JPEG Image Optimization- The Best Practices

JPEG is widely used image format in the web design applications. Raw image formats such as PNG might not be the best choice for your website usage. The JPEG format produces the best quality compressed images. This can be helpful in decreasing the loading time of your web pages. Here, I will be guiding you through some of the best  JPEG image optimization techniques in getting most out of its website applications.

Effective JPEG Image Optimization Techniques

Understand the Difference Between Image Compression and Quality

When we talk about the image compression, it is inversely proportional to the quality of the images. When you rip off any pixel component of the JPEG file, it will result in the loss of image data.

However, it is important to note that not all the graphical data of images are usable for practical uses. So, JPEG compression technique gets rid of these non-usable image data thereby decreasing the size of the image without compromise with visible quality.

Also Read, 9 Patch Images Using Android Asset Studio

Here, I list 3 distinct techniques that produce compressed JPEG images without substantial loss.

Plan a Graphical Model

The storage of your images on the sources like Flickr are useful but how they will be displayed on the website might not be same. You still need some specialized compression tools to reduce the image sizes. This is required seeing the popularity of mobile devices and how people access to the Internet.

The 8-pixel Grid Optimization

This is a popular JPEG image Optimization technique. Since JPEG images consist of 8×8 pixel blocks, which can be easily visible if you put down the JPEG “Quality” parameter.

The image is broken down into blocks of 8×8 pixels, and every block is optimized individually. A number of advanced utilities support these JPEG optimizations. This is also known as selective optimization. It results in the various quality of images in different image regions and saves more bytes.

This technique is very effective in saving rectangular objects.

Do not Save at 100%

It is undoubtedly a bad idea to save your JPEG images at 100% quality. This is not likely to create an “optimized” image that you need. In general, there is an optimization limit formula that increases your file sizes exorbitantly. When you compare it to 90% or 95% quality, you’ll see a substantial drop in the file size of the image.

In most cases, it is recommended to save your images at a much lower than 90% of the quality. When you open the “Save for Web” dialog box in Photoshop, you will come across some preset values you can choose from.

That’s all about some effective JPEG compression techniques for getting optimized images for web design uses.