This is a guest post by Shariq, who writes at Homelogy. If you like to write for us, do check Shoutmeloud revenue sharing program.
Images helps a lot in driving traffic to your blog. We already discussed 4 ways how images enhance your blog. Few days back we also informed Google started ranking website based on speed and images plays a great role in increasing or decreasing page load time. In this post we will talk about how you can compress and resize any images with softwares and that will help you to optimize your website. If you are on WordPress, you can also use Wp Smush.it plugin.
It is a big need to compress and resize images for blogs and websites. Photoshop is the easy tool for resizing an image but it is not a good tool to compress an image. Compressor of photoshop is not so much effective. And it can not maintain the image quality with compression after a certain limit .
Suppose we create a header design for our blog with adobe illustrator and its size is 990/200 px . When we import it to jpg format we find its size approx 300 kb on 150 dpi resolution .Now we try to compress this image with illustrator but we cannot reduce its size below 100 kb if we want to maintain image quality. We need a tool to compress it for webpage and the quality of image must remain as such (almost 80%).
Fast stone image resizer
It is a freeware photo resizer software but it works like a shareware. It is best image re-sizer in my opinion. It has many advanced options. You can resize a picture based on pixels, percentage and side. Rotate, crop, canvas, adjustment with preview, adding text and watermark your images, borders are many other options those make it more than an image resizer . .Its image editor is the best jpg compressor in my opinion. It is my favorite software.
Irfan view
Irfan view is also a freeware but works like a pro. It is a very good image resizer and compressor. It ia a good image viewer and editor too .
MS paint
Ms paint can resize an image .It also reduce the size of jpg image .But we can not manually compress the image .
MS office picture manager
It is not free but if you have installed Microsoft office on your pc then you can try ms picture manager .
Webplus
Webplus is a static website builder. It can be used as image compressor and resizer. Because webplus is not only a html code generator but also a fantastic graphic designer and image manipulator. It can reduce the size of images .I have found webplus as best png compressor .
Do let is know which tool do you use to compress your images without losing quality?
→ 
→
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I mostly prefer using online services for image compressing like smush.it or dynamic image tools image compressor.
I don’t feel much need of resizing as I mostly use images in my wordpress blog which already includes inbuilt resizing option..So, I might not feel the need of these softwares.
Thanks for your response .
When I saw your comment I took a review of smush.it and compared it with faststone image compressor .
I used this image to do a demo .
http://i41.tinypic.com/178gpe.jpg (244kb in size )
First I used smush.it to compress it and get a result with only 29kb size reduction .(http://smushit.zenfs.com/results/c981e350/smush/%2F178gpe.jpg )
Then I compressed it with fast stone and I reduced size up to 220kb . (http://i41.tinypic.com/250ny4g.jpg )
I THINK IT IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 29KB AND 220KB)
It really matters how much loss finally we encounter.
Nice collection of software bro, I’m using Pic – Resize online Image editor, Advantage for me as I will often switch between Linux and Windows.
Cool news.
Started using it.
Thanks.
I would like to add, I haven’t seen a single free image compressor better than Image Optimizer (imageoptimizer.net). Not only does it add a right click option, but it has 5 levels of optimization. Best acc. to me till date…
I prefer Irfan view for the image editing requirements for my blog
I use screenpresso, it not only allow me to compress images but also allow me to edit it in different way.
I use MS paint & MS office Picture Manager.
i have never felt the need of using these image compressors
I have used Photoshop’s save for web option and Irfan view. I like the irfanview’s batch operation. Photoshop’s compression utility gives better control over the method with options to chose format, colours, dither and much more.
You have a very good list of applications. thanks for sharing. Like @typhoon said, WordPress has built in image optimizer but it is not perfect. I have seen that Picnik.com is a very good online and free application. It is really amazing. It resizes and even has tons of effects. On the site you can also add different textures, as well as hues. You can reduce and keep aspect ration or not. You can frame it also (check my rotating header on my Personal Finance blog).
The best aspect for me is that I can use most of the features (some are for a fee) and get a professional image and it is online so no need to carry my desktop about to be able to do stuff.
MS paint which comes with Windows 7 is the best !
I’ve tested all of them, but MS paint is easier and provides better functionality than others, even better than the Irfan Viewer.