Dealing with high-resolution photos can be a real pain simply because of their large file size, and that in turn, takes up more hard drive space. For those of you who upload photos to photo sharing sites, social networks or with PhotoRocket, larger file sizes mean longer upload times and can even cost you more for online storage.
In this article, I’ll show you how to compress photos while retaining their quality through a simple web app called JPEGmini.
How to compress photos without ruining them
JPEGmini is an online image tool that will allow you to compress photos and reduce image sizes while retaining their original quality. It sounds unthinkable but you must try it for yourself and see how well it really works. In fact, you’re not even required to register for anything in order to give it a whirl. Here’s how it works.
To begin giving JPEGmini a try, head to JPEGmini.com and click on the big yellow button labeled Try It Now. On the next screen, you’ll find another big yellow button labeled Select Photos. Clicking that button will bring up a pop-up navigation window allowing you to browse to the picture that you want to compress.
How to compress pictures with JPEGmini
As soon as you select your photo, the process begins. You’ll be able to tell by the uploading symbol on the screen.
Once the uploading is complete, you’ll watch as JPEGmini compresses your photo automatically. Finally, when it’s done (it really doesn’t take all that long), you will see a preview showing how much the image was optimised by and what the new file looks like compared to the original.
While previewing your optimised image, you’ll notice a nifty slider that, as you move your mouse over the photo, the divider line moves with it showing off the changes on the compressed photo. As you can see from the screenshot above, JPEGmini reduced my image size from 4644KB to a meager 757KB with no real difference in photo quality. No complaints!
Finally, you can click the yellow button labeled Download Photo to save the newly compressed photo.
How to optimise images to save space
JPEGmini is totally free to use and there is no sign-up process at all to compress photos one at a time. The process is very simple, short and quick which makes life a whole lot easier. If you do choose to register for an account (which is still free), you’ll get specific benefits:
- You can create albums and compress multiple photos at a time. This feature alone saves a lot of time and hassle.
- You will have some sharing options such as uploading your photographs to Picasa and Flickr. The cool part is being able to send the compressed photos to the social photo sharing sites, making things quite a bit simpler.
- JPEGmini is free for unlimited use. You will have access to your photo albums for only 6 days, giving you sufficient enough time to either download your compressed photos or share them online.
The only real limitation with JPEGmini is that it only works with images formatted as JPEG. You probably already guessed that by the name though, right?
JPEGmini is a good web-based solution to compress photos and reduce image sizes, especially for high-resolution photos.
How do you compress photos and optimise image sizes? Please share your technique with us in the comments.
Arsalan
October 12, 2011
With the cheap as dirt hard drives today, space is not as much of a concern as upload time is. That is why this tool must be offline or work without having to upload the file to be practical.
Jackson Chung
October 13, 2011
That’s a good point, Arsalan. Still, this would be a useful tool for those working with netbooks or want to compress images on the go. Plus, after the image is compressed, you’ll be able to share it instantly without uploading again.