I recently (over the last 4 months) switched my handful of websites from Enfold to Thrive Themes. Thrive themes is a light year better!
Now that ‘the switch’ is done I’ve been messing around with settings and getting things dialed in. Image optimization came up.
Would I need an extra plugin for image optimization?
If you have a regularly updated site, you know about image bloat and how it slows the site down, and makes it difficult to back up. Image optimization was not a question. I just needed it to be good… and I didn’t want an extra plugin, so I decided to just run through the ThriveThemes options.
3 settings in Thrive Themes.
Thrive has 3 default options in the backend of my Focus Blog theme.
No compression. That’s straight forward.
Lossy Compression. 80-90% reduction in size, but still good quality.
Lossless Image. Compress the image as much as possible without lowering quality.
I tested the same image through each setting.
All the uploads came from my Mac.
The exact image size isn’t given in WordPress, so I had to download them to check the file size.
Here’s how they came out!
(this image is a screenshot from my Mac and uploaded to this site through the ‘lossy’ setting so it isn’t 100% true, but you get the idea)
At first glance I couldn’t tell the difference between No Compression and Lossy images. I doubt 99.99999% of internet users would even notice the difference. On top of that is was 80%+ small. WIN.
Upon closer the review the Lossy image did have a slight difference in skin color, but unless I was examining and trying to find a difference, I’d have no clue.
The lossless setting didn’t reduce the size at all and quality looks the same.
Bottom line…
Thrive Themes image optimization, and the Lossy setting are a win if you want to avoid image bloat. I WILL be using this on all my sites going forward!
Related: Thrive Themes Review (After 2 Years of Use & 25+ Websites)