 x 2048 image is enough to reduce the load speed of your site.

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If you have 10 of them, then the size of the post will be larger than 10MB.

Add the additional resources like JavaScript, CSS and Fonts.

These tend to make a small post in text a big resource with nothing. 

Loading time of the image is also an important parameter.

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As we know that more the images, than you need a CDN to deliver these images quickly to your visitor.

The Kraken Image Sizer also should be able to give a better user experience. 

The quota of Images per month also has to be checked.

If your photography or travel website gets too many images from your writers, then they can easily cross the limit.

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Bulk Optimization is necessary if you have already existing images. The new images can be reduced to the optimization level on each upload. 

Cache plugin can be used to reduce the size of JS, CSS, HTML files. Many of them have the minification feature.

• What about Image Loss in Quality?
• What is the right size?
• Do you need to compress them before uploading?

How Image Size Reduction affects Page Load and SEO?

In a common scenario, it is observed that page load of well below 3 seconds is the norm.

For every additional second, you will lose visitors and thus organic traffic.

If you are talking about conversions, a single customer can be so valuable.

If he does not return because your page is loading slow, then it can be a loss in revenue.

After all, our main purpose of our WordPress blog is also to achieve our financial goals.

For every small image, using Adobe Photoshop, Canva, Paint.NET, GIMP is not required for image optimization.

You can directly upload the images from your smart device or screenshots of your PC. Next, the image optimizer plugin comes into the picture.

Organic traffic or visitors from the search engine make a lot for ad revenue generation.

For example, if your page or post or articles takes 10 seconds to load, then you can reduce the load speeds to less than 3 secs by image optimization.

Keeping other factors on the deck, you can easily solve image loading problems with one plugin.  

Lossless vs Lossy Compression

You can reduce the file size so small, that it can be seen on mobile or desktop WITHOUT clarity.

For many WordPress posts, image clarity is not of that much significance. If you can just see the image, it is enough. A reduction of 50% to 90% is achieved. This is Lossy compression. 

The normal  operation of batch image compression of many plugins is done keeping quality in mind. So you achieve a reduction of 20% to 50% in size and thus time resources. 

This is called losslessly compressing images. 

Responsive images are needed for mobile sites.

If you can’t see them on an Apple iPhone or Android Samsung Galaxy, then it doesn’t make sense. Lossless compression can solve many of your problems. The size limits can also be set using the plugin. 

No need of using multiple image plugins like – EWWW Image Optimizer Cloud, Imagify Image Optimizer, Optimole and other tools. WP Smush does it all for many of the common image problems. 

These are several questions that come to your mind while creating a WordPress post. The best solution is to have a single image optimization plugin along with your SEO tools. This will reduce the number of warnings and errors shown by the PageSpeed Insights tool of Google. 

Reasons of image errors in Google PageSpeed Insights tool are  –

1. Serve images in next-gen formats
2. Properly size images
3. Efficiently encode images
4. Defer offscreen images
5. Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy

If you can fix all those kinds of image optimizing errors with a single stroke, it would be great! That’s the holy grail of image compression. 

In this tutorial we are going to learn settings and details of the wordpress image optimizer plugin that squashes images in bulk with single-click. 

Smush from WPMU DEV does it in a simple and easy manner. 

Dashboard

This is the main interface of the plugin. 

Bulk Smush

The advantage with the WPMU DEV’s Smush Pro plugin is that you can batch compress different size files at once.

However, this will take some time. As mentioned above, it depends on the speed of the plugin server and your hosting server for the image optimization to take place quickly.

Using the free image compression feature, you can only flatten 50 images at once. Even if you have 400 posts with 5 images per post, it will make 2000 images. It means you have to click 40 more after every pause. The time spent in checking after each pause can be converted wisely by using the Pro features. 

Image Sizes

For example, my blog produced different thumbnails for each image uploaded to the “WordPress Media Library”.

I had 13 such formats.

We don’t know for sure where each size is used. One can be used in phone and another in tablet form. So it becomes imperative to compress all of them to have low page size. 

WordPress generates multiple image thumbnails for each image you upload.

Choose which of those thumbnail sizes you want to include when bulk compress.

All, Custom

Automatic Compression

If automation is the norm after 2020, you can use this tool safely. This gives the image list that is not available on your site and how to fix them. If you are using image optimized tools before upload, then it will take a lot of time.  

When you upload images to your site, we will automatically optimize and compress them for you.

Automatically compress my images on upload

Super-Smush

Optimize images up to 2x more than regular compress with our multi-pass lossy compression.

Super-Smush my images

Metadata

Images often store camera settings in the file, i.e., focal length, date, time and location. Removing EXIF data reduces the file size. Note: it does not strip SEO metadata.

Strip my image metadata

Note: This data adds to the size of the image. While this information might be important to photographers, it’s unnecessary for most users and safe to remove.

Image Resizing Feature

Detect unnecessarily large oversize images on your pages to reduce their size and decrease load times.

Resize my full size images

As of WordPress 5.3, large image uploads are resized down to a specified max width and height. If you require images larger than 2560px, you can override this setting here.

Original Images

Choose how you want Smush to handle the original image file when you run a bulk compress.

As of WordPress v5.3, every image that gets uploaded will have your normal thumbnail outputs, a new max sized image, and the upload as backup. By default, plugin will only compress the thumbnail sizes your theme outputs, skipping the new max sized image. Enable this setting to include optimizing this image too.

As of WordPress v5.3, full size images above a certain size (2560px by default) will be stored as , while a new max sized image will be created. However, if the uploaded image is smaller than the specified size WordPress won’t create a backup for it. Enable this setting to ensure you always have backups of all your image uploads.

PNG to JPEG Conversion

When you compress a PNG, plugin will check if converting it to JPEG could further reduce its size.

Note: Any PNGs with transparency will be ignored. Plugin will only convert PNGs if it results in a smaller file size. The resulting file will have a new filename and extension (JPEG), and any hard-coded URLs on your site that contain the PNG filename will need to be updated manually.

Directory Smush

In addition to reducing the image size of your media uploads, you may want to optimize non WordPress images that are outside of your uploads directory. Get started by adding files and folders you wish to optimize.

Integrations

Smush Pro comes with other features. It integrates with Gutenberg blocks and WPBakery Page Builder. If you are interested, you can show your savings stats in blocks. This can be included inside any post content. Page Builders are common to design custom post. But the images included within that aren’t squeezed. But this plugin does the magic of working within it. 

Amazon S3 is a cloud service which can be used for hosting and storing images. If this is used, instead of your hosting server, then Smush can detect them and compress all the assets on it. The integration is very easy. Just Enable Amazon S3 support.  

NextGen Gallery is another WordPress plugin for management of your photos. You can enable this integration also. So the stats and smushing images through its platform can be done. 

Lazy Load

This feature stops offscreen images from loading until a visitor scrolls to them. Make your page load faster, use less bandwidth and fix the “defer offscreen images” recommendation from a Google PageSpeed test.

CDN

Multiply the speed and savings! Upload huge images and the CDN will perfectly resize the files, safely convert to a Next-Gen format (WebP), and delivers them directly to your visitors from our blazing-fast multi-location globe servers.

WebP

This is one of the best tools of Image Optimization. I was unable to achieve this, as my server does not support this conversion yet. But in the new version, you can convert to next-gen format locally on your server. This is without the need of a CDN. Previously it was required. 

Fix the “Serve images in next-gen format” Google PageSpeed recommendation by setting up this feature. Serve WebP versions of your images to supported browsers, and gracefully fall back on JPEGs and PNGs for browsers that don’t support WebP.

Tools

Image Resize Detection

This will add functionality to your website that highlights images that are either too large or too small for their containers.

Detect and show incorrectly sized images

Note: The highlighting will only be visible to administrators – visitors won’t see the highlighting.

Bulk Restore

Made a mistake? Use this feature to restore your image thumbnails to their original state. Please note, that you need to have “Store a copy of my small ” option enabled to bulk restore the images.

Note: This feature uses your image uploads to regenerate thumbnails. If you have “…. my original full size images” enabled, we can still restore your thumbnails, but the quality will reflect your compressed original image.

Settings

Translations

By default, …. will use the language you’d set in your WordPress Admin Settings if a matching translation is available.

Not using your language, or have improvements? Help us improve translations by providing your own improvements here

Increase the visibility and accessibility of elements and components to meet WCAG AAA requirements.

Color Accessibility

Increase the visibility and accessibility of elements and components to meet WCAG AAA requirements.

Usage Tracking

Help make … better by letting our designers learn how you’re using the plugin

 

Help us make …. better by allowing usage tracking

 

Note: Usage tracking is completely anonymous. We are only tracking what features you are/aren’t using to make our feature decisions more informed.

 

Data

Choose how you want us to handle your plugin data.

Restore Images

Made a mistake? No worries. We have a built-in bulk restore tool that will restore your image thumbnails to their original state.

Navigate to Tools to begin the process.

Uninstallation

When you uninstall the plugin, what do you want to do with your settings? You can save them for next time, or wipe them back to factory settings.

Reset Factory Settings

Need to revert back to the default settings? This button will instantly reset your settings to the defaults.

Tutorials

Source: Smush – Lazy Load Images, Optimize & Compress Images – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org

My Experience

But I found that it is a little complicated in finding the Pro version page. You can always talk to their Sales team, who are supportive and fast. Tech support is also good. But you have to wait a few minutes, most of the time. 

You can resmush each image separately, if that option is available. In addition, you can see the amount of savings for each image. This is useful to see how much storage resources you have saved. I can see savings of 60% to 70% for most of the small images that I upload. This is when I use the super-smush. 

PNG images can be converted to lossless JPG. This is useful if you are taking screenshots or the mobile has this default format. 

I had a PNG file of size 81KB of dimensions 1911 x 1030. The stats section show the following –

13 images reduced by 857KB. This is a reduction of ~70%. Since I had the WebStories plugin also installed, its relevant images have also been squashed. In addition to the default Large, Medium, Thumbnail sizes of WordPress, others were related to a review plugin and web stories section. 

Question #1

Since yesterday I am doing bulk smush. This is before 9 hours ago till now it is 25% done.

I know I have huge number of images (12024) but I think it is very long time.

Feb 21, 2020 at 4:34 PM

Answer –

It’s nearly impossible to say how long it will or should take, I’m afraid. The first bulk-smush run, especially if there’s a lot of images on site, can take a while but how long – that depends on multiple factors.

Source – https://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/how-much-time-does-bulk-smush-take/

Question – #2

Also, the MAIN dashboard will show different results as the batch process goes on. I was terrified that my image files have been deleted on my server. But to my amusement, they were not.

In the past 1 week, I have done the **** operation several times.

But what I observed is that the number of images compressed reduced a couple of times. In the dashboard I see that. The Total savings also reduced. Once I had to do the process again. Can you tell me the cause and is it permanent or temporary.

Dec 15, 2020 at 8:16 PM

Answer

Hi again,

I spoke with our development Team and this is already a reported issue related to those stats. I got confirmation this will be fixed in the next version.

But the best feature is the tech support not taking too much time to answer the questions. Also, you have a great community platform to post your questions. 

How to Purchase and Use Smush Pro

If you visit the free plugin page, you will see the link to the Pro version. You can always try it for 1 week before buying it. You need to give your credit card details. Later, if you don’t like you can cancel the membership. 

Pro only is billed at $60/year or $6/month for 1 site. If you have multiple sites, then you are required to pay $140/year for upto 10 sites. There are several plans on this page – Smush Pro Only, Performance & Uptime Pack, WPMU DEV membership.

To use Pro, you need to install the WPMU DEV plugin also. Once the main plugin is installed, you need to connect your site with the main site login details created while purchasing the image optimization plugin. This will make sure that all the updates are done automatically. An API key is registered with this product. 

Once you use the trial, you cannot use it again. 

Now based on your plan, you can download the relevant plugins. If you have bought Pro  then that plugin is only visible for Install. To use other plugins, you need to upgrade to a higher membership. 

FAQ – Smush Pro WordPress