Today I have found tinypng wordpress plugin which has capability to compress PNG images up to 70% and that without losing quality. One of the biggest advantage of using this plugin it is that it has capability to preserve alpha transparency.
We all know that png images always look better than jpeg, gif and other image formats. One of the biggest reason for this is that PNG files can handle more colors and can support up to 64 bits of color indexation. This directly affects the quality of the pictures and that’s the reason why most of the photographers and designers prefer this format.
But along with elegance the size of the file also increases. And that’s the reason why it’s not perfect choice to be used for web design. Today we all know the importance of website speed and even an increase in 1KB of file size can impact your websites performance. So usually you are suggested to consider using JPEG and gif format images for your blog posts and tutorials. You can also use PNG file but you should consider using 8-bit based images as they carry less information and have less color complexion.
Tinypng wordpress plugin.
WordPress core by default has capability to compress jpeg format images to 90%. So this means whenever you upload any image of this format to your blog they will automatically get optimized and their quality will be reduced to 90%. So overall you can say that WordPress really cares for your blog performance.
But WordPress core doesn’t have any compression technique for PNG files. So by this you can conclude that you will have to use any other third party service or software to optimize your images. Now one another big problem with these third-party services is that most of them are not able to handle alpha transparency. This means, if your image has any transparent background then after compression those blank background will be turned into black color. And trust me the quality and elegance will be lost forever.
But this doesn’t happens with tinypng. They use a special technique named as quantisation. In this technique first your image is analyzed for similar colors and once they are found they are combined and converted into 8 bit indexed images. So as a result you get extremely compressed pictures without compromising with quality.
How to install tinypng plugin.
Now let’s take a look at the steps you need to follow in order to install this plugin to your WordPress blog.
- Login to your WordPress Administration panel.
- Now visit to your plug-ins page and click on add new link.
- In the search bar type tinypng and click on search button.
- Now from the search result click on install link and then finally on activate button.
Congratulations you have successfully installed this plugin to your blog. Now you are completely ready to automatically compress PNG images in WordPress.
Configuration settings.
The only requirement of this plug-in is to sign up for their API key. In order to do so you’ll have to visit their developers page. Over here you will have to enter your email address and your full name in order to retrieve an API key. The key will be sent to your email address automatically within few seconds to even a few hours. The delay happens usually because of excessive load to their servers.
Once you get your key go back to the tinypng settings page in your blog and enter your details in the boxes which you will find on the right-hand side of the screen. Finally click on the save button and enjoy better website performance.
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