How To Optimize Images For Your Blog with Photoshop

Optimizing your images for your Blog is critical,if you want to reduce the load time of your Blog.Whether it’s a Personal blog or a business blog, without images your blog don’t appeal. But more images means longer load time (if you don’t optimize your images),and you don’t want that. So how do you optimize your images, before uploading ? There are plugins for word press blogs, but I don’t think there’s any for Blogger(If there is any, may be ,I have not come across). This is a very simple step by step Photoshop tutorial where You can easily optimize your images in a few steps in Photoshop.

Step 1: Open your Image in Photoshop. From the Menu click on Image – than Image size – Photoshop will show the present size of the image in pixels. Make sure to keep the resolution at 72 and check the box that says “Constrain proportions” at the bottom. Under the Width and Height at the top you can put the size (in pixels) according to your choice, but since we are optimizing it for the web, smaller the size the better, I size of 300 px to 400 px should be good enough for the web.Since we have already checked the “Constrain proportions” what ever figure (size) you put under the width, the height also will be automatically calculated. Than click on OK, Photoshop will resize your photo.

Step 2: If you want to do some tweaking to your photo, you can do it now before saving it for the web. For example you can adjust the brightness and contrast, levels or sharpness of the photo etc, all these options you will get under the “Image – Adjustments “ and  filter menu of Photoshop.

Step 3: Once you are satisfied with the photo, now its time to save it. Click on the File menu and from the drop down menu choose “ Save for Web and Devices” as shown below.

Step 4: Once you select the save for web and devices option , you will get the following window. Here on the right side of the window check the box “Optimize” (by default it should be checked), than choose JPEG for the format and quality to “ Medium”., the remaining options can be left as it is.Now click on the save button, Photoshop will save your optimized image in to the folder you specify.

That’s it. with this simple 4 step you can easily optimize your photos for the web in Photoshop. You can play around with the settings in Photoshop if you are not satisfied with the outcome, for example in the quality section you can use “High” instead of medium, but remember the size of the Image will increase, defeating the very purpose of this tutorial.

Hope this simple Tutorial was of help. How do you normally optimize your Images for the web ? Any better option ? share with us.
Posted By: Ben Jamir