Have you ever wanted to upload a good-looking photo but its size is way too big? Must be a disappointing and frustrating time. Indeed, compressing size is the solution that comes to mind. However, the photo ends up losing its previous quality after the compression. How frustrating! Worry not! In this article, you will learn how to compress photos to achieve their best result.
Why Do You Need to Compress Photos?
The quality and the size of a photo should be balanced. Unfortunately, a good quality photo requires a big size which some people might understand the consequence, but there are several reasons why compressing photos is not a bad idea and instead will benefit you.
First of all, it will reduce loading time of your website pages. Photos with big sizes will have a longer time to load on the website especially with a slow speed of internet connection. You may be patient during the waiting time but not the visitors of your website. Researchers have proven that visitors will only want to wait approximately three seconds for a website to load. If it reaches more than three seconds without the page being completely loaded, it increases the chance for visitors to exit without exploring your website.
The next good thing about compressing photos is it will save you more space in the memory storage of your computer, phone, or laptop by almost 80%. Memory storage is usually limited, and you could just save a lot of good photos without being aware of the big sizes.
Sooner or later, it reaches its maximum capacity and it will be difficult to delete those photos just to free up some memory space. Lastly, sending images through social networks and email will be a lot quicker. Big-sized photos will take a while to upload regardless of the internet speed.
Thus, you need to know how to compress photos. Photo compression definitely eliminates any waiting time and allows you to explore more on other features of social media or email.
How Does Photo Compression Work?
There are various ways of photo compression, yet only some are able to produce a great result. If you do not reduce the size in sequence, the quality will be horrible and look blurry. The key is to compress photos properly by knowing the image formats. By knowing the information, you will be able to decide which type of compression you need to use.
It is because an image format will only be able to support one type of compression. Thus, you cannot apply compression on an image format that is not compatible with one another. To simplify, here is the brief explanation of two types of photo compressions.
1. Lossless Compression
Lossless compression is known to be a compression without reducing the quality of a photo. There is no critical data that is being removed from the original quality so your photo will remain as good as before. The advantage of this type is the flexibility. You are able to restore the photo without any significant degradation or distortion.
However, the disadvantage is the inability to downsize the size of your photo too dramatically, or else it decreases in quality. So you still need to know how to compress photos properly. The most popular image format to use for this method is PNG.
2. Lossy Compression
Lossy compression is the process of removing insignificant data permanently unlike lossless compression. In other words, you may not be able to recover the change you have made. It also can reduce the greater size of photos. However, the image quality will turn horrible if you compress the photo too much.
It is important to not overdo and put just the right amount of the compression. The most common image format that uses lossy compression method is JPEG.
Easy Way: How to Compress Photos
1. On an Android Smartphone
Sometimes turning on your computer requires too much energy, especially when you urgently need to compress some photos. The solution is to download some editing apps into your phone such as Pixlr, Adobe Photoshop Express, Lit Photo’s Photo Compress, Codenia and Resize Me.
Usually, the steps to reduce size are fairly easy. Let us take Resize me as an example. After you download the app into your phone, you may launch it and select the photo you want its size to be reduced. You immediately will see options such as cropping, rotating, and reducing which you may choose the size you wish to have.
It is very convenient and does not require a high photography knowledge of how to compress photos.
2. Using Online Platforms
Online platforms provide convenience and once you click one of them, you usually face a big word of ‘select image’. Let us take iloveimg.com as an example. On the first page, you can see the option of ‘select image’ which you may click to allow you to choose the photo you wish to compress its size.
You are also able to select a photo from your Google Drive or Dropbox. Once your photo is uploaded, you only need to click the ‘compress image’ to proceed the compression. Next, all you have to do is wait until the result appears. Unfortunately, most online platforms do not allow you to choose the size you wish for.
Any Other Tool to Compress Photos?
Usually, you need some editing skills to compress photos properly by using software such as Photoshop. Moreover, Windows and Mac computers will most likely provide their default programs installed to reduce photos sizes. Fortunately, there are some online platforms that offer such services like compressjpeg, tinypng.com, and iloveimg.com.
However, there is also a photo editing service company that retouches your photos into professional-looking ones. They are trustworthy and offer you the most extensive services for your photography needs!
Ready to Compress Photos?
These days, there are a lot of ways to do photo compressions such as by using online platforms and mobile apps. However, sometimes the results are not as accurate as you want them to be. On the other hand, learning how to compress photos properly requires time. If you find it too challenging to move or edit on your own, you can turn to a photo editing service company.
