Is it worth the time to resize photos to make our pages load faster?

1. 72

   brakel2posted 11 years ago

   Is it worth the time to resize photos to make our pages load faster?
   
   This info was from an answer to a question where the person said her internet is slow, and if loading takes forever, she backs off  I I also tested load time for a hub. The site recommended converting jpg to png on images. Please help.

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2. 78

   junksellerposted 11 years ago

   I think it is always somewhat worthwhile to work on having efficiently encoded and sized images. Not just for page loading, but for overall storage considerations. For something like hubpages, the viewable width is probably about 800 pixels or so (I don't know the exact width), so for a full width photo I will usually size the width to be in the 640-800 pixel range and then I save them as jpgs usually at the 85% quality rating. This will give you images in the 50-100kb range, which is, in my opinion, very manageable. It is worth playing around with a bit. You could take an image and try to make successive copies smaller and smaller and post them into a hub to see how they actually look online. If a 32kb image looks about the same as a 200kb image than you might as well go with the small one. (That would actually make a great hub if no one has done it.)
   
   Personally, It doesn't concern me too much on Hubpages. Words, pop up right away and can keep someone busy even if an image takes a few seconds to load. Other sites which depend heavily on graphics and visuals it matters much more.
   
   As for jpg vs. png I am a long way from an expert. My understanding of pngs is that they were intended to replace gifs. A primary use of gifs and pngs is for images which require transparency. But, absent that requirement, it is my experience that jpgs are generally much smaller than pngs or gifs, so I wouldn't convert for that reason. Also, there are still some platforms/browsers which do not handle pngs well.
   
   It is also important to point out that lots of other things can slow down webpage loading times. Webpages are pretty complex these days and there can be all sorts of coding and scripts and activity running as they load.
   
   There are websites and software programs which analyze webpage loading times and can offer suggestions for improvement, but I don't have any experience with them so can't recommend any, but they may be worth checking out.

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3. 81

   leakeemposted 11 years ago

   It's a practice to resize AND resample images for web use. Hubpages probably resizes images as they are uploaded to the server so it all comes to upload times. Why waste a minute uploading a photo if it can be done in seconds. If those are 10 photos, then that's 10 minutes wasted.
   
   I resize images to about 1600x1200 when I upload for the web i.e., facebook, my blog, and here. Then I resample them to 60-75% quality JPEG format.

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4. 59

   alvairsposted 11 years ago

   Yes load time for a web page is important, so go for it. you don't want a slow load time because you could lose traffic to your website due to slow page load.

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5. 97

   eugbugposted 11 years ago

   From my experience, I don't think it is necessary.
   I upload photos at 1600 x 1200 resolution. I don't resize because there was an option on HubPages which allowed users to click on photos in order to zoom the image. Unfortunately this feature has been dropped and clicking on photos now generates a slide show. However it is probably better to keep uploading at high resolution in case the feature is restored.
   From what I can see, images are converted to a lower resolution by HubPages. If you right click on one of your images on a hub and save it to your computer and then check the resolution, you will notice that the pixel size has been reduced. Unless the connection is dialup, there shouldn't be a major problem once there aren't loads of images on the page.

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   1. 72

      brakel2posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I have checked all my photos from a hub, and it appears that HubPages has made them smaller than their original size. I still have  answer from  pageload site that total  photos are too large - Pixel size. That must include some of the photo ads.

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6. 57

   vegaswriterposted 11 years ago

   Load time is a big factor for visitors as well as SEO. People don't tend to wait around for page that takes too long to load whether their browser or connection is fast or slow. They just close it out and move on to the next to find what they are looking for if it takes too long to come up.

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7. 59

   photostudiosupplyposted 11 years ago

   I totally agree with vegaswriter. People can't wait too long for a site to load. So, in my opinion, photos should not be so large to take a long time to process.

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