Because photos can drastically slow down your website, it’s critical to save all of your photographs in web-friendly formats. One of our users recently inquired about the benefits and drawbacks of utilizing a plugin like WP Smush. In this essay, we’ll go over the benefits, drawbacks, and alternatives to WP Smush for image optimization in WordPress.
What exactly is WP Smush?
WP Smush is a WordPress plugin for optimizing photos without sacrificing quality.
WP Smush’s Advantages
WP Smush is a simple tool that allows you to optimize photos as you submit them to your WordPress site.
You may bulk smush 50 photos at a time by going to Media » WP Smush for older images.
It is a simple and straightforward technique for beginners to optimize their photographs and increase the speed of their website.
WP Smush’s disadvantages
The difference in performance isn’t as noticeable as it can be in other ways.
If you submit a 3 MB photo to your WordPress site, for example, WP Smush shrinks it by 10-20% without sacrificing quality. It’s still a 2.4-2.7MB file, which is enormous.
WP Smush provides you no control over how much an image can be optimized. While it reduces the size of the image file, it isn’t the ideal option.
Alternatives to WP Smush
You may optimize your photographs with a variety of additional tools and WordPress plugins. These tools allow you additional flexibility in terms of how you optimize your photographs. As a result, file sizes will be less and page loads will be faster.
Image Optimizer EWWW
The EWWW Image Optimizer plugin for WordPress optimizes your images as you submit them. You can also optimize photographs that you’ve already submitted. It also allows you to convert file formats, allowing you to select a smaller image size format.
If you’re uploading a PNG screenshot, for example, converting it to JPEG may result in a significantly reduced file size.
Imsanity
Imsanity is a WordPress plugin that allows you to resize huge photos in masse. Unlike the other plugins mentioned, Imsanity allows you to set a preset maximum picture size.
In WordPress, you can choose the default compression for jpeg photos. The plugin can also convert image file types from BMP to JPEG or PNG to JPEG automatically.
Adobe Photoshop
In the field of image processing, Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard. It’s a little pricey, but it’s well worth it. It has a built-in Save for Web feature that allows you to save web-optimized photos.
The finest feature is that you have complete control over how much an image gets optimized. For JPEG photos, you can select the compression level, as well as the amount of colors in PNG files.
As you alter these settings, it will also display you a preview of the image and the file size.
Gimp is a free Photoshop alternative. It may not have the same aesthetic appeal as Photoshop, but it can help you optimize your photographs for the web.
Last Thoughts
When it comes to image optimization, it’s preferable to perform it outside of WordPress. We’ve developed a comprehensive lesson on how to optimize pictures for WordPress.
While WP Smush or one of the WP Smush alternatives will work, it will not produce the same results as Photoshop, GIMP, JPEGMini, or TinyPNG.
That’s all there is to it; we hope this post has taught you how to optimize pictures using WP Smush and its equivalents.