How do you get fast-loading Amazing-Looking Product Photos

Apr 22, 2023

Incorporating these images to your website's pages could cost you. For every large image or media files you add to a page for a product, the load time increases. No matter the level of engagement they may have, aren't willing to sit for for long.

Store owners often have to find out: How can I increase speed of loading images with an appealing, high-resolution look? It might sound like a challenge, but there's actually quite a couple of straightforward methods that will ensure you have a balance between speedy pictures of your products with stunning images.

Let's first get an overview of the reasons why web speed is important. We'll then go over the ways you can improve speed of loading your images, while maintaining the quality of your photos.

The speed of your website's speed is so important (hint that it's not only about SEO)

There are many reasons for having fast-loading photographs of your product is as crucial as having appealing photographs. One of the reasons that proprietors of stores think of first is the search engine.

It's true that faster sites perform better when it comes to ranking in search results, all else is equal. Also, the higher you rank on rankings, the greater search engine traffic that you can drive to your website. But SEO isn't the sole reason speed is important. Google only made speed an element of ranking initially in order to prioritize User Experience (UX) on the web.

What's at stake at the end of the day is that customers don't want to sit around waiting. They don't like waiting for shipments and they aren't willing to be waiting for responses. They don't need to sit around waiting for your website to be loaded. If you give prospective customers the slow and sluggish site, then what does that mean about your relationship with them?

man sitting with arms crossed

Furthermore, even though large image files can create slow-loading websites, which could hurt search engine optimization, these slow pages may also -- perhaps more importantly -- irritate the customers. And that's why it's so vital to find the right appropriate balance between speed and aesthetics.

That being said, keeping that idea with that in mind, let's get on to the methods you can use to make the size of your photos smaller while still preserving their quality.

Keep images saved to WebP or JPEG formats unless you require transparency.

The consensus among users is it is WebP is the best option as well as JPEG as a second choice, unless you have transparency due to reasons. If you require transparency, then it is essential to choose a transparent PNG.

Some formats are more expansive or aren't as suitable for web compression. If you're inclined to put an humorous animated GIF for the product's page it's best to consider rethinking your decision. The expense of loading it isn't worth the brief chuckle the customers may experience.

Take a look at the sizes of files in this image of a cup of tea on a white background, when it is saved in one of the well-known format for images. The image wasn't compressed in this image. The only file sizes saved in the case of images with a resolutions of 1280x853 pixels. resolution.

white cup of tea on a platter
image sizes listed for GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF, and WEBP

You can see that the most compact file format is the WebP format. This is followed by JPEG as a close second. The biggest file size is the TIF the file type. It is estimated that a GIF file is more than twice the size of a WebP file. If it was an animated GIF the file would be much more massive.

Images aren't just saved in different sizes and at their best quality, they also have different compression options too. After running image file optimization for these pictures in Photoshop by adjusting settings, which resulted in images similar to the quality of their images, these are the results:

image sizes after compression

The WebP image has been saved back at its lowest size, which was by a vast distance. The JPEG reduced the size of its files. It is also significantly smaller than the PNG did not see any reduction in size, and the decrease in dimensions of GIF was not significant. The use of LZW compression for the TIFF image saved an enormous quantity of the file's size. However, the resulting file size is over 2.5x larger than the original uncompressed WebP image.

If you've got thousands of images that are stored on your site, you can see the benefits of compression of WebP or JPEG documents could help to save space and make the loading times of your pictures remarkably quick.

Note: AVIF is another image format which is believed to be able to compress images with a higher quality as WebP. While it has broad support but it's not as popular like WebP. If you're making use of Adobe Photoshop to process images then you'll have to install a plug-in to open AVIF pictures and store them in AVIF format.

Use image compression for photos that are compatible with the Web.

Customers want images of the products they purchase that are massive, detail-oriented, and can be zoomed in on (if you have an option to allow users to zoom in on your website, that's). It's a good thing that this is accomplished with the use of application for compressing images.

A lot of these programs can be so efficient that the untrained eye can be in awe of the distinction between images compressed and non-compressed.

photographer taking a picture with a camera

Prior to compressing your photos It is important to determine what the maximum file size is at which your images are displayed. Mobile devices tend to use displays with greater resolution compared to desktop computers. But, displays with higher resolutions are becoming frequent on desktop computer.

It is possible that a 500px image displayed in a space of 500px isn't very appealing and a 800px or 1000px-wide image will look better when confined to 500px when displayed on a retina display, such as a desktop or smartphone screen.
    You can experiment with dimensions of your images to discover which is the most appropriate balance to your product. Additionally, if you are using a zoom function to the images of your products, you'll require larger images than if you had thumbnails.

When you've established which your max pixel size will be, you're in a position to begin the process of converting your original images of the product in high resolution to web-ready, optimized images.

We'll take a look some of the software you can employ to make fast-loading images for your site.

Adobe Photoshop

If you're working with any version of Adobe Photoshop, there are various ways to save images to optimized formats. You can use the Save as feature. Just don't forget to change the name of your file when saving the file with the same file format used in the original file. You can also utilize Export to or the legacy Save option for Weboption (until the time it's not supported anymore).

Photoshop compression settings

Each one of these options comes with specific steps in the process of saving which allow you to alter the settings for your compression settings. Each option will have some different features and options.

  • The only method to save is Save As. Save as allows customers to save the WebP file.
  • Two options are available, Export to as well as Save for Web, allow you to alter the dimensions of pixel pixels in your photos during the process of saving. If you are using Save as it is, then you'll have to alter the image's dimensions to match the size you'd like to see in Photoshop at the start.
  • The earlier Save for Web option is the only one that can provide you with the estimated time for loading and size of the resultant file before saving the image. You can also alter the animation loop's settings for the GIF and provide you with specific choices for the information you can include in your file.

Other choices for each method are the same you can decide to keep or eliminate metadata or to embed the colour profile you prefer after which you can adjust the quality of your photo (lossy or non-lossy).

Are you still using Photoshop? No problem: try one of these no-cost online tools

Not everyone has access to Photoshop But this should not be enough to discourage you from. There are a lot of free online tools that can reduce in size your images.

Two of the best most popular are Kraken Image Optimizer as well as ShortPixel. These two applications reduce the size of your images to an amazingly tiny size, while preserving the quality of your photos.

compression tool in action

When the software has completed uploading your photos, you'll be able save them, and include them in your store.

Both of the free versions are accompanied by restrictions regarding the number of files, and/or the maximum size that they can upload, so it could be less efficient in comparison to Photoshop or the paid versions. But, it is absolutely free, and if do not have a huge store with hundreds of products and/or products, this could work for you.

Are you logged into a WordPress account? Make changes to the WordPress settings, or use the plugin

You may or may not realize the compression of images has been integrated into WordPress. It reduces JPEG files up to 82 percent of the size they were originally However, this might not suffice for some stores who prefer huge high-detailed, detailed photos or huge galleries.

The easiest way to handle this compression built into WordPress is to edit the WordPress functions.php file. This lets you increase and even reduce the level of automatic compression, depending on what you prefer about the amount of compression that automatically occurs prior to the images being loaded into your Media Library.

Are you looking for the easiest way? It's always a good idea to test the plugin. ShortPixel comes with its own plugin, and it works with almost every kind of file which includes Apple's HEIC format, so you are able to upload images right through your iPhone. If you sign up for a free account, you get 100 credits per month.

Enable a content delivery network for your store

Even though the most modern Internet connections as well as the increased bandwidth of hosting has accelerated the length of time by customers to access your site, there may remain connectivity issues. They can cause slow load times, especially if your customer is located across the globe from where your server is situated.

There's an option to speed things up for these documents (and not only for large files such as photographs of products). A content delivery network (CDN) showcases files in servers located close to users as opposed to content accessible on demand at a specific location. It enhances user experience for all your shoppers.

With a CDN like Jetpack, cached (that is, not current-to-the-second) copies of your store will be shown to visitors. Visitors will also receive content directly through the CDN server close to their. Both of these things speed down load times dramatically in particular for big images and media file sizes.

Along with compression, using CDNs combination with a compression CDN could be a great option to deliver product images super swiftly and efficiently, specifically when you do not regularly update your shop on a regular schedule. In the event that you require immediate updates to your shop, the shop owner must turn off the CDN to turn it off.

There are other methods you can balance fast and amazing

The suggestions above are among the most important things you can achieve a good balance with product images that appear attractive and load fast.. Below are additional points to bear on your thoughts:

  • Choose white backgrounds. In general, the fewer colors an image contains in its shades, the smaller its size is. The same is true after compression kicks in and the palette further decreased.
  • Remove unnecessary photos of the product. Do you have photos of the shoes you're selling from ten different angles? It's probably best to reduce them to five and cut the load time by half.
  • Download thumbnails first, and after which you will only show the complete dimension when you press. So, customers will not have to wait until they see the larger pictures.
  • lazy load of pictures. Lazy loading images enhances the performance of your website by loading images above the fold, and then loading additional images as users scroll they're within the webpage. Jetpack is a Jetpack plugin doesn't just provide an extension of the CDN functionality, but also lazy loading of images. Jetpack is also the provider of a range of WordPress optimizing tools which, although not always directly connected to images, could enhance performance and user experience.
  • Remove unnecessary metadata. Depending on the purpose of your image file, you might contain a significant amount of metadata like copyright information Keywords, tags, geographical data, image descriptions, etc. In some cases you might like to keep this information however, you could reduce storage space by removing it once you compress your pictures.

Gorgeous product photos shouldn't be required to speed up your website (or the speed of your customers)

There's a possibility that the best way to produce stunning images of products is to settle with an inefficient store. Or that the only method to create quick-loading product pages is to select tiny, high-quality photos. But we don't agree.

By making a couple of improvements to the photos your website sells, you'll strike the right balance between fast-loading and gorgeous-looking. Additionally, neither your site or your customers -- will have to increase speed.

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