It’s been awhile since I posted anything design-related. There are a number of reasons for that, none of which involve a lack of interest on my part (although there might be the slightest bit of laziness at work). But I ran across a link to an intriguing website called Compressor.io that purports to shrink the size of your images (JPG, PNG, GIF, or SVG) by up to 90% without significantly affecting quality. Next to being able to enlarge photos without affecting quality, compression to save space and download time is the holy grail of website design, although it’s not nearly as important today as it was in the days of dialup.
Anyway, I decided to test the service and got mixed results. First, the good news: the “lossy” compression option is impressive. Below is the “pre-processed” image (in JPG format); it weighs in at a hefty 326kb.
Now, here’s the result after running it through the lossy compression option of Compressor:
It’s fairly easy to discern a slight fuzziness in the second image, especially on the “hairs” of the flower, but the image is pretty darned good, overall…considering it’s now only 37kb, or only 11% of the original size.
I then tested the lossless compression option, and the results were much less impressive. Oh, the image quality was excellent, but…well, see for yourself in this screenshot from the website:
I have no idea why, but Compressor was unable to wring out any kilobytes without affecting image quality.
Compressor currently limits the size of each uploaded image to 10mb, and you can upload only one image at a time, but the developer says he’s working on an increased size limit and batch upload. (He’s also willing to entertain a $10 million offer for the service, in case you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket.)
Despite the disappointing results with the lossless option, I’m going to bookmark the site for future use because the lossy option really does deliver as promised. While I don’t do much design work for others anymore, this still may have some practically use for my personal projects.