AOTD: JpegMini, Put Your Photo On A Compression Diet And See The Difference.

Theres several ways you can speed up your website, use a CDN, get a better host but none of that is going to help unless your images are properly optimised.  JpegMini helps do just that, providing the optimum balance between compression, quality and clarity.

If you used photoshop or Pixelmator and hit the file, export as jpeg function you could think that the jpeg defaults are set to optimal levels.  Turns out this isn’t the case as theres more than one way to compress a jpeg for the best results

This is something I only found out thanks to the Mac And Forth podcast so I take no credit for this finding but JpegMini turns out to be a bit of a gem.

Jpeg mini is a small, easy to use program that shrinks down your jpeg image but proclaims to loose as little amount of the image detail as possible, all down to their own algorithms that look at all of the pixels in an image than taking just an average mix.

What this means in simple terms that JpegMini sees different shades of red as just that, different shades whereas programs like Photoshop tend to group reds in a more generalist sort of way and then clump them together.

Thanks to this more probing way at looking at the whole picture JpegMini claims to have less artefacts, color blow out and that annoying blockiness from things being over compressed.  / blooming when you compress images with their app.

I’ve now realised I’ve been making a mistake for the longest time at pulling an image into Pixelmatr, applying a resize, then exporting the file with the default settings looking at the small preview window trying to guess the right balance of size vs quality.  It takes a while to trust JpegMini to do the right thing as there’s no preview window, no quality settings just simply drag and drop the image.

So to test this I’ve pulled a selection of photos with varying colors and details for resizing and compression.

JpegMini has a default resize to 960 * 720 pixels, not enabled as default, with no other settings other than to where you want to save the new files.

So to test again Pixelmator, images were opened, resized and then exported as Jpeg twice.  Once with default compression settings and then with the level of compression adjusted to match the file size of JpegMini for a true comparison

Another close up image where in the original 3.6mb file is surprisingly crisp given it’s taken on a iPhone

Here’s how things break down.

Image	Original size	Jpeg Mini	Pixelmator 85% Compressed	PM Matching Compression	PM Final
Biscuit 1	4.1 mb	276 kb	512 kb	55%	281 kb
WoodBuds	2.6 mb	159 kb	359 kb	48%	160 kb
Skyline	918 kb	66 kb	148 kb	58%	68 kb
Wales V NZ	2.4 mb	176 kb	269 kb	65%	175 kb
Desktop Tizi	3.6 mb	93 kb	179 kb	61%	95 kb

Overall

Not only does the file compression sizes speak for themselves but the quality of image is nothing to be sneeze at either.  The amount of compression and clarity, clarity being a keyword here, is spot on.

All of the image and bandwidth savings come at a grand old price of free providing you don’t want to do more than 25 images in a day. A normal edition is available via in app purchase for £14.99 with no limit on the amount of images you can compress but is limited to images of 28 mega pixel or less.  For those needing a multi user licence, plugin support and much, much more a pro version is also available with some seriously advanced features to boot with a price to match of £110.

If you want to take agenda at what Jpegmini can do with no uploads or perhaps take a snapshot of your website to see how much in terms of bandwidth / cdn costs you can save, JpegMini’s website will show you graphically what you can save. http://www.jpegmini.com/server

Overall.

Jpegmini represents fantastic value at being free if you want to do no more than 20 images a day.

If you’ve got a majorly busy website with CDN costs attached then JPEGmini is going to recoup its outlay in no time at all.

It;s hard to believe that with no tweaking or settings to play with images can get that compressed and still be as clear as they are.

JpegMini competently delivers in it’s promise to compress images without a major loss in clairty.  Recommended.

JpegLite Is Free From The App Store JPEGmini Lite – ICVT Ltd.
JPEG mini with more features, 50mp picture limit and unlimited conversions £14.99
JPEGmini Pro, Lightroom support, all cpu core processor support and MUCH, much more £109.99