Best image compression software: A friendly comparison of Photoshop, Canva, Preview and Tinify (TinyPNG)

George the Panda on February 5, 2024

When it comes to image compression, most people are introduced to this concept through familiar apps they use daily – for example, Photoshop, Canva, or even Preview. These apps offer image optimization features, aiming to reduce file sizes without sacrificing image quality.

However, they often fall short of offering a seamless experience.

While reducing the file size of only one picture with traditional image editing software is as easy as it sounds, the same can’t be said when you have to do it dozens or hundreds of times. This is usually the turning point for our users, who end up on Tinify’s website when searching online for better solutions out of frustration. If this is you right now, keep on reading – let’s explore why Tinify might be a better choice for compressing your images.

What is image compression?

In simple terms, image compression is the process of reducing the size of an image file without sacrificing its visual quality. The goal here is to strike a balance between file size and image quality to ensure your website loads quickly and smoothly.

Picture this: you stumble upon a website that takes forever to load. Frustrating, right? Slow-loading websites can be a major turn-off for users, resulting in high bounce rates and losing potential customers. This is where image compression comes to the rescue! By reducing the file size of your images, you can significantly speed up your website’s loading time, making your visitors happier and more likely to stick around.

4 reasons image compression is important

Faster loading speed: Compressed images are smaller in size, which means they require less bandwidth to load. This translates into lightning-fast loading times and a seamless browsing experience for your users.
Improved user experience: A website that loads quickly is a website that keeps users engaged. By optimizing your images, you ensure that your audience can access your content without any frustrating delays or interruptions.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) boost: Did you know that search engines take website speed into account when ranking search results? By compressing your images, you’re not only pleasing your visitors but also giving your SEO efforts a nudge in the right direction.
Reduced bandwidth usage and hosting costs: Smaller image files mean less data consumption, making your website more cost-effective to host. This is especially important if you have a high-traffic website or if you’re on a limited hosting plan, as well as if your users access your website through mobile data.

How TinyPNG compares with traditional image editing software

TinyPNG vs. Canva

Canva is a great graphic design platform for people with little design experience. At Tinify, we’re fans of its simplicity in creating social media graphics. While the free subscription offers a vast array of options, image compression is only available to paid users.

The image compression option works both for PNG and JPG images. For PNGs, it is only a matter of ticking off a box, but users have the option to choose the level of compression of JPEGs. The compression algorithm works well; however, it is a tiresome process, as they don’t provide any indication of how much one can compress each image without any visible loss in quality. All we are left with is to guess, pick a percentage, download the image, check it, and repeat the process once again until we find the optimal degree of compression.

Photo by Elena Loshina on Unsplash

Alternative to Photoshop to reduce image files

This is why we heard from some Tinify users that they first create their graphics on Canva and later use Tinify/TinyPNG’s website to quickly compress their images. Our drag-and-drop feature allows them to cut on time because our algorithm automatically picks the best optimization level. All they have to do is drag and drop their images on our website and wait to download them. As one user said:

“It’s great, I don’t have to do anything – just drag and drop and that’s it. We did try using Canva’s compression feature but it’s okayish. Instead, with Tinify we can get a reduction of 50-60% in image size.”

Jaroslaw Rozanski, Founder of Wide Angle Analytics

TinyPNG vs. Preview

Apple’s Preview is an image and PDF viewer with editing capabilities. MacOS users have the option to compress their JPEG, HEIC, and JPEG-2000 (a next-gen image format), as well as convert their images. In the same way as Canva, users can choose the level of compression, from “least” to “best”. Although the changes are immediate, Preview still requires a certain amount of guessing.

Screenshot-image-compression-with-Preview

In addition, while Preview offers a batch compression option, it doesn’t work when you’re trying to compress different image types. Furthermore, this option requires you to apply the same compression level to every picture, lacking the ability to personalize the optimization level for each individual image.

Alternative to Preview to reduce image files

With Tinify, you don’t have to worry about spending unnecessary time picking the best compression levels. Our unmatched compression algorithm ensures each image is meticulously analyzed to determine the best optimization level. Unlike other tools such as Preview, which are powerful in their own right, Tinify takes a web-focused approach, making sure each image is the smallest size possible to load faster on webpages, increasing web speed and, consequently, SEO rankings and conversions.

Moreover, what sets Tinify apart is its ability to handle large volumes of images effortlessly. The tools presented require manual adjustments to optimize images for online platforms, making them less efficient for batch compression tasks. Alternatively, with Tinify’s bulk compression feature, you can upload multiple images at once, saving you valuable time with just a few clicks.

TinyPNG vs. Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a comprehensive graphics editing software that offers a wide range of features. It is a professional-grade tool used by graphic designers, photographers, and artists for tasks such as photo editing and graphic design. As an image editing software, it also provides the ability to compress images.

Just like Canva, you have the flexibility to adjust the compression level for JPEGs to optimize image file sizes. However, when it comes to PNGs, the only option available is to select “smaller file (8-bit)” which reduces the number of colors and consequently decreases the file size. It’s worth noting though, that some users have reported that this option may not always work effectively for transparent backgrounds, so keep that in mind.

Screenshot-image-compression-with-Photoshop

Alternative to Photoshop to compress images in bulk

Photoshop also has a batch option available under “File > Scripts > Image Processor”. However, this feature requires you to choose a single compression level for all the images, which means it may not provide the maximum file size savings. So why waste time with manual adjustments when you can rely on TinyPNG’s user-friendly interface and efficient batch compression? Try Tinify today and see the difference it can make for your website’s performance!

“Image compression is something I need to pay attention to because designer portfolios always have a ton of images, and we have to juggle between resolution and size. I used the Preview app as well as Photoshop but the files were still really big. Someone recommended Tinify and I was like “This is what I needed the whole time”.

Raven Mo, Designer

Why Tinify is the best image compression tool

Key features of TinyPNG

One of Tinify’s greatest strengths is its simplicity and user-friendly interface. With a few clicks, you can easily upload your images and let Tinify work its magic, allowing you to optimize images quickly and effortlessly.

Efficient compression: Tinify employs smart compression techniques to reduce file sizes while preserving image quality.
Ease of use: Tinify/TinyPNG’s website is straightforward, allowing users to simply upload their images and download the compressed versions without the need for complex configurations.
Web-focused optimization: The tool is specifically geared towards web developers and designers who want to enhance website performance by minimizing image file sizes.

You can easily compress and convert your images for free using Tinify’s web interface. It’s the ideal solution for new business owners who are building their websites from scratch or people who have a blog on the side. With Tinify, you can compress up to 20 images for free in one go, saving you time and effort.

“Tinify was exactly what I needed – simple and straightforward. Unlike other image optimization services that seemed dubious and complicated, Tinify’s drag-and-drop tool was a perfect fit. It helped compress our web images by over 70%, resulting in faster load times.”

Ahmed Saleh, Founder of Rupt

If you’re a bit more tech-savvy, you can also subscribe to Tinify’s free image compressor API and enjoy up to 500 free monthly compressions. This is especially useful for WordPress users, as Tinify integrates seamlessly with it. By downloading the TinyPNG WordPress Plugin, you can automate the image compression process during uploads. Unlike Tinify’s API, other tools like Photoshop, Canva, and Preview lack this direct integration, requiring manual exporting and optimization of images before uploading them to your website.

Conclusion

When it comes to image compression, Tinify/TinyPNG stands out as the top choice among Photoshop, Canva, and Preview. Tinify is the go-to tool for web developers and designers with its specialized compression algorithm, user-friendly interface, ability to compress images in bulk, and web-focused optimization. By choosing Tinify, you’ll not only streamline your workflow but also enhance the overall user experience on your website by reducing loading times and optimizing bandwidth.

How to resize images to make them smaller for a faster website: dimensions vs. file size

George the Panda on February 5, 2024

How to resize images? Isn’t it the same as compressing them? We’ve noticed that many of you have questions about reducing the size of your images. We understand that this is especially common among e-commerce users, like those using Shopify. E-commerce stores often have a maximum pixel limit for images, which can cause confusion when compressing images doesn’t solve error messages such as the “Exceeds 20 Megapixels” in Shopify. That’s why we’ve written this blog post to help clarify things for you.

When it comes to optimizing images for the web, there’s a fundamental difference between reducing file size and altering pixel dimensions.

Let’s break it down for you.

Reducing file size, which is what tools like Tinify focus on, means compressing images to save storage space (measured in MB, or megabytes). On the other hand, altering pixel dimensions means changing the actual number of pixels in an image (measured in MP).

In simpler terms, Tinify reduces the file size of images in terms of storage (MB), not in terms of dimensions. It tackles the weight of the image file, not its size in pixels.

If you want your images to have a smaller size in terms of megapixels, you’ll need to resize them before using Tinify. By reducing both the pixel dimensions and the file size, you can significantly enhance the performance of your website.

Now, let’s dive into image resizing and how it can benefit your e-commerce business.

How to resize images: change dimensions

Image resizing refers to adjusting the dimensions of an image (MP), not its file size in terms of storage (MB). While resizing an image impacts its file size, the main objective is to consider the website’s design and enhance user experience. So, if your website doesn’t actually require large images, it’s best to avoid using them. For instance, the best Shopify product image size is 2048 x 2048 pixels. This means that your images don’t need to be larger than these dimensions.

And what happens when you don’t resize your images?

You score low on web performance, particularly in the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), one of the three Google Core Web Vitals metrics. LCP indicates the time it takes for the most significant element on a web page to fully appear. Usually, this element is an image and that’s why resizing large images is crucial. When images are excessively large, they require more data to be downloaded, resulting in slower page rendering. However, by resizing images appropriately, you can reduce the file size and optimize the delivery of visual content. This, in turn, leads to faster LCP and overall improved website performance.

According to Google, the LCP should be below 2.5 seconds (within the green threshold). Screenshot of PageSpeed Insights for tinypng.com.

Benefits of dimension-based image resizing for e-commerce:

Reduced image file sizes translate to faster load times.
Smoother browsing experience for visitors.
Optimized images contribute to better search engine rankings.
Smaller image sizes potentially reduce storage costs.

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of dimension-based image resizing, let’s talk about how to resize your images.

How to resize images on your laptop

Most operating systems come with built-in image editing tools that can help you resize your images effortlessly. Whether you’re using Windows or macOS, you can use these tools to adjust the dimensions of your images. Here’s a simple guide for both:

For Windows users:

1. Open the image you want to resize using Paint, which is usually pre-installed on your computer.

2. Click on the “Resize” option under the “Home” tab.

3. Enter the desired dimensions or percentage for the image.

4. Save the resized image with a new name or overwrite the original image after making a backup copy.

For macOS users:

1. Open the image you want to resize using the Preview application, which comes pre-installed on your Mac.

2. Click on the “Tools” tab in the menu bar and select “Adjust Size.”

3. Enter the desired dimensions for the image.

4. Save the resized image with a new name or overwrite the original image after making a backup copy.

Remember to always keep a backup copy of the original image before making any changes. This way, you can revert to the original version if needed.

Now that you understand image resizing, let’s move on to image compression and how it can further optimize your resized images.

How to compress images: maximum size reduction

Once you resize your images, you can further optimize them by using an image compression tool like Tinify. Image compression focuses on reducing the file size of your images (in terms of megabytes) by compressing the data, without altering the dimensions.

Different compression algorithms are used to achieve a reduction in file size while maintaining visual quality. For example, Tinify uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of WebP, JPEG, and PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is invisible to the naked eye but it makes a big difference in file size.

Image compressor API: original images are heavier in size and slow down websites

Photo by Pascal Müller on Unsplash

Benefits of image compression for e-commerce:

Faster loading speeds for improved user experience.
Enhanced SEO through faster page loading times.
Mobile optimization for better performance on smartphones.
Bandwidth conservation, vital for areas with limited connectivity.
Cost efficiency by reducing storage and bandwidth needs.

Both original and compressed images have the same dimensions, but the compressed versions are lighter. For instance, the first picture (also shown below) was compressed almost 70% with no loss in quality. Screenshot of tinypng.com

How to compress images using Tinify: online and API

To optimize your resized images with Tinify, visit Tinify’s website or integrate Tinify’s API within your development environment:

If you prefer a user-friendly web interface, head to Tinify’s website. Drag and drop your images directly to compress them.
For developers seeking a smooth integration, Tinify offers an image compressor API that can be directly incorporated into your development workflow.

In both instances, Tinify’s advanced compression algorithms will automatically analyze and compress your images while preserving their visual quality.

After using Tinify, replace the original images on your website with the resized and optimized versions. Smaller image file sizes contribute to faster loading speeds, improved user experience, and reduced bandwidth usage. Ultimately, this leads to higher visitor engagement and increased conversion rates.

How to make your images even smaller: convert to WebP

There are some nifty tricks and tips you can implement to make your images even smaller. One way is by using “next-gen” images, which are newer file types designed to render faster on the web. These include formats like WebP, AVIF, HEIF, and JPEG 2000. Among them, WebP has gained popularity due to its wider browser support.

WebP, developed by Google, is an innovative image format that offers the best of both worlds – superior image quality and smaller file sizes compared to JPEG or PNG formats.

Photo by Lukas W. on Unsplash

Advantages of Using WebP

Reduced file size: WebP images can be up to 34% smaller than equivalent JPEGs and 26% smaller than PNGs, without compromising image quality. This means faster page load times and a smoother browsing experience for your visitors.
Transparency support: WebP supports alpha channel transparency, making it an excellent alternative to PNG for graphics and logos with transparent backgrounds.
Browser compatibility: WebP is supported by major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. For browsers that do not support WebP, such as Internet Explorer, fallback options can be implemented to ensure a seamless experience for all users.

How to convert to WebP

If you’re using Shopify, you’re in luck! Shopify automatically serves WebP images to supported browsers and falls back to the original formats for unsupported browsers. However, for websites that don’t support this feature, you’ll need to find a way to convert your existing images to the WebP format.

Remember to always check if your CMS supports WebP – e.g. e-commerce Squarespace still can’t host WebP format. This can have an impact on your SEO rankings since Google is pushing for next-gen images as shown in PageSpeed. For example, some website owners have reported a significant dip in their website performance and SEO rankings just because they weren’t able to adopt WebP yet.

Luckily if your website supports WebP, you don’t need to get lost in a sea of online tools and libraries to convert your images. Tinify now offers a new feature that allows you to convert images using our web interface or automating the process through our API. With Tinify, you can convert WebP, JPEG, and PNG pictures hassle-free. One of the greatest benefits of using Tinify’s image converter is that it not only converts your images but also compresses them, resulting in the smallest possible file size.

Converting the same JPEG images to WebP resulted in even smaller file sizes without noticeable changes in image quality. Screenshot of tinypng.com

Conclusion

To clarify, Tinify focuses on reducing the file size of images in terms of storage (MB) rather than dimensions (pixels). If you want your images to have a smaller size in terms of megapixels, you can resize them before using Tinify. Resizing your images can further decrease the file size, benefiting your website.

To achieve the best results, follow this order: first, resize your image by reducing its pixels, then compressing it with Tinify. Lastly, consider converting it to WebP and finally upload it to your website.

[New feature] Custom Domain: Use your own domain name with Tinify CDN

George the Panda on February 5, 2024

We are excited to announce a new feature for Tinify CDN: custom domain. This allows Tinify CDN users to personalize their URL with their own brand (“example.com”), without having to include Tinify’s delivery domain (“tinifycdn.com”). This feature is now accessible for the Enterprise Plan due to high demand from businesses.

Why set up your own Tinify CDN custom domain?

A custom domain is important when using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for the following reasons:

Branding and identity: By using a custom domain, you can maintain a consistent brand identity across your website or application. This reinforces your brand instead of using the CDN provider’s domain.
Trust and credibility: A custom domain enhances trust and credibility. Visitors are more likely to trust a website with a familiar and custom domain rather than one that appears to be served from a generic CDN domain.
SEO benefits: Having a custom domain can positively impact your search engine optimization efforts. Search engines may view content delivered from a custom domain as more legitimate and trustworthy.
Easy migration and switching CDNs: If you decide to switch CDN providers or make changes to your CDN setup, having a custom domain makes the process smoother. You can update your DNS records to point to the new CDN without changing your actual domain.

All in all, by setting up your own domain name with Tinify CDN, you can maintain your brand identity and provide a consistent experience for your users.

How to set up your own custom domain on Tinify CDN’s dashboard?

Here’s what you need to know about setting up your custom domain with Tinify CDN. You’ll need:

A CDN account with the Enterprise plan
A registered domain
A SSL/TLS certificate
Permission to modify the DNS records of your domain

To set up your own custom domain, you’ll need to obtain a valid TLS certificate for your domain. A Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates and encrypts a website. The main purpose of a TLS certificate is to guarantee the privacy and integrity of data exchanged between the user and the website.

Nowadays a TLS certificate is required for normal web browsing. For instance, when using Google Chrome, if a website lacks a TLS certificate, visitors will be shown a warning message stating “this page is not secure”. In this way, users can easily identify secure websites and build trust. Moreover, search engines like Google consider TLS as a ranking factor. Websites with TLS certificates may receive a slight boost in search engine rankings, encouraging website owners to prioritize security measures.

To generate this certificate, you must choose a Certificate Authority (CA), which is an entity that issues digital certificates and is regarded as a trusted entity by all major browsers and operating systems – e.g Comodo (CA), DigiCert (CA).

Once you have it, you can set up your custom domain on Tinify’s dashboard by following these instructions. The final step, which involves configuring your DNS (Domain Name System), is also clarified in the provided guide. Essentially, you’ll have to replace “xxxxxx.tinifycdn.com” with your custom domain on the DNS settings of the dashboard of your domain registrar or DNS provider – e.g. GoDaddy, NameCheap, Gandi.

If you have any questions on how to set up your custom domain, reach out at support@tinify.com.

Why sign up for Tinify CDN’s Enterprise Plan?

If your website has slow loading times, increased traffic volume, large media files, or an international audience, implementing a CDN can be beneficial. CDNs improve website performance by reducing data travel distance and caching content in different geographic locations.

Without a CDN, a website relies on a single server and connection. This means that the further away users are from your location, the longer it takes for your content to load. However, with a CDN network, the website’s data is loaded from a server closer to the user, resulting in improved performance.

Tinify CDN stands out from other CDN providers because it is both an Image CDN and a Multi-CDN. This means that our CDN can compress images in real time, making your website faster without sacrificing quality. Additionally, we work with multiple Content Delivery Networks to ensure worldwide coverage and minimize potential downtimes.

The Enterprise plan gives you more bandwidth and support, with unlimited media library size, 1500 GB per month of bandwidth, and 10 sites included. This plan is specifically designed for high-volume websites and businesses.

“We are very focused on performance because the websites we build have very large quantities of images and they have to be very high-resolution. To give you an example, we serve up about 200GB of images alone from one website. So it didn’t just speed up the website when we use Tinify CDN, it was speeding up that import process.”

Matt Neal, Project Manager at STAFFLINK

How STAFFLINK improves real estate website performance with Tinify CDN

The main features of Tinify CDN include:

Advanced optimization: Tinify’s proven techniques automatically optimize your images.
Global content delivery: Deliver your content through multiple independent networks with servers near your users.
Redundancy: Tinify CDN can use failover mechanisms to redirect traffic when servers fail. If a server is unreachable or has problems, the CDN can send requests to another server, reducing downtime and ensuring uninterrupted service.
Instant configuration: Easily start serving optimized images regardless of how your website is built.
Secure by default: Connect via HTTPS for safe usage of your images on secure websites.
Simple resizing: Edit the image address to generate a different image size effortlessly.
Simple dashboard: Modify settings and track data usage conveniently with our user-friendly dashboard.

Still new to Tinify CDN? Visit Tinify CDN’s homepage and sign up for a 14-day trial, with no credit card details needed.

TL;DR

Tinify CDN now offers custom domains for users on the Enterprise plan.
This feature was highly requested by businesses who prefer using their own brand name in the URL instead of Tinify CDN’s domain.
This helps businesses maintain a consistent brand identity on their website or application, which is important for SEO and online credibility.
To set up your custom domain with Tinify CDN, you need an Enterprise plan account, a registered domain, a TLS certificate, and permission to modify your domain’s DNS records.

Customer story: Designing high-quality renewable energy websites with Tinify CDN

George the Panda on January 29, 2024

Evert Albers specializes in creating visual identities and websites for clients in the renewable energy sector. As a graphic and web designer with customers from various regions, ensuring an efficient user experience and fast website loading is crucial. With this, Tinify CDN became part of Evert’s workflow.

Key results:

Enhanced performance: By implementing Tinify CDN, Evert’s clients experienced better website performance, resulting in faster load times.
Global accessibility: The global server network of Tinify CDN ensured that users from various regions could access the websites with minimal latency, catering to Evert’s international clientele.
Technical Bridge: Evert’s non-technical background didn’t hinder his ability to optimize website performance. Tinify CDN provided a user-friendly solution that seamlessly integrated into his workflow.

Background: Tinify CDN’s first customer

Back in 2019, when the Tinify team started developing its CDN product, Evert was one of the first people testing the script that enabled faster website loading. While these days Tinify CDN is used by both technical and non-technical users, the initial focus was to ensure that everyone, from designers to developers, could effortlessly integrate Tinify CDN.

“I find myself in a position where I have to communicate between two worlds, design and development. CDN was already much connected with my own job as a web designer, so it was just a matter of adding the Tinify CDN prefix to my clients’ URLs.”
Evert Albers, freelance graphic and web designer

Seamless implementation ensures that Tinify CDN operates quietly in the background, just as it should. Evert mentions that when he adds a new website to his CDN dashboard, it becomes almost effortless for him: “For me, it’s very simple. It fits perfectly into the amount of knowledge that I have. It’s so straightforward that I often forget it’s there.”

Solution: Multi-CDN for international reach

Evert highlights that for customers with an international reach, access to Tinify CDN was an added benefit to his services:

“A lot of what I do is in English, and sometimes I have clients reaching out to me from Asia or the United States. Their audiences are mainly international, so instead of being totally dependent on one main server to deliver content across the world, CDN makes the content available faster by serving it from servers located in different geographical points.”
Evert Albers, freelance graphic and web designer

In addition to this, Tinify CDN is made up of multiple content delivery networks (i.e. Multi-CDN), which is especially relevant for international customers such as the ones Evert caters to.

By definition, a CDN is useful to reduce latency and ensure faster content delivery. It makes the website faster because it stores copies of the content on servers in different places, so when someone in Asia or the United States visits the site, they get the information from a server closer to them. This makes the website load quickly and work smoothly for everyone.

But as a Multi-CDN, Tinify CDN ensures that if one server has a problem, the others can still keep the website running, reducing the chances of it going offline. In simple terms, using multiple CDNs is a smart move for international websites because it ensures users have a fast and reliable experience, which is great for the websites’ reputation and popularity.

In addition, Evert highlights the dual benefits of implementing Tinify CDN. Not only does it tackle slow load times across the globe but also offers an effective image compression feature. As an example, Evert mentions its usefulness in reducing image file sizes for websites “with a lot of images to illustrate technical developments in renewable energy”.

Conclusion

Web designer Evert Albers uses Tinify CDN to boost website performance for international clients in niche industries such as renewable energy. By making the most of Tinify CDN’s image optimization features and worldwide server network, Evert enhanced his clients’ websites, resulting in quicker load times for international audiences, and improved user experience. This story shows how non-tech-savvy professionals can enhance their clients’ websites with minimal setup.

Use an image compressor API for better and faster website load time

George the Panda on January 18, 2024

An Developer API is a quick solution to compress a lot of images on your website in no time. Instead of manually uploading all your photos within an online compression tool, an API can do it all at once. It saves you a lot of time and besides, compressed images make your page speed way faster. It has a positive influence on how long users will stay on your webpage. But what is an API and how can you compress images with it?

Customer story: Tinify’s API helps Adpiler simplify ad approvals for creative agencies

George the Panda on January 15, 2024

Adpiler is a solution dedicated to streamlining ad approval processes for creative agencies. It allows them to receive feedback and manage approvals in one tool, eliminating the need for multiple email versions and cumbersome zip attachments. To further provide a seamless experience for their clients, Adpiler integrated Tinify’s image compression API to enable them to download and preview HTML5 ads already compressed, contributing to faster loading times.

Key results:

Importance of image compression for ads: Smaller ads load faster, contributing to better performance and user experience. Additionally, ad networks like Google impose file limitations, making optimization crucial.
Savings and performance improvements: With Tinify’s API seamlessly integrated, Adpiler improved performance and load times for optimized banners.
User-friendly integration with Tinify’s API: Adpiler highlighted the ease of integration, reliability, and the advantage of not having to worry about the complexities of image optimization.

Background: Users asked for Tinify’s image compression integration

Adpiler’s founder Jorrit Baerends explains that Tinify was already on their radar, thanks to some customers who were already compressing approved ads. Ultimately, it was these customers who advocated for the integration:

“They requested that we integrate Tinify into our platform to avoid the hassle of going through separate optimization steps. It made perfect sense to us, so we made it happen. Now, our users can upload their HTML5 ads to Adpiler, and during the process, they have the option to optimize the PNG and JPEG files. It’s not mandatory, but it’s a convenient feature that saves them time and ensures their ads are optimized.”
Jorrit Baerends, Founder of Adpiler

One of the main advantages of image optimization for ads is the improvement in load times. The smaller the ad file size, the faster it will load, benefiting both performance and user experience. Additionally, ad networks like Google have file size limitations, such as a maximum of 150 KB. By optimizing images, advertisers can ensure their ads meet these limitations and avoid any issues.

Using Tinify’s API: Easy integration to complement Adpiler’s solution

Adpiler has been on Tinify’s API corporate plan since 2020, a tailored subscription with a fixed price for companies that compress on average thousands of images per month. Jorrit highlighted the simplicity of the integration process, the reliability of the API, and the advantage of not having to worry about the complexities of image optimization, which isn’t their primary business focus:

“The best part is that we don’t have to bother about it. We simply send an API request, receive the optimized images back, and know that they are compressed while maintaining their quality. This is fantastic because otherwise, we would have to develop our own solution, which isn’t our core business but certainly benefits our customers.”
Jorrit Baerends, Founder of Adpiler

In the future, Adpiler will integrate Tinify into their social ad mockup generator, optimizing images for ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks. Jorrit concluded that with “a quick and easy integration”, Adpiler efficiently compresses customers’ ads, adding value to their solution and making it the go-to choice for digital agencies seeking to save time in ad approvals.

Conclusion

To enhance user experience, Adpiler seamlessly integrated Tinify’s image compression API. This integration enables creative agencies to effortlessly manage and download ads already compressed. By reducing image sizes, ads load faster, solving advertisers’ worries about file size optimization from the get-go.

Are you concerned about meeting ad size requirements? Give Tinify’s API a try and take advantage of our offer of 500 free monthly compressions.

Can I use WebP images in 2024? What is a WebP file, pros and cons of WebP, convert JPEG and PNG to WebP

George the Panda on January 4, 2024

Can I use WebP? The answer is a resounding yes, with major browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Edge leading the charge. Since 2020, Apple’s Safari browser supports WebP, which finally made this image format a reliable choice.

Tinify’s Web Ultra: A new plan to compress and convert unlimited images

George the Panda on December 18, 2023

Introducing Tinify’s new website… And Tinify’s Web Ultra!

Tinify’s website was long due to a makeover, but we wanted to hold off until the official launch of Web Ultra, a new plan to compress and convert unlimited images online.

Web Ultra offers even more possibilities compared to Web Pro. Just like before, you can easily drag and drop your images onto Tinify’s homepage. However, with Tinify’s Web Ultra, you can enjoy the freedom of compressing your images without any restrictions while converting them as many times as you need. Moreover, you can now upload images up to 150MB, which is double the limit of Web Pro. Enjoy the enhanced features with Tinify’s Web Ultra!

Tinify’s Web Ultra: Convert and use WebP images on your website

Tinify’s image compression and converter tool simplifies the way users handle images online, providing a user-friendly solution, especially for those seeking an easy way to convert images to WebP.

This next-gen image format has gained significant traction due to its remarkable reduction in size compared to traditional PNG and JPEG formats. Google, the creator of WebP, designed it specifically as a superior alternative, ensuring that WebP images inherently boast smaller sizes for faster loading on web pages.

The difference between a WebP image and a JPEG/PNG image might not be apparent in terms of quality, but the file size discrepancy is striking. With the introduction of our new image converter tool, users can now seamlessly convert and automatically compress JPEG and PNG images into the WebP format, further aligning with the industry’s push towards more efficient and faster-loading web content.

Tinify’s latest image converter tool allows both Tinify’s Web Ultra and API users to convert an unlimited number of images. If you’re using our online image tool as a free or Web Pro user, you have the convenience of converting up to 3 images per session directly on our website. On the other hand, API free users can take advantage of 500 free image conversions/compressions.

Why converting and compressing images to the smallest size possible is important for your website:

Faster loading times: Smaller image files load quicker, reducing the time visitors wait for your website to become interactive.
Improved user experience: Quick-loading images enhance the overall experience, potentially reducing bounce rates and keeping visitors on your site longer.
Enhanced performance on mobile: Compressed images are particularly important for mobile users, who may have limited bandwidth and slower connections.
SEO benefits: Search engines, like Google, favor websites that load quickly, which can improve your search engine rankings.
Improving conversion rates: A fast, responsive site can lead to higher conversion rates as it keeps potential customers engaged.
Reduced bandwidth usage: Compressing images saves bandwidth, which can lower hosting costs and is beneficial for users with data limits.
Increased storage space: Smaller image files take up less server or cloud storage space, facilitating better resource management.

Choose between 5 products to optimize your images

Online interface – Web Pro and Web Ultra

1. Web Pro

The Web Pro subscription costs 39 USD per license, per year, and is for the drag-and-drop area on the tinypng.com website. Free users can upload up to 20 images at a time with a maximum file size of 5MB per image. The Web Pro subscription removes the upload limit and increases the maximum file size to 75MB.

Customer story: Tinify’s Web Pro for faster websites

Lebanese-based Nascode, an international marketing, advertising, and software development agency, opted for upgrading to Tinify’s Web Pro yearly subscription to meet the growing demand for image optimization. Nader Stouhi, Managing Partner and Developer at Nascode, explained that they were looking for a solution to help their customers whenever they reported having a slow website. Compressing their images with Tinify’s online tool immediately helped them display images faster.

Furthermore, compressing images not only ensures that images look stunning while remaining efficiently sized but also results in cost savings by reducing server resource usage. According to Nader, they regularly compress their images in order to save up on server storage space and cut down on bandwidth costs.

“The Web Pro subscription allows us to optimize our images for faster websites and mobile applications for our clients”

Nader Stouhi, Managing Partner and Developer at Nascode

2. Web Ultra

Tinify’s Web Pro is the latest subscription plan with drag-and-drop feature for 149 USD per license, per year. Unlike the free and Web Pro subscription, which limit you to converting only 3 images per session, the Web Ultra subscription offers unlimited conversions. Additionally, you can upload images up to 150MB in size.

Tailored to your website – TinyPNG WordPress Plugin and API

3. WordPress Plugin

For websites made in WordPress, Tinify made an image compression plugin that can help you optimize your JPEG, PNG, and WebP images. This plugin provides two options for compressing existing images: a convenient bulk optimization tool or manual selection from the list. Additionally, the plugin offers three methods for handling newly optimized images – you can choose to have them optimized after upload, during upload, or not compress them at all. As a bonus, the plugin allows you to compress up to 500 images per month for free.

“I’m not really sure what the disadvantages were of using other WordPress plugins, but Tinify is a lot easier to use and I just kept using it. One of the differences is that with the TinyPNG plugin, you pay per compression, while others ask for monthly or yearly subscriptions, which ends up being more expensive.”

Jacco de Jager, Freelance illustrator and web designer

4. Developer API

Developers have the option to compress and convert images using Tinify’s API subscription, with the first 500 compressions/conversions available for free. In addition, you can automatically resize your images, add colors to transparent backgrounds, and save your images directly in your Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.

Customer story: Tinify’s API Developer for quality retention

Digital agencies understand the critical role of fast-loading, high-quality images in retaining user engagement. While there are many alternatives in the image optimization market, one of the biggest challenges digital agencies face is to find a tool that can reduce file sizes without compromising image quality.

This was one of the challenges Seonguck Kim, the CEO of Korean-based digital agency Aresjoy, faced back in 2016. The agency was particularly focused on optimizing user-uploaded images, which were often high in file size due to smartphone photos. Tinify’s image compression service stood out as a solution that could meet these needs. Seonguck praised Tinify’s user-friendly interface and compression quality, setting it apart from other solutions:

“Tinify’s API was a great help in improving web page loading speed and reducing traffic costs by reducing the image file sizes while maintaining quality.”

Seonguck Kim, CEO of Aresjoy

5. Tinify CDN

Tinify CDN is an image content distribution network designed specifically to automatically optimize your images and deliver them from servers worldwide. Your content will be served via the “points of presence” making it lightning-fast and as close as possible to your users. The CDN is a monthly subscription, and you can choose from the most basic plan to an enterprise one.

“We are very focused on performance because the websites we build have very large quantities of images and they have to be very high-resolution. To give you an example, we serve up about 200GB of images alone from one website. So it didn’t just speed up the website when we used Tinify CDN, it was speeding up that import process.”

Matt Neal, Project Manager at STAFFLINK

How STAFFLINK improves real estate website performance with Tinify CDN

TL;DR

Introducing Tinify’s Web Ultra, a new plan for compressing and converting unlimited images online.
It offers more possibilities compared to Web Pro.
Tinify’s Web Ultra allows unlimited image compressions and conversions, with a maximum upload size of 150MB (double the limit of Web Pro).
This is the perfect solution for users looking to convert their images to WebP, which significantly reduces image size compared to PNG and JPEG formats.

Customer story: eD-ONLINE speeds up e-learning content with Tinify’s Web Pro

George the Panda on December 12, 2023

“Tinify helps users download content much faster. When we shrink image sizes by 70 to 80 percent, it really helps people in areas where internet connectivity isn’t as good as in urban areas.”
Chiang Loong Tan, Executive Director of eD-ONLINE

eD-ONLINE is a digital agency specializing in e-learning, gamification, corporate communication, and entertainment in Malaysia. They offer services across various platforms, including websites, desktops, thumb drives, and intranets. With a significant focus on e-learning, they often face the challenge of delivering image-heavy content over these platforms. To address this, eD-ONLINE subscribed to Web Pro, Tinify’s image compression online tool.

Key results

Improved download times: By integrating Tinify into their workflow, eD-ONLINE saw remarkable improvements in download times for their e-learning content. Image file sizes were reduced by up to 70% to 80%, making the content accessible even in rural areas with slow internet connections.
Efficient handling of high volume: With projects involving up to a thousand images per day and tens of thousands each month, Tinify’s service made image compression accessible, saving time and resources for eD-ONLINE.

Background: Enhancing download speeds through image compression

As eD-ONLINE expanded its services and created increasingly image-rich e-learning content, the need to optimize images for faster loading times and reduced bandwidth consumption became evident. Many of their clients’ users, especially in rural areas, faced slow or unreliable internet connections. To maintain a seamless learning experience, it was crucial to ensure that image file sizes were as small as possible.

Chiang Loong Tan, the Executive Director of eD-ONLINE, came across Tinify while looking for the perfect image compression solution:

“A few years back we had a particular e-learning project involving all public schools in Malaysia, including those in rural areas where the internet at the time was quite slow. So we needed to compress our images in order to reduce the time it took visitors to download this content.”

Solution: Tinify’s Web Pro for easy content download and better user experience

Tinify stood out as the most suitable option to address their specific needs. The service offered an efficient way to compress images, reducing their file sizes while maintaining quality.

“We handle a substantial number of images. For instance, in some of our active projects, we optimize around a thousand images per day. So we use Tinify extensively, especially in our e-learning projects, to reduce the size of image files.”
Chiang Loong Tan, Executive Director of eD-ONLINE

Tan says that Tinify has made a significant difference in their projects. He used a recent initiative as an example, which involved downloading an e-learning package for iPads across the APAC region, known for its different internet speeds. According to him, Tinify’s image compression played a vital role in ensuring smooth access to content, regardless of the location:

“Tinify helps users download content much faster. When we shrink image sizes by 70 to 80 percent, it really helps people in areas where internet connectivity isn’t as good as in urban areas.”
Chiang Loong Tan, Executive Director of eD-ONLINE

Tan ends by saying that Tinify has improved user experience and made content distribution more seamless for eD-ONLINE by helping them deal with slow internet and huge image files. In his words, “We’re very satisfied with Tinify, and it has become an essential tool for our image optimization needs”

Conclusion

eD-ONLINE‘s success in optimizing e-learning content with Tinify demonstrates the tangible benefits of image compression. By addressing the challenge of slow internet connections and large image files, eD-ONLINE has enhanced the accessibility of its content, resulting in improved user experiences, particularly in rural areas. As they continue to expand their services, Tinify remains a valuable partner in ensuring efficient content delivery.

Is the combination of sluggish internet speed and oversized images causing roadblocks for your business? Embrace efficiency by compressing your images using Tinify’s Web Pro or API, or step into the fast lane with Tinify CDN.

Customer story: Web development agency TheGuy optimizes websites with Tinify’s Web Pro

George the Panda on November 28, 2023

“I found that Tinify’s Web Pro worked exceptionally well for our needs. It just became a part of our workflow.”
Guy Walder, Founder of TheGuy

TheGuy is a web development provider offering a wide range of services from complex web development to custom web-based software solutions. As a company dedicated to delivering high-performance websites and systems, they signed up for Tinify’s Web Pro subscription to compress images, consequently enhancing website loading speeds for their clients.

Key results

Loading time reduction: Tinify’s Web Pro subscription significantly decreased website loading times for TheGuy’s clients.
Integration into workflow: Tinify seamlessly integrated into TheGuy’s workflow since 2017, becoming a fundamental part of their toolkit for web development and image optimization.

Background: Stumbling upon Tinify’s image compression tool

TheGuy was founded by Guy Walder, an engineer and developer with a background in managing information systems, and over time, the company expanded to twelve more people.

As TheGuy delved into more complex web development projects, they learned that optimizing images was a crucial aspect of enhancing website performance, particularly for clients with extensive content and numerous images:

“Image optimization wasn’t something I knew about from the start. It was a client who pointed out the need for website optimization. One of the main issues we identified was image size and weight. While exploring solutions, I stumbled upon Tinify, and I was immediately impressed by its capabilities.”
Guy Walder, Founder of TheGuy

Tinify’s drag-and-drop image compression tool impressed Guy with its capabilities, and he decided to sign up for Web Pro, a yearly subscription with limitless compressions. They have been using it since 2017: “I found it worked exceptionally well for our needs. It just became a part of our workflow.”

Solution: Tinify’s role in image optimization and website performance

TheGuy adopted a comprehensive approach to image optimization, recognizing its often underestimated importance among customers:

“It’s challenging to persuade clients to invest the time in image optimization. Although we highly recommend uploading appropriately sized images, many clients continue to upload large, high-resolution images unnecessarily. This leads to slower loading times, lower Page Speed scores, and negatively impacts user experience.”

This is why, before launching any website or system, they perform a thorough optimization process. This includes optimizing both PDF and image files. They use Tinify to compress images and then convert them to the WebP format. This meticulous process ensures that their client’s websites load quickly.

“Every instance of using Tinify has resulted in improved performance. Loading times have significantly decreased, with some extreme cases of websites going from a 20-second load time to just 2-3 seconds. While Tinify plays a role in this improvement, it’s also a combination of clean and scrupulous coding practices and other optimization tools like WP Rocket and Lightspeed”.
Guy Walder, Founder of TheGuy

Conclusion

In 2017, TheGuy, a digital solutions provider, opted for Tinify’s Web Pro subscription to compress images. They assist clients in optimizing their websites, specifically addressing problems related to oversized images. Tinify is a crucial tool in their arsenal, contributing to substantial improvements in loading times. Some websites have seen load times reduced from 20 seconds to just 2-3 seconds, with additional support from tools like WP Rocket and Lightspeed, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience.

Want to improve your website speed? Try out Tinify’s web interface for free before signing up to Web Pro.

Customer story: Tinify’s API optimizes images for construction material marketplace app Tul

George the Panda on November 17, 2023

“Infrastructure costs and improving SEO are recurring challenges in the e-commerce industry. Image compression is also one of them, and Tinify’s API has proven to be an effective solution.”
Nicolás Villegas, CTO of Tul

Tul is a B2B marketplace specializing in the sale of construction materials, tools, and various products tailored for small hardware stores across Latin America (LATAM). As a rapidly growing mobile app platform, Tul faced a critical challenge in optimizing images to enhance their app’s speed and reduce data transfer costs. To overcome this, they signed up for Tinify’s API Developer, integrating it seamlessly into their existing infrastructure.

Key results

Improved speed: Tinify’s API drastically improved the speed and responsiveness of Tul’s app, enhancing the overall user experience.
Cost reduction: The reduction in image file sizes resulted in lower data transfer costs, contributing to cost savings for the company.
Same image quality: Despite the reduction in file sizes, the optimized images retained high quality, allowing users to view products in detail.
Positive user feedback: Users noticed and appreciated the app’s increased speed, resulting in higher user satisfaction.

Background: Discovering Tinify’s image compression API tool

Image optimization plays a crucial role in improving user experience, and this was a challenge that Tul faced right from the start when creating their app. For any e-commerce platform, while it is important to maintain high-quality images to provide customers with a detailed view, large images slow down loading times and increase data transfer costs, affecting the company’s bottom line. But co-founder and CTO Nicolás Villegas explained that they initially lacked awareness of the solutions available in the market:

“We recognized the importance of managing our images effectively to improve the speed of our app and reduce data transfer costs. Originally, we considered building our own solution, but another company recommended Tinify to us, so we decided to give it a try.”
Nicolás Villegas, CTO of Tul

After exploring Tinify’s capabilities, Tul decided to integrate Tinify’s API into their image management workflow: “We didn’t explore any other options. Since Tinify worked well for us from the start, we never felt the need to look for alternatives.”

Solution: Optimizing the app’s speed with Tinify’s API for lightweight images

Tul has been relying on Tinify’s API for the past two years, following a straightforward workflow: their work involves sending the initial product images from their catalog to Tinify’s API, which are then optimized and stored in Amazon S3.

“Tinify has been instrumental in improving the speed, quality, and overall user experience of our app. We received positive feedback from users who noticed the increased speed and improved image quality”
Nicolás Villegas, CTO of Tul

Impressed by the effectiveness of Tinify’s image optimization solution, Nicolás has recommended Tinify to several other companies in Colombia and beyond:

“Infrastructure costs and improving SEO are recurring challenges in the e-commerce industry. Image compression is also one of them, and Tinify has proven to be an effective solution.”

Struggling to make your e-commerce or marketplace images load faster? Give Tinify’s API a try and enjoy the first 500 compressions every month for free!

Conclusion

Tul’s initial uncertainty about image optimization solutions faded as Tinify’s API seamlessly integrated into their workflow. By compressing their images with Tinify’s API Developer, Tul achieved a faster app, reduced expenses, and improved customer satisfaction. This has made Tinify’s image optimization solution a recommended choice for businesses facing similar challenges in the competitive e-commerce industry.

Customer story: ResponsiveAds uses Tinify’s API for optimal ad sizes

George the Panda on October 31, 2023

“Ads have a lot of images, it isn’t just one image. So, if each ad is made up of 30 images, and each image is 3KB, that’s already 90KB. That’s why we use Tinify’s API to drastically bring the size down. Achieving the same level of fidelity in a lightweight size – like 50KB – is great for ad performance.”
Matthew Snyder, CEO of ResponsiveAds

ResponsiveAds is a creative platform that makes it easy for designers, brands, and publishers to create and share unique ads. They do this by using automatic layout tools to speed up the ad-making process, helping users improve, streamline, and scale their ad creation efforts.

One of the key challenges faced by ResponsiveAds was optimizing image sizes to meet the stringent requirements of banner ad dimensions. If an ad takes too long to load, users might leave the webpage before seeing it. In an industry where ad size and quality really matter, ResponsiveAds needed a good way to make their images lighter to improve performance. They found the right image compression solution with Tinify’s API Developer.

ResponsiveAds uses Tinify's API on their website

Key results

Improved performance: Tinify’s stable API helped ResponsiveAds ensure uninterrupted performance even during peak traffic, with the ability to compress thousands of images daily without slowdowns or crashes.
Image quality retention: Tinify’s lossless compression capabilities allowed ResponsiveAds to optimize images without compromising quality or fidelity, crucial for ad creatives.
Transparent PNG support: Compatibility with PNGs with transparent backgrounds allowed ResponsiveAds to create complex ad designs with overlapping elements.
Environmental impact: By minimizing image file sizes, ResponsiveAds contributed to a reduction in carbon emissions associated with data storage.
WebP integration: ResponsiveAds is now exploring Tinify’s WebP conversion feature, which has the potential to further reduce image sizes and enhance ad performance.

Background: Seeking a reliable solution for ad compression

ResponsiveAds initially used a different image compression service but encountered stability and reliability issues, especially during periods of high traffic and optimization demands. Seeking a more robust solution, ResponsiveAds transitioned to Tinify in 2020, and they haven’t looked back since then:

“We haven’t had any support issues since then. We have lots of designers using us, amounting to 10 million hits a day, and Tinify’s API handles it with speed and no backlog or choke on the server side.”
Matthew Snyder, CEO of ResponsiveAds

Display advertising requires ads to be lightweight, with maximum file sizes ranging from 50 KB to 300 KB, depending on the platform. But achieving this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Matthew explains that ads are composed of overlapping images, many of which are transparent PNGs. When combined, these images can contribute to the overall weight of the ad.

Moreover, ResponsiveAds goes the extra mile by offering “fluid design”. This approach ensures that ad creatives can seamlessly adapt to diverse screen sizes and devices. However, to achieve this, each image within the ad has to be adjustable on its own. This underscores the critical importance of reducing image sizes, especially since they function as isolated elements in the ad composition.

“Ads have a lot of images, it isn’t just one image. So, if each ad is made up of 30 images, and each image is 3KB, that’s already 90KB. That’s why we use Tinify to drastically bring the size down. Achieving the same level of fidelity in a lightweight size – like 50KB – is great for ad performance.”
Matthew Snyder, CEO of ResponsiveAds

Solution: Tinify’s API for smaller ads

ResponsiveAds found Tinify’s API to be a stable, reliable, and developer-friendly solution that provided excellent results in terms of image compression and optimization. They seamlessly integrated it into their ad builder platform, enabling on-the-fly optimization of uploaded images.

“We automatically create all the different ad renditions, and then Tinify’s API compresses every picture automatically. Compressing images also means that ZIP packages are as small as possible and easy to download”.

In addition, Matthew highlights that in line with growing environmental awareness, reducing image sizes means that ResponsiveAds can minimize carbon footprint due to data processing and storage. “We just signed a petition that encourages compression for less consumption of carbon. If images are lighter, they take up less cloud space, which is better for the environment”, he explains.

Future Plans: WebP support for even lighter ads

In the future, Matthew hopes to explore additional ways to reduce ad file sizes with Tinify’s Developer API. He’s particularly interested in WebP, a gen-next image format that is typically lighter than JPEGs and PNGs.

“PNG has been kind of our go-to. That’s why I’ve been excited about WebP support. Since WebP works with translucent images, it makes it a great alternative to the PNG format.”

This should be a straightforward task thanks to Tinify’s latest image converter tool, currently available to API users. This tool enables the effortless conversion and compression of PNG files into WebP format, resulting in substantial size savings for ad creators.

Conclusion

ResponsiveAds faced challenges optimizing image sizes for banner ads with a previous image compression provider. Solving this problem was crucial because ads need to meet specific size criteria to load quickly on the page and capture users’ attention. In this way, Tinify’s API Developer provided them with a much-needed stable and reliable solution.

With it, they achieved improved performance, handling thousands of image compressions daily without slowdowns. They maintained image quality through Tinify’s lossless compression for visually appealing, complex ad designs. Looking ahead, ResponsiveAds plans to explore WebP support for even lighter ads, considering it a promising alternative to PNGs with transparent backgrounds.

Are you interested in boosting your website’s loading speed? Try Tinify’s API for effortless PNG to WebP conversion, and start saving substantial bandwidth and improving user experience today!

Tinify joins CDN Alliance and strengthens its position in the CDN industry

George the Panda on October 18, 2023

Tinify’s membership in the CDN Alliance showcases its commitment to the CDN industry and support for standardized practices.

Amersfoort – October 18, 2023 – Tinify, renowned for its image compression technology, proudly announced its membership in the CDN Alliance, an independent non-governmental organization dedicated to connecting and supporting the global CDN (Content Delivery Network) industry. This strategic move firmly establishes Tinify’s presence in the CDN market.

This development follows Tinify’s recent transition from its beta version to the final release of its CDN service, marking the beginning of a new era after two years of beta testing.

According to CTO Remco Koopmans, the decision to join is motivated by the CDN Alliance’s capacity to provide CDN industry players with a valuable opportunity to voice their ideas and be heard, which would otherwise be hard to accomplish without a central hub.

“CDN Alliance is well-known for its activities, which allows us to engage with CDN experts and actively collaborate with them as members of a community”, explained Koopmans.

This is particularly significant for Tinify, as it operates not only as an image CDN, offering image compression on the fly, but also as a multi-CDN, integrating multiple CDN providers into a single solution to ensure comprehensive global coverage. To this extent, effective communication with various CDN providers is pivotal to Tinify’s operations.

However, as COO Matthijs Plat pointed out, this can be challenging due to the varying standards and definitions employed by different CDN suppliers, making seamless integration into a unified solution a complex task. The CDN Alliance is actively addressing this issue by advocating for standardization and regulation.

“They are making progress in favor of standardization, and we are eager to be a part of these efforts,” said Plat.

CDN Alliance’s Chairman, Mark de Jong echoed this sentiment: “We are very excited with Tinify joining the CDN Alliance with their expert knowledge in image compression and multi-CDN. Looking forward to working with Tinify and other members on activities and in working groups in relation to CDN and Content Delivery.”

About Tinify

Tinify, also known as TinyPNG, is a company dedicated to improving website performance through image optimization. They are well-known as pioneers in image compression and have extended their services to include a high-speed Content Delivery Network (CDN) for optimal website delivery.

Contacts

Tinify

support@tinify.com

CDN Alliance

info@cdnalliance.org

Customer story: STAFFLINK improves real estate website performance with Tinify CDN

George the Panda on October 3, 2023

“We are very focused on performance because the websites we build have very large quantities of images and they have to be very high-resolution. To give you an example, we serve up about 200GB of images alone from one website. So it didn’t just speed up the website when we use Tinify CDN, it was speeding up that import process.”
Matt Neal, Project Manager at STAFFLINK

STAFFLINK is a leading Australian company that provides digital solutions for the real estate industry. With a dedicated team of professionals, they help real estate professionals improve property management operations and increase productivity.

In the online world of real estate, a big challenge is cramming in tons of high-resolution images for potential house buyers to view. Unfortunately, these images that are large in size contribute to sluggish website performance – imagine eager visitors seeking their dream home, only to be met with the frustrating spinning loading icon. To conquer this challenge, STAFFLINK uses Tinify CDN to build faster real estate websites.

Key results:

Efficient image handling: With Tinify CDN, STAFFLINK optimizes their clients’ image delivery process. Instead of manually resizing images for various screen sizes, they now upload raw images to their Amazon S3 bucket and let Tinify handle resizing and compression. This streamlined approach reduced manual efforts and improved efficiency.
Faster website load times: By serving optimized images through Tinify CDN, STAFFLINK significantly improved the loading times of their clients’ websites. This enhancement is particularly crucial for real estate websites, where high-resolution property images are integral to the user experience.
Simplified workflow: STAFFLINK no longer needed to spend time on image compression and resizing, allowing their developers to focus on other aspects of website development and optimization.
Cost-effective solution: Tinify CDN’s competitive pricing structure appealed to STAFFLINK as the initial pricing tier provided an affordable entry point, making it feasible for them to scale their usage as needed.

Background: Looking for efficient image delivery

STAFFLINK’s project manager Matt Neal explained that uploading and storing images on Amazon S3 prompted them to explore the need for a reliable Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optimize image delivery. During their search, Tinify CDN came up as a solid option:

“I’ve been using Tinify’s website to compress images since 2014. It does a really good job, it’s fast and free. Then I came across Tinify CDN when I was looking for alternatives to serving large amounts of high-resolution images.”

According to Matt, Tinify CDN was exactly what the team was looking for – it had the usual characteristics of a CDN while offering the option to compress and resize images on the fly:

“Our property listing pages typically present around 30 high-resolution images each. If we served them in their raw format, we’d literally have about 100 MB worth of images on one single page load. That’s just not possible.”
Matt Neal, Project Manager at STAFFLINK

Solution: Implementing Tinify CDN to automate image resizing and compression

Before implementing Tinify CDN, managing hundreds of property uploads involved a time-consuming process of resizing and compressing images:

“It’s a very long process dealing with hundreds of properties a day. Before, we’d wrestle with downloading, converting, resizing – you name it – so we were able to cut all that out. The first load might have a tiny delay as Tinify CDN works its compression magic, but all the heavy lifting is on its end, not ours.”

With an Image CDN like Tinify’s, STAFFLINK streamlined its image processing workflow, resulting in a significant speed boost in page loads. They solved the challenges tied to handling large images by automatically serving compressed, properly sized visuals. According to Matt, this is a “pretty big deal”:

“We are very focused on performance because the websites we build have very large quantities of images and they have to be very high-resolution. To give you an example, we serve up about 200GB of images alone from one website. So it didn’t just speed up the website when we use the CDN, it was speeding up that import process.”
Matt Neal, Project Manager at STAFFLINK

In addition, Matt says that Tinify CDN stands out from other providers due to its straightforward configuration. While considering alternatives, he found that many were either too complex or restrictive in terms of customization: “I spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour trying to get another CDN to work. And there were a whole bunch of issues. So then I went with Tinify, I tested it and it worked straight away.”

Conclusion

STAFFLINK, an Australian digital solutions provider for real estate, implemented Tinify CDN to automatically resize and compress hundreds of their clients’ property images. This results in quicker website loading times for STAFFLINK’s clients, positively impacting the experience of potential homebuyers. For STAFFLINK, Tinify CDN allowed them to simplify their workflow with just a few clicks, saving them from the trouble of resizing and compressing images using many time-consuming tools.

Need a way to make your image-heavy website load faster? Give Tinify CDN a try with our free trial!

Tinify’s image converter: Effortlessly convert images online with new tool

George the Panda on September 25, 2023

👏 Introducing Tinify’s Beta image converter tool!

Did you know that the idea for Tinify started on a train? It was one of those light-bulb moments when a web developer was tasked with creating a heavy-image website that simply wouldn’t load on mobile data for him. By the time the website finally loaded, his commute was over – well, perhaps it wasn’t as bad, but you get the idea. So, this got his team thinking: How can we make images load faster? It was from this point that Tinify, also known as TinyPNG, was born.

That was 10 years ago. Now, things have changed. New kinds of image files make websites load faster. People are using a format called WebP, which is smaller than the old ones like JPEG and PNG. While compressing images is still one of the quickest and most efficient fixes for slow websites, choosing the best image format and opting for next-gen formats are becoming equally important. To keep up with this trend, we’re introducing a new feature: Tinify’s image converter online tool.

Why is Tinify the best image converter tool?

Converting images online isn’t new – a quick search on Google will lead you to dozens of websites that convert images in multiple formats to JPEG or even WebP. But Tinify gives you a two-in-one tool by letting you do more than just convert images; you can also make them smaller with no quality loss all in one go.

With Tinify’s image converter tool, you can now drag-and-drop your images and convert them from and to WebP, PNG and JPEG. Free and Web Pro users can convert three images per session. In the near future, users looking for limitless conversions can sign-up for Web Ultra, a new tier that includes both unlimited image conversions and compressions. Plus, every converted image gets automatically compressed, ensuring your website loads faster with the smallest file sizes.

How to convert images online with Tinify

Tinify’s image converter helps you find the best image version for optimal performance. You can choose from all available formats (JPEG, PNG, and WebP) and select the one with the smallest file size.

Whether you need to convert a high-resolution image to JPEG or you want to jump on the WebP trend, all you have to do is slide the converter button to the right, select the image format output, and you’re good to go! The interface is as simple as possible so you don’t waste time in complex configurations:

How to pick the best image format – from JPEG and PNG to the trendy WebP

Keep in mind that each image format has a distinct impact on your image size and, consequently, your website’s performance.

Since PNGs are generally larger than JPEGs, use them only for web graphics, logos, charts, and illustrations, especially when transparent backgrounds are required. JPEGs work best for photographs, but these days users are embracing the WebP trend.

Replacing PNG and JPEG images with WebP can further reduce loading times. In fact, Google introduced WebP precisely to serve as a superior alternative to these traditional image formats. Tinify users have been using WebP increasingly, with a growth of over 80% compared to 2022. In the picture below, you can see that WebP performs better than other formats:

Developers also have the option to convert and compress images using Tinify’s API developer subscription, with the first 500 compressions/conversions available for free. Soon, online users will be able to sign up for unlimited conversions. For more updates on Tinify’s latest features, follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

TL;DR

Web image formats have evolved, with WebP emerging as a smaller alternative to older formats like JPEG and PNG. Compressing images remains important, but choosing the right format is equally crucial for faster website performance. Tinify has unveiled a new feature – an online image converter tool that not only converts images but also compresses them seamlessly without quality loss. Try out our beta version on Tinify’s homepage.

Customer story: Web dev company Immer’s outstanding web performance with Tinify CDN

George the Panda on September 19, 2023

“Performance is more and more important for our clients, and by using Tinify CDN’s services we are able to get outstanding performance scores”
Michael Mol, Founder of Immer

Immer, a Dutch-based web development company, specializes in creating online platforms and websites primarily using Drupal’s content management system. The company’s core goal is to optimize website performance and deliver a seamless user experience. With this, it was a no-brainer for them to explore various Content Delivery Network (CDN) options, and ultimately sign-up for Tinify CDN.

Key results:

Simple configuration: Tinify CDN requires minimal technical changes, making it suitable for a small team like Immer. With it working quietly behind the scenes, Immer’s team of 10 employees can focus on other aspects of web development without investing time in complex setup and maintenance.
PNG and WebP format support: Tinify CDN stands out by compressing images on the fly, reducing file sizes by up to 80% without noticeable quality loss. At first, its focus on PNG compression was a crucial factor for Immer, and later, when they made the switch to WebP, they found it just as advantageous.

Why implement a CDN

In short, a CDN ensures that users around the world experience reduced latency and faster content delivery without any delay. This is possible because a CDN speeds up online content by delivering it from a network of servers located closer to the end user – the shorter the distance that data has to travel, the better. In this way, implementing a CDN is an easy way to improve website performance, as it requires minimal technical changes to configure it, and performance gains can be seen immediately.

Immer’s founder Michael Mol explains that the company considered factors such as pricing, features, and support for their technical requirements when looking at CDN options. While there were other alternatives available, Immer was already familiar with Tinify’s image compression services, which they had previously tried out for free. Eventually, this was the defining factor for their choice:

“Obviously, we looked at alternatives, even free and cheaper options, but Tinify CDN had some great support for PNGs which sparked our interest.”
Michael Mol, Founder of Immer

Tinify CDN sets itself apart from other options by not only enhancing load times but also compressing images on the fly. For a company like Immer, this was important as they also build websites that are image-heavy. When using PNGs, which are typically larger than other image formats, the ability to upload and automatically display the compressed versions of the original images guarantees an even more optimized website. This is done by reducing the file size by up to 80% with unnoticeable changes in quality.

For Michael, this feature is particularly useful for one of their customer segments: “For instance, we have customers in publishing, and these websites can have a lot of images, which compromises how fast a website loads for people who visit it. That’s where Tinify CDN comes in.”

Tinify CDN’s simplicity

Michael says that even though they didn’t have specific benchmarks, they noted instant improvements on website speed. Furthermore, as the team switched to using WebP – a next-gen format that reduces file sizes by up to a third compared to JPEG and PNG images – Michael highlighted the fact that Tinify CDN could compress this format even further.

Nonetheless, on day to day, Tinify CDN is but an unassuming cog in Immer’s machine, working quietly behind the scenes. For a small team like Immer, made up of 10 employees, it is important to not waste time on complex configurations. For Michael, simplicity is key:

“That’s what we expected from Tinify as well: it should just work, running in the background.”
Michael Mol, Founder of Immer

Does your team value simplicity? Read more about how you can improve your company’s website speed with just a few clicks here.

Conclusion

Tinify’s reputation for effective image compression and the unique benefit of supporting PNG compression were key factors in Immer’s decision-making process. For this web development company, Tinify CDN’s ability to improve web speed, coupled with efficient image compression and support for new formats like WebP, has been useful in maintaining their website performance.

How to optimize videos and images for better SEO traffic and conversion rates

George the Panda on September 4, 2023

This blog post was written in collaboration with VEED, a platform to help content creators easily create stunning videos, add subtitles, and grow their audiences.

In today’s digital landscape, where visual content reigns supreme, optimizing images and videos on your website is not just a matter of aesthetics – it’s crucial for improving SEO traffic and driving higher conversion rates. Visual content can captivate your audience and convey information more effectively than text alone. In this how-to guide, we’ll explore the strategies and techniques to optimize your images and videos, enhancing your website’s search engine visibility and user engagement.

By the end of this blog, you’ll know:

Why visual content is king
How to optimize images for SEO
How to optimize videos for SEO
How to boost your social sharing

Importance of visual content for SEO

Visual content plays a vital role in enhancing Search Engine Optimization strategies. Images, videos, infographics, and charts can improve user engagement compared to plain text. Provide high-quality visuals to keep your users on your site longer, as it helps reduce the bounce rate. Having a low bounce rate indicates relevant and valuable content to users. Integrating images and videos makes your content more engaging and helps convey complex messages quickly. They can improve page ranking, increase social sharing, diversify content types for those with different learning styles, and more.

Choosing the right media format: images vs. videos

The decision between images and videos depends on your content goals. Pictures are ideal for showcasing products, infographics, and conveying information succinctly. On the other hand, videos are powerful for storytelling, demonstrations, and building a personal connection with your audience. Many video editor tools in the market can help you create professional videos, like VEED, designed for content creators, social publishers, dank memers, and anyone who wants to get involved in making video content.

📷 How to optimize images for SEO

Compressing images

High-resolution images are stunning, but they can slow down your website. Strike a balance by compressing images without sacrificing quality using tools like Adobe Photoshop, or online with Tinify.

Utilizing descriptive filenames and alt texts

Search engines rely on filenames and alt texts to understand image content. Be descriptive and include relevant keywords to enhance your images’ discoverability.

Using appropriate file formats

For photos or images with abundant colors, use JPEG, and for those with transparency or text, use PNG. You can use SVG for icons and simple graphics.

Implementing responsive design

Responsive design ensures your images adapt to different devices and screen sizes, improving user experience and SEO. Use CSS media queries to create a seamless transition between devices.

Structured data markup for image SEO

Implement structured data markups such as Schema.org to provide search engines with context about your images, leading to improved rankings and helping your pages be more visible in organic search.

📹 How to optimize videos for SEO

Hosting vs. embedding

Choosing between hosting videos on your site or embedding from platforms like YouTube affects loading speed and user experience. According to Pair Networks, hosting your videos is good; however, you need to have enough bandwidth for them to play. Using embedded videos is better because you don’t need much bandwidth since it’s hosted elsewhere.

Optimizing page speed

Consider non-simultaneous loading or embedding videos so that they don’t delay page loading, which prevents slow page speeds.

Creating video thumbnails

Thumbnails act as gateways to your videos. Create custom, relevant, visually compelling thumbnails that accurately represent your video content to boost click-through rates.

Writing video titles and descriptions

Your video’s title and description should be captivating and keyword-rich. It improves SEO and gives viewers a clear idea of your video’s content.

Harnessing video transcripts or captions

Transcripts and captions make your videos accessible and enable search engines to index their content. It can lead to higher search rankings and a broader audience reach. Since this can be time-consuming, you can use VEED’s transcription tool to save time.

Optimize videos with VEED's transcript service

Mobile-Friendly Optimization for Visual Content

With the surge in smartphone and tablet usage, more users access online content through their mobile devices than ever before. With this, optimizing your visual content for mobile devices is very important today. Having mobile-friendly visuals ensures a seamless and enjoyable user experience. This means that the content loads faster and is easy to navigate, leading to higher user satisfaction and lower bounce rates. In addition, it is more likely to be shared across social media channels, enhancing the content’s reach and potential to go viral. Lastly, it helps you rank in search engine results pages (SERP) as it’s one of Google’s ranking factors.

Amplify UX for SEO and Conversion Rates

User experience goes beyond being creative. It encompasses the user’s usability, accessibility, design, and the emotional response generated during the interaction on the site. User behavior is essential for search engines to determine the site’s quality. When users quickly leave a website, it indicates poor user experience and can negatively affect your SEO rankings. Having slow-loading pages can also disappoint users and lead to higher bounce rates. You must aim for longer dwell times, which entails creating valuable content that sends positive signals to search engines and consequently improves rankings.

Aside from that, mobile responsiveness plays a big part in user experience and SEO. Websites must adapt to various screen sizes, providing a consistent user experience, which search engines reward with better rankings. Here are some factors you need to review for more vital UX:

Website Layout
Visual Design
Content Quality
Ease of Navigation
Overall Website Functionality

📱Boost Your Social Sharing

Finally, distributing your content is key. Here are some tips on improving your social media presence with your visual content:

Strengthen your visuals

Visual content is highly shareable and has the potential to go viral on different social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Create visually appealing content that can tell a story and bring emotions to boost engagement. This video below guides you on how to create social media video content.

Use open graph meta tags

Don’t forget to put open graph meta tags for your images and videos to make your content shareable, clickable, and noticeable. It can help increase your brand visibility through search.

Integrate share buttons

Encourage users to share your visual content by integrating easy-to-use social media share buttons. It amplifies your reach and can drive more traffic to your website.

Conclusion

Optimizing images and videos for SEO is no longer optional – it’s a strategic necessity. You’ll build up your SEO, improve your user experience, and increase the likelihood of higher conversion rates. By implementing the tips in this guide, you can enhance your website’s visibility, engage your audience, and drive higher conversion rates.

If you want to get started with video content, try out VEED, a simple online video editor. If you want to trim, filter, rotate, crop, add text, draw, and more on your videos and need more time or the know-how, VEED is the tool designed precisely for you. We think video editing should be easy, simple, and accessible to all. It is designed for content creators, social publishers, dank memers, and anyone who wants to get involved in making video content. You just have to review video tools carefully, look for super easy tools to use, and give you the quality and all the features you need.

How to install Tinify CDN on your WordPress website

George the Panda on August 18, 2023

This blog post will walk you through the process of installing Tinify CDN on your WordPress website. It only takes a few minutes and you have the chance to try it out for 14 days with no credit card details required. By the end of this, your website will become faster and perform better for users!

One of the main advantages of using a WordPress website is the user-friendly interface that makes it perfect for both beginners and advanced users to manage their websites. Whether you have a small personal blog or a large enterprise website, WordPress allows you to scale your website by adding new content and integrate third-party services to extend the functionality of your website as your requirements evolve.

This is how WordPress users can easily compress their images with our popular TinyPNG plugin to make their website faster on the go. But besides this, if you’re a WordPress user looking for even faster page load speeds, you can also take advantage of Tinify CDN – it only takes a few clicks!

Long, story short: Why use a CDN?

Is your WordPress website suffering from slow loading times? Or has your traffic volume increased? Does it contain large media files throughout its pages? Do you have an international audience? If you replied yes to any of these questions, then implementing a CDN is likely beneficial.

CDNs improve website performance by reducing data travel distance and caching content in various geographic locations. A website that doesn’t use a CDN is dependent on a single server, in a single connection. This means that the further the users are from your location, the longer it takes for your content to load.

For example, when a person somewhere in Europe visits a website located in the US, the data has to travel a very long distance through servers, which consequently adds up to a longer loading time. However, when a website uses a CDN network, the data of the website will be loaded from a server closer to the user – in this case, somewhere in Europe. This drastically improves the performance of your website.

Tinify CDN is both an Image and Multi-CDN. This means two things: firstly, our CDN offers the ability to compress on the fly. Large images become the smallest size possible with no loss in quality, and this change, invisible to the eye, makes your website automatically faster. Secondly, we work with multiple Content Delivery Networks which ensures the greatest possible global coverage.

1. Sign-up for Tinify CDN’s trial

Screenshot - Try Tinify CDN 14 days for free

Visit the Tinify CDN website and sign-up for an account. We give users the chance of trying it for free for 14 days, so no credit card details are required. You just need to provide your email address and website url.

If you’re already a Tinify user, you can also sign-up for a trial on your dashboard by clicking on the “CDN” link on the side-bar.

2. Obtain your Tinify CDN endpoint

After signing-up, you’ll get a welcome email so you can log-in to your Tinify account. Once you do it, you can access your CDN dashboard. There, you’ll find your CDN endpoint, which looks like this: “https//xxxxx.tinify.com”. This is a sort of personal “configuration code” that allows you to connect your WordPress website to Tinify CDN. Copy this CDN endpoint as you’ll need it later.

3. Download the WordPress CDN plugin “CDN Enabler”

Screenshot - Download CDN Enabler WordPress plugin

Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the “plugins” option on the side-bar. To configure a CDN in WordPress, you’ll need to download a plugin such as CDN Enabler.

4. Configure the CDN on your WordPress account

Screenshot - Configure your CDN Enabler in "Settings"

After installing and activating the plugin, click on “Installed Plugins” on the side-bar and select the “Settings” under the CDN Enabler plugin.

Screenshot - Copy your CDN Hostname to your WordPress

This will lead you to another page where you’ll see a field called “CDN Hostname”. Copy your Tinify CDN endpoint into this field. The last step is simply to click on the button “Save Changes”. That’s it!

How do you verify if Tinify CDN is working on your WordPress website?

Screenshot - Validate Tinify CDN by looking at the source code of one of your images

After enabling the CDN, visit your website and inspect the source code of the page. Look for the URLs of your static assets, such as CSS files, JavaScript files and, of course, images. If the URLs of those assets contain the Tinify CDN domain, it means the integration has been successful!

Watch the instructions video:

Choose one of the 3 Tinify CDN plans

Once you’re done with your 14-days trial, you can sign-up for one of our plans: Basic, Business and Enterprise. The basic subscription is made for personal websites and blogs, while the business plan caters to professional and e-commerce websites. If you have specific business needs and demand more support, you can contact us so we can create a tailored enterprise plan for you.

Do you have any questions about Tinify CDN or its implementation? Shoot us an email at support@tinify.com.

Customer story: Learning platform LearnWorlds improved blog speed with Tinify’s API

George the Panda on August 15, 2023

“By having a lossless solution to optimize the images, we are usually reducing the image load of articles to under 1 MB, improving the speed and the Web Vitals”.
Nick Malekos, SEO Manager at LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is an online learning platform and learning management system (LMS) that enables individuals, businesses, and organizations to create and deliver courses, training materials, and educational content to learners. It is designed to facilitate the creation of engaging and interactive online courses with various multimedia elements such as videos, quizzes, discussions, and assignments.

Their website is filled with resources, templates, and articles to help users elevate their online courses. With this, one of their main concerns was to make sure that the number of images uploaded to illustrate their content did not translate into slow-loading pages. To overcome this challenge, their web development team recommended Tinify as a top solution for compressing images automatically on their blog. In this case study, we delve into LearnWorlds’ experience with Tinify’s service and the benefits they gained.

Background

Before using Tinify, LearnWorlds employed various online free tools to optimize images on their blog, including converting them to WebP format or resizing them. According to Nick Malekos, SEO Manager at LearnWorlds, this was necessary when dealing with high-resolution images received from their design department:

Picture of Nick Malekos, SEO Manager at LearnWorlds

“In many cases, we are getting very high-resolution images from our design department to upload to the blog. This would mean articles with >3 MB of images if we were to use those.”
Nick Malekos, SEO Manager at LearnWorlds

Resizing images to fit the specific dimensions of a blog is one of the first steps to decrease their file size and cut on loading time. Next to this, adopting next-gen image formats such as WebP is a new way to make images smaller to speed up websites.

Unfortunately, free online solutions often resulted in quality issues and did not yield the desired performance improvements, says Nick. At the same time, optimizing images with no automation tools can become time-consuming, especially for a company like LearnWorlds that uploads several informative articles for their users.

LearnWorlds discovers Tinify

In their quest for an improved solution, the LearnWorlds’ web development team came across Tinify’s API Developer subscription as a way to automate image compression for their blog. Nick explains that this shift was a “big hands-off improvement” and adds:

“By having a lossless solution to optimize the images, we are usually reducing the image load of articles to under 1 MB, improving the speed and the Web Vitals”.
Nick Malekos, SEO Manager at LearnWorlds

Once they subscribed to Tinify’s API Developer plan, LearnWorlds automated the optimization of blog images, streamlining the process and enhancing web performance and Google Web Vitals, a set of metrics that measures the likelihood of a great user experience.

From an internal perspective, this allowed their team to spend less time tweaking the file size of their images. Compared to the free image optimization tools they used previously, Tinify provided a significant improvement in image quality and overall performance. LearnWorlds found Tinify to be highly user-friendly. Their developers seamlessly integrated the service into their workflow, making it an effortless and efficient solution for optimizing images on their platform. Furthermore, with a monthly usage ranging from 500 to 1000 image compressions, Tinify’s service proved to be a cost-effective addition.

Ultimately, as Nick mentioned, it improved their blog’s SEO by compressing images, reducing their size, and thereby contributing to faster loading speeds which helps LearnWorld rank higher on search engines.

Conclusion

LearnWorlds faced a challenge when dealing with high-resolution images received from their design department. Without proper optimization, these images would have led to articles with over 3 MB in image load. By utilizing Tinify’s lossless compression, LearnWorlds reduced the image load of articles to under 1 MB, significantly improving website speed and overall Web Vitals. The seamless integration and user-friendliness of Tinify’s API service made it the ideal choice for the LearnWorlds’ web development team in ways that free online tools couldn’t make it.

Do you want to improve the load times of your company’s blog? Read more about Tinify’s API Developer here.

Tinify’s easy recipe for SEO basics and image compression

George the Panda on May 23, 2023

It’s probably safe to assume that any website owner reading this knows about SEO, which is about improving your website’s ranking on search engines to increase traffic. That should be doable, right? But on second thought, how exactly does that work?

In this blog post, we’ll help you with this by going through SEO basics. Think of your SEO as a three-course meal and the search engine as a fancy Michelin inspector: to get that star, you must excel equally on the three dishes. For your website, these are: on-page (content), off-page (authority), and technical. Let’s don that chef’s hat!

By the end of this post, you’ll know…

Exactly what to focus on to make your content more SEO-friendly.
Some actions you can take outside of your website to improve its popularity.
Basic technical improvements with little tech expertise – like compressing your images.
Further links on SEO if you want to learn more about this topic.

Time to prepare the food!

How to improve your on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is all about content. It includes tasks such as optimizing text, title and header tags, internal links, and URLs.

URLs: When creating URLs, make sure to make them short, and include one or two keywords that represent your page best.
Title and header tags: The title and heading tags of your page (e.g. H1, H2, and H3 tags) should also include keywords. By following these tips, you can improve the chances of your content appearing in featured snippets on Google.
In addition, sub-sections bring structure and help users and search bots to easily read your content. Backlinko suggests website owners write question-based tags. After conducting a study with over 5 million Google search results, they found that question-based title tags have an above-average click-through-rate (so, more visitors).
Internal links: This refers to linking to pages within your own website. Make sure to incorporate relevant links so visitors can explore other pages.
Meta description: This is the description that shows up in search results below the page title. Make it brief, engaging, and informative. Semrush recommends keeping it under 120 characters, so mobile and desktop users can skim through the full summary of the page.

On-page SEO basics: A short meta description.

Lastly, quality text! After all, this is the backbone of your website. For pages that you’d like to optimize for SEO purposes, the recommended length is 1500 words. Besides, remember to include your keyword in the first 100 words of your first paragraph.

Of course, not all pages need to be visible in search engines, so these tips apply to formats such as blog posts and product landing pages. If you’re a WordPress user, you can find free plugins (we use RankMath) that guide you through all these steps.

For ideas on what to write, conduct keyword research. Mailchimp compiled a basic guide on how to do this, but overall, track your analytics to understand what words visitors use to find you. Tools like Google Search Console can give you a good overview of keywords that are performing well on your website.

In addition, if you’re new to SEO, you can target long-tail keywords – i.e. searches with three or more words – which are usually more specific but have lower competition. For instance, an example of a short tail would be “hotel”, and a long one “Amsterdam hotel twin room”. When looking at keywords, try to find what is the intent of your users behind those words. It’s all about getting into their shoes and figuring out what they are looking for.

How to improve your off-page SEO?

Off-page optimization is about all the actions taken outside of your website to improve its search engine rankings. This includes social media activity, directory listings and most important, backlinks. The latter refers to a link from one website to another one. When this happens, it’s like giving that website a vote of confidence, telling search engines that the content on the linked website is relevant and valuable.

All in all, the cornerstone of off-page SEO is authority building. Ahrefs refers to it as the “strength” of a particular domain to rank high in search engines.

It is worth noting that SEO experts can’t reach an agreement on how important this is for SEO. While some point it out as playing a big role, others say that there is no proof that search engines like Google evaluate authority. Search bots are like black boxes, which means no one can ever say for certain how they work. Nonetheless, website popularity is a good indicator of how well your website is performing. Bluehost put it this way: a website referring back to yours is like word-of-mouth marketing.

If you want to check how your domain rates in authority, you can use MOZ’s domain authority checker, which tells you how likely your website is to appear in search engine result pages. In addition, Semrush also provides a backlink analytics tool, which also gives you an authority score.

Off-page SEO basics: Check how your domain authority.

Once you analyze your score, you can start by:

Building high-quality backlinks: Focus on building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites relevant to your industry or niche. You can use techniques like writing guest posts, asking websites that mention your brand to link to your website, as well as finding broken links related to your content and suggesting your website as a replacement. This will help you rank your website higher.
Focusing on social media: Social media platforms can be a great way to build brand awareness, increase engagement, and drive traffic to your website. Make sure to optimize your social media profiles and share high-quality content regularly.
Improving online reputation: Your online reputation can affect your SEO rankings. Encourage happy customers to leave positive reviews and address negative feedback right away.
Optimizing local SEO: If your business has a physical location, optimizing your website for local SEO can help improve your rankings in local search results. Claim your business on Google My Business, and make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) is consistent across all directories.

How to improve your technical SEO?

The third and last thing to improve is your website’s technical SEO, which involves optimizing technical aspects to help search engines crawl, index, and rank it more effectively. In other words, the idea behind this is to make it easier for search bots to find your web pages, understand what they are about, and finally return the page that matches what users are searching for.

One key element of technical SEO is website speed. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your website doesn’t take longer than 3 seconds to load as 40% of users will quit it. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify areas of improvement and optimize your website for faster loading. In this stage, you might find that your images are too heavy – this is one of the top reasons for a slow website. Fortunately, you can quickly fix this!

Firstly, you can check how much loading time you can save by compressing your images through Tinify’s Web Page Image Analyzer. Some experts recommend that your images shouldn’t be more than 1MB, but Shopify advises users to keep image files under 70KB.

Technical SEO basics: Check your website speed.

To achieve this, you can compress your images on Tinify’s website, or use our Developer API. Our lossy compression algorithm is designed to automatically deliver the best optimization results without compromising image quality (this means that the changes are imperceptible to the human eye). Compressed images take up less space and require less bandwidth to load. This will significantly help improve your website’s loading speed, and in turn, increase your website’s ranking on search engines.

Besides this, here are other tips you can implement that don’t require extra technical expertise:

Create an SEO-friendly site structure: Make sure your website has a clear and organized structure, with easy-to-use navigation and URLs that are simple to read and understand. All pages should be easy to find in a matter of a few clicks – this will also help search bots understand your content.
Create a Google Search account and submit your sitemap: Submitting your sitemap is like giving Google a map of all the pages on your website. This helps Google find and show your pages in search results faster and more accurately. It also helps you see how your website is doing in search results and any problems to fix. For a more detailed explanation, read Semrush’s article on this.
Make your website mobile-friendly: Mobile devices now account for the majority of internet traffic, so it’s crucial to have a mobile-friendly website. Use responsive design or dynamic serving to ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices. Most website templates – e.g. WordPress, Squarespace – are already prepared for this. Nonetheless, evaluate your website’s mobile version with Google PageSpeed Insights in case improvements are needed.
Fix technical errors: Identify and fix technical errors like broken links, 404 pages, and duplicate content. Use tools like Google Search Console to monitor your website and identify errors.

And that’s it – you can now take your apron off… Well, not quite! Remember that SEO is a long-term strategy, which means that you won’t be able to see any results immediately. According to a survey conducted by Arhfes, it typically takes between 3 to 6 months to see any improvements, while Marketing Lab suggests up to one year, especially for new websites as they have less content and backlinks than older ones. It’s a slow-burning process, but eventually, you’ll see an increase in website traffic. Lastly, you need to consistently go back to these steps so you keep ranking higher.

TL;DR:

SEO basics can be divided into three:

On-page SEO (content):

Optimize URLs, titles, and headers with relevant keywords.
Use internal links to relevant pages.
Write a concise and informative meta description.
Create quality content that’s at least 1500 words long and includes keywords.
Conduct keyword research to understand what words visitors use to find you.
Use tools like Google Search Console and RankMath to guide you.

Off-page SEO (website authority):

Building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites relevant to your industry is crucial for ranking higher.
Social media can help build brand awareness, increase engagement, and drive traffic to your website.
Online reputation affects SEO rankings, so encourage positive reviews and address negative feedback.
Optimizing your website for local SEO can improve your rankings in local search results.
Tools like Moz and Semrush can help you analyze your website’s authority score.

Technical SEO:

Make sure your website loads within 3 seconds and compress heavy images to reduce loading time.
Create an SEO-friendly site structure with clear navigation and simple URLs.
Submit your sitemap to Google Search for faster and more accurate indexing.
Make your website mobile-friendly with a responsive design or dynamic serving.
Fix technical errors such as broken links, 404 pages, and duplicate content.

Finally, remember that it might take up to a year to see any results but a consistent effort to improve your website’s SEO will eventually lead to more traffic.

Clear the confusion about Image CDN: Answering 4 essential questions

George the Panda on March 31, 2023

Much like everybody else these days, the Tinify team has been obsessed with ChatGPT to answer the most pertinent – and sometimes not so much – questions. So, when we asked this AI tool if CDNs – in particular Image CDNs – are popular, we got in return: “yes, they are very popular”.

However, our personal experience tells us that being popular doesn’t mean that everybody understands it well. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been interviewing some of our users only to realize that CDN is still a foreign concept to some of them.

In today’s blog post, we asked our developers’ team to answer some of the users’ doubts about CDN. By the end of it, you should be able to assess if your website needs one and if Tinify CDN meets your needs.

Should you use a CDN?

“I think I should use a CDN – but I’m not sure.”

This one goes for the ones that have heard about CDN but can’t fully grasp its benefits. By now, you probably already know that a CDN improves the performance and speed of online content by delivering it from a network of servers located closer to the end user. In practice, this improves the load times of web pages, images, videos, and other types of content, which is great for visitors. But, does your website need more improvement?

The long answer to this question is as follows: if your website has slow loading times, high traffic volume, or large media files, then you probably need one.

A CDN reduces the distance that data has to travel, which works perfectly when you have users who are located far away from your server, by caching your content in different geographic locations and thus reducing the amount of time it takes for the content to load.

Even if you aren’t focused on an international audience, a CDN helps to offload your server by caching and distributing the load across multiple edge servers, which in return avoids downtime and reduces bandwidth costs.

The short answer is simpler, though. If you think you should use a CDN, you’re probably right. It can’t hurt to give it a try, since the benefits of using one are clear.

Now, the question is, out of all CDNs out there, which one is right for you?

If you got here because you already compress your images, it means that you should take a look at Image CDNs. Unlike other CDNs, Image CDNs are designed to handle image-heavy websites – e.g. photography and design portfolios, as well as blogs and e-commerce.

Large image files are one of the main reasons for a slow website and ultimately, this hurts your SEO. For some, resizing and compressing images isn’t enough to improve their website speed, and the missing puzzle might be to host images on a CDN.

In addition, it’s important to remember that incorporating effective SEO strategies not only improves search engine rankings but also enhances user retention. This is because a website with a faster loading speed reduces bounce rates, which is the percentage of visitors who leave the website without exploring beyond the initial page. Put differently, if your website is swift and easy to navigate, not only will it receive recognition from search engines, but it will also increase the likelihood of users reading your content and taking action to make a purchase.

The main advantage of an Image CDN is that it distributes content over servers around the world, which means that it offloads the work of serving images from the main server. But more than this, an Image CDN gives you other advantages related to image handling, such as the ability to automatically optimize and resize images on the fly.

This is what Tinify CDN is all about. As an Image CDN provider, we offer a compression algorithm that delivers the same results as Tinify’s website and API. Additionally, our content distribution servers enable even faster website speeds.

For website owners with regional or global audiences, it is worth noting that Tinify CDN is a Multi-CDN, so instead of relying on one CDN provider, we work with different Content Delivery Networks that ensure great coverage around the world. In practice, this means that we analyze which CDN has the fastest server to the user or offers the best response time. It’s important to note that relying on a single CDN provider may not provide optimal coverage worldwide, as they may not have servers in every country or region. However, by combining multiple CDNs, the likelihood of achieving excellent global coverage increases, allowing you to cater to the performance requirements of every visitor.

When considering costs, Tinify CDN starts with a basic plan of 15$ (best for personal websites and blogs) but we give users the chance to try it for free for two weeks, with no payment details required.

Try Tinify CDN for free

In the end, how to understand if it was worth signing up for a CDN?

You should be able to evaluate if acquiring a CDN makes your life and the performance of your website better. Here are some ways to measure this:

Website Speed: Measure website speed before and after implementing a CDN using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest. If there is a significant improvement, then signing up for a CDN was worth it.
User Experience: Track user behavior using tools like Google Analytics to see if there is an increase in user engagement, such as longer time on site, lower bounce rates, and increased conversions, as well as an increase in traffic from different regions. If there is an improvement in user experience, it might be due to a faster website.
Server Load: A CDN reduces server load by caching static files, reducing the number of requests to your server. If you see a decrease in server load, then signing up for a CDN was worth it.
Cost Savings: A CDN can reduce bandwidth costs by serving cached files from edge servers. If you see a decrease in bandwidth usage, then a CDN was a good investment.

Is your current CDN the smartest way to go?

“I already use a CDN… But optimize my images first with Tinify.”

During our user interviews, we found that some API and Web Pro users accustomed to compressing images are unfamiliar with Tinify CDN and use other Image CDN providers to speed up their websites. We recognized that this adds unnecessary complexity to their workflows, which could be streamlined if they switched to Tinify CDN.

For example, we came across instances where customers were compressing images with our free drag-and-drop tool and then synchronizing them with some other CDN provider. Another user was compressing images with Tinify API but optimizing their website with different tools and CDN providers. While this may not be a significant inconvenience for a few images, it can become a hassle for multiple images that require different versions and design tweaks.

Tinify CDN provides a solution to streamline this process by eliminating the need to download, compress, and upload images again. By continuously uploading the latest pictures, users can automatically display the most compressed version of their images to their website visitors.

So, ask yourself: should I continue using my existing CDN which adds extra steps to my workflow, or can I switch to a more efficient CDN to save time?

Tinify CDN: Automatically compress your images

If this speaks to you, consider signing up for Tinify CDN. With it you have access to:

Automatic image optimization: Tinify CDN compresses images on websites, reducing file size by up to 80% for faster loading and less bandwidth consumption.
Resizing made easy: Users can change the width, height, and aspect ratio of images through the URL, automatically cropping away uninteresting parts.
Optimizing more than images: Tinify CDN can optimize static content, JavaScript files, and CSS stylesheets without requiring any changes from the user.
Easy integration: Tinify CDN can be easily integrated into existing websites and applications using plugins or APIs.

Why not begin your free trial today? 🐼

Try Tinify CDN for free

TL;DR

Despite being popular, some people still don’t understand if they need a CDN.
If your website has slow loading times, high traffic, or large media files, an Image CDN could be helpful.
If you already resize and compress images, Tinify CDN might be the way to go, since it offers a compression algorithm for images and content distribution servers to boost website speed.
But long story short, if you think you might need one, you might as well give it a try – we offer a two-week trial, with no payment details necessary!
Lastly, if you already have a CDN that doesn’t automatically compress images, consider if you should switch to an Image CDN like Tinify CDN.

Tinify’s Developer API: New image converter feature to improve your workflow

George the Panda on February 16, 2023

“Can I convert JPG to WebP?”, “When will you develop a JPG converter?”, “Do you have an image converter?”. Yes, yes and yes. Tinify’s API image converter is live!

As an API subscriber, you can now convert your images from and to WebP, JPEG and PNG. Each conversion counts as one additional compression. This also means that all users can use the 500 monthly free compressions to convert their images to other formats.

How does Tinify’s image converter work?

API users can convert their images to their desired image type – for example, from PNG to JPG, or vice versa.

As an API user, when you upload an image, you can convert it by making a “convert request”. In this request, you must specify the “image type” – that is, the format you wish to see returned.

In addition to this, you can choose the option of returning the smallest of Tinify’s supported image formats (WebP, JPEG and PNG). For this, you need to specify multiple image types in your request. For example, if you specify two formats, Tinify’s API will convert the image to both formats and return the smallest type.

Together with this, we released the “transform” option. This allows you to convert an image with a transparent background to a color of your choice, which is required if you want an image type that doesn’t support transparency (e.g. from PNG to JPEG).

Why use Tinify’s image converter?

This image converter feature was one of the most requested by our users. It’s easy to understand why: there are plenty of image converters – some online and even for free – but most don’t compress images!

Tinify’s Developer API was first designed for image compression, but we’ve been working on new features since then. The most recent one was image resizing, which allows users to compress an image and generate other image sizes. The option to convert images into other formats is another step to further streamline the process for developers.

More importantly, this goes hand in hand with SEO strategies. For instance, Google PageSpeed Insights (which you can use to test and improve your website’s performance) advises users to switch to next-generation image formats, such as WebP. This means that its search engine prioritizes this image format. Tinify’s image converter makes it easier to comply with this requirement since you can easily convert your images to WebP.

Getting into the WebP wave

WebP is an image file format created by Google for web use and it is supported by the main browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc). It enables small file sizes while preserving the quality of images as much as possible. In this way, WebP images are smaller in size than PNG and JPEG images, making your website load faster. In this way, your users have faster access to your content and fewer bandwidth costs – which is especially important for mobile users.

Even though WebP is by definition smaller than other image types, it is worth noting that this image type can be even more optimized – Tinify’s algorithm does this automatically.

Image converter example - JPEG vs. compressed WebP — (Illustrative example)

API users can find all the information needed to start converting their images here. We also want to hear your thoughts on this feature – feel free to test it out and tag us on Twitter.

When will we have an online image converter?

It’s on our roadmap to have this feature available for the web interface. As soon as this is done, we’ll notify our users on Twitter and LinkedIn – follow us there so you don’t miss out on it!

TL;DR

Great news for our API users: you can now convert your images to other image types – WebP, JPEG, and PNG.
It was one of the most requested features since other converter tools don’t compress images – now, you can easily do both.
The highlight here is that you can convert your images to WebP, which can improve your SEO.

Looking for an image size reducer? Learn 5 techniques to better optimize large images beyond compression

George the Panda on January 31, 2023

“Make PNG smaller”, “how to compress JPEG to 50KB”, and “image size reducer” are a few of the things users type to find a way to compress large images into small ones. However, there is more that users can do than compress their images. While this is key – after all, that’s what Tinify is about! – there are other ways to make sure your images are the smallest size possible.

Large images can slow down your website, which may lead to a negative user experience and even lower search engine rankings. While this may sound obvious, it is common for new bloggers and inexperienced website users to overlook this. The excitement of seeing our little corner of the internet come to life can make us blind to more technical points – like whether our website is taking two seconds more to load than what is recommended.

So, if your website visitors are first presented with a loading symbol before accessing your content, keep on reading!

Let’s go over some tips and techniques for optimizing large image files to ensure that your website stays fast – including using an image size reducer:

Use the right image format
Use the right image dimensions
Compress your images with Tinify’s image size reducer tool
Convert your images to WebP
Use lazy loading and image caching

“Panda promise” that this will work!

Use the right image format

The first step in optimizing large image files is to choose the right image format. The reason for this is that image formats make a big difference in terms of file size. For example, PNGs end up being larger in size than JPEGs. That’s why JPEG, the most common image format, is the best choice for photographs, while PNG should be used for web graphics, logos, charts, and illustrations, particularly because it handles transparent backgrounds.

Knowing these differences will help you save your images in the right format, which will ensure your website isn’t populated with image formats that are larger than necessary.

Use the right image dimensions: resize and crop images

Another factor that can affect the size of an image file is its dimensions. It’s usual for new website owners to overlook the size of their images, but with this, they might end up uploading too many large images.

Since most websites only display images at a specific size, find out the recommended sizes and resize your images according to them. For example, if you want to upload a header image to WordPress, your image doesn’t need to be larger than 1048×250 pixels. In the end, resizing decreases the file size even further, which will make your website load faster.

You can resize and crop your images with built-in software on your computer. For Windows users, you can check this link for instructions on how to resize images using Paint. For macOS users, you can use Preview – learn how to here.

If you’re a technical user, you can sign-up for Tinify’s Developer API, which gives you the chance to resize your images within your code, as well as smart cropping options.

Use an image size reducer: Compress your images with Tinify

Another effective way to optimize large image files is to compress them. Image size reducer tools compress the file size of an image by removing unnecessary data and reducing the number of colors. Compression tools are quite effective at reducing the size of large images without any noticeable loss in quality.

According to the e-commerce platform Shopify, a good rule of thumb is to keep your image file size below 70KB. This can be difficult to achieve with large images, and that is why they recommend using image size reducer tools, like Tinify.

You can use Tinify as your go-to image size reducer tool.

While some compression tools give you the chance to choose the level of compression, Tinify’s algorithm is designed to optimize images to their fullest extent at the click of a button. So, when you upload an image to Tinify, we will analyze each image, and based on this, the best optimization level will automatically be determined. There’s so much website owners have to worry about that it’s important for us that they can save time in the process of optimizing their pictures.

If you have a website, you can use Tinify’s analyzer to discover how much loading time you’ll save by compressing your images.

To compress them, you can drop them directly to Tinify’s homepage and upload the compressed image back to your website. Free users have a limit of 5MB per image, but if you find yourself stuck with larger images, you can take advantage of our Web Pro subscription. For WordPress users and developers, there’s an easier way to compress images. All you have to do is to create a Tinify API account, and all your images will automatically be optimized for free up to 500 compressions.

Convert your images to WebP

Okay, perhaps now your website loads faster than ever – no loading symbol to exhaust your visitors! However, when you add your website to Google’s web analyzer, you realize that more can be done to optimize your images… Like converting them to next-gen image formats. Unlike JPEG and PNG, next-gen image formats were created for web use, which means they’re smaller in size to load faster.

One example of this is WebP, created by Google. It is similar to JPEG and PNG, but it can produce smaller image file sizes while maintaining the same quality. In this way, you can replace your PNG and JPEG images with WebP to cut even more on loading time. The downside is that this image format only works in modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc), so you need to have a fallback option for Internet Explorer and older browsers.

You can convert your images to WebP online or with Photoshop, and compress them after with Tinify. If you’re a technical user, you can take a look at Tinify’s API to automatically convert your PNG, JPEG, and WebP images. We hope to make this feature available to browser users later this year.

Use lazy loading and image caching

Once you’ve optimized your images, you can also implement a few things on your website to make them load in the best possible way.

One trick is to implement lazy loading, a technique that delays the loading of images until they are needed. In other words, you can use lazy loading to defer the loading of images until the user scrolls down to the part of the page where they’re displayed. This can improve the initial loading time of the page and reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred over the network.

To implement lazy loading, you can use a lazy loading plugin or JavaScript libraries, such as LazyLoad, Lozad.js, and unveil.js. You can also use HTML attributes: the loading attribute can be used to specify the loading behavior of images. The attribute can be set to lazy which will only load the image when it comes into view. This is a native browser feature and is supported by most modern browsers. All in all, these tools allow you to specify which images should be lazy-loaded and when they should be loaded.

Lastly, another technique you can implement is image caching. It’s a technique that involves storing copies of images in a cache which stores the image temporarily in a proxy server or a browser cache. Image caching can be useful for reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred over the network. It can also help to reduce the load on servers, as it reduces the number of requests that need to be handled.

For example, a web browser will typically cache images that are downloaded as part of a webpage, so that they don’t need to be re-downloaded each time the user visits the page – this is one of the reasons why cookies exist. You can use a caching plugin for this, or a CDN (Content Delivery Network) so your images are served to users from a server that is geographically closer to them.

If you’re curious about this, Tinify’s CDN might be for you! Tinify’s CDN caches optimized versions of images, which makes it an “all in one” tool for reducing, compressing and caching your images.

TL;DR

If you’re stuck with large images that slow down your website, remember that using only an image size reducer might not be enough to solve this issue. Here are 5 ways to reduce and optimize large image files:

Use the right image format: JPEG for photographs and PNG for web graphics, logos, charts, and illustrations.
Use the right image dimensions: resize and crop images to the appropriate size by checking the appropriate dimensions for your website.
Compress your images with Tinify: Large images can be compressed by a lot with our image size reducer tool without any noticeable loss in quality.
Convert your images to WebP, a modern image format that can provide smaller file sizes than JPEG or PNG.
Use lazy loading to only load images when they are needed, and image caching to store images so they are served faster to your users.

Take advantage of next-gen images to make your website faster in 2023

George the Panda on January 12, 2023

One of the most read posts in Tinify’s blog is about WebP, a next-gen image format that offers better compression for a faster website. WebP – together with HEIF, AVIF, and JPEG 2000 – is slowly replacing the usual JPEG and PNG image formats. But while they aren’t new, only now more and more users are jumping on the bandwagon and serving images in next-gen formats. If you’re behind on this, don’t worry – the beginning of this new year is perfect timing to take your visuals to the next level.

In this blog post, we talk about:

What are next-gen images and examples;
Which next-gen image format is the best for your website;
What are the advantages of using next-gen images;
How to convert your images to next-gen formats using Tinify.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

What are next-gen images?

Next-gen (short for next generation) images are newer file types that were designed to render faster on the web. Unlike traditional image formats such as JPEG and PNG, they offer better compression, meaning that they can be smaller in file size while still maintaining high quality.

These new formats include WebP, AVIF (AV1 Image File Format), HEIF (High-Efficiency Image File Format), and JPEG 2000 (JP2). Here is a summary of the key differences between these formats:

Compression algorithm: JPEG 2000 uses a wavelet-based compression algorithm, while WebP uses the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats, HEIF uses the HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard, and AVIF uses the AV1 video coding format. Wavelet-based compression can offer better compression ratios and image quality than the block-based compression algorithms used by VP8, VP9, and AV1, but it can also be more computationally intensive to decode.

File size and compression ratio: AVIF has the potential to achieve the best compression ratios and smallest file sizes of these formats due to its use of the AV1 codec. HEIF may also have an advantage in terms of compression ratio and file size due to its use of the HEVC codec. JPEG 2000 and WebP may have slightly larger file sizes, but can still offer good compression and image quality.

Features: All of these formats support lossless and lossy compression, as well as transparency. WebP also supports animation and color profiles, while HEIF supports 16-bit color depth and the ability to store multiple images in a single file. AVIF and JPEG 2000 do not currently support animation or color profiles.

Which next-gen image format is the best for your website?

In terms of compression ratio and file size, AVIF probably yields the best results. JPEG 2000 might also offer good compression ratios, but its wavelet-based compression algorithm can be more computationally intensive to decode, which may affect its performance in some applications.

In terms of browser support, WebP is currently the most widely supported of these formats. It is supported by all modern browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari. AVIF and HEIF are also supported by many modern browsers, although their support is not as widespread as WebP. JPEG 2000 is less widely supported than the other formats, with limited support in some modern browsers.

Overall, all these formats offer good compression and image quality, but WebP has become the go-to next-gen image format due to its wider browser support. According to Google, WebP can reduce file sizes by up to a third compared to JPEG and PNG images. The only catch is that it is not supported by older browsers, such as Internet Explorer. However, a way around this is to have JPEG or PNG as a fallback and serve these instead in older browsers.

What are the advantages of using next-gen images?

There are a few different ways in which using next-gen image formats can help you optimize your website. One is that they can help reduce the file size of your images, which can speed up your website’s load time. Another way is that they can improve the quality of your images, making them look better and more professional.

Moreover, next-gen images can also help you save money on bandwidth costs. This is because they are typically more efficient than traditional image formats, meaning that they use less data to achieve the same quality level. This means that you won’t have to pay as much for bandwidth when using next-gen image formats.

In a nutshell, these are the major benefits:

Smaller file sizes: Next-generation image formats are typically more efficient at compressing images, which can result in smaller file sizes. This can be especially beneficial for websites that need to load quickly.
Improved image quality: Some next-generation image formats offer improved image quality, especially at smaller file sizes. This can be useful for images that need to be displayed at a high resolution or with a lot of detail.
Enhanced features: Some next-gen images offer enhanced features that are not available with traditional image formats. For example, some next-generation image formats support transparency or animation, which can be useful for certain types of images.
Better performance: Next-gen images can often be decoded and displayed more quickly than traditional image formats, which can improve the overall performance of a website.
Reduced bandwidth usage: Using smaller file sizes can help to reduce the amount of bandwidth required to transfer images, which can be beneficial for websites with a large number of visitors or a global audience.

If you are still in two minds on whether you need to convert your JPEG and PNG images on your website, remember that even a one-second difference in loading time can have a big impact. According to Website Builder Expert:

A 1-second delay reduces customer satisfaction by 16%.
40% of users wait no more than 3 seconds before abandoning a website.

Besides this, using next-gen images can help you boost your SEO. One of the biggest recommendations of the web analyzer Google PageSpeed Insights is to switch to next-gen image formats, such as WebP. So, if you want to rank higher on Google’s search engine, converting your website images to next-gen formats is worthwhile.

How to convert your images to next-gen formats

Since we launched the new image converter feature for Tinify API users, WebP has been the most converted image type – around 80%. If you’re an API user looking to improve your website speed, this new feature allows you to do that in just one step, simply by making a “convert request” in your code. The Tinify algorithm will automatically convert and compress your images. This assures that you have the smallest version possible of your image without losing quality. API users can find all the information needed to start converting their JPEG, PNG, and WebP images here.

Next-gen images: JPEG vs. WebP example — Can you spot the difference?

For non-developer users – such as WordPress users – you’ll need to use a WebP image converter tool and manually upload your pictures into Tinify’s online tool to maximize the level of compression. After it, you must upload them manually to your website. In the future, along with image compression, we’ll also offer the image converter feature to Web Pro users. Keep an eye out for this on Twitter or LinkedIn!

TL;DR:

Next-gen images are designed to be faster on the web and offer better compression, allowing for smaller file sizes while maintaining high quality;
Examples of next-gen image formats include WebP, AVIF, HEIF, and JPEG 2000;
WebP is the most widely supported of these formats, but fallback options are necessary for older browsers;
Next-gen formats will improve your website speed and SEO, according to Google;
API users can convert PNG and JPEG images to WebP with the new image converter feature.

Tinify Multi-CDN: Protect your website against CDN outages

George the Panda on September 2, 2022

There’s a saying that the longer a cow stands, the more likely it is to lie down. The same goes for CDN services: the chances of them failing increase the longer they are online. There is why companies are now relying on Multi-CDN.

Recent feature Tinify CDN: Purging single files now made easy

George the Panda on June 3, 2022

Tinify CDN now includes the option of purging single files – now you can easily remove and update specific content, instead of purging everything.

3 free Tinify tools for early-stage entrepreneurs

George the Panda on May 6, 2022

Website performance is key for small businesses to attract customers. Find out how Tinify’s free image optimization tools can help your website rank higher on search engines.

Image compression plugin: Better images with Tinify WordPress Plugin

George the Panda on April 1, 2022

A simple way to increase the loading time of your website is to compress the images. If you have a WordPress website, Tinify’s image compression plugin might be very helpful. This plugin can automatically compress all your images by integrating with the popular image compression services from Tinify. You can choose between the different compression options, just how you like it!

How important are compressed images for website speed?

George the Panda on January 5, 2022

An easy way to improve your website performance is to compress images. Image compression is the act of reducing file-sizes of images through either a lossy or lossless method. Compressed images have a positive influence on the page speed of your website.

What is a CDN and why should you use it to improve your website?

George the Panda on December 7, 2021

A CDN ensures that content is stored closer to your users. Your website will load faster and that has a positive influence on the conversions, page views and customer satisfaction.