Save Bandwidth by Optimizing your Blog’s PicturesWritten by Abdulrehman on November 8th, 2008
It is a well-known fact that 9/10th of your downloading while browsing is of pictures and the bigger their size is the more bandwidth will be used for both the Client and the Server. Recently I checked out Ken’s Blog where he showed the fruit of his 17 years of hard work in building a Lamborghini Countach following a life-long dream. Now a story like this would grab heaps of Spikey traffic to the website in minutes, and it actually did. It did so to such an extent that the extra traffic cost him $957 because of a limited bandwidth account for which he normally paid $8.
Now, others may take out various reasons for this overage bill, but I’d give just two reasons:
- The hosting package had a pretty low bandwidth transfer, i.e. 300 GB per month.
- Most images on the website are not optimized and are more than 1 MB per image(Approximately)
The front page has three of these pictures which means any visitor to the front page would have to simply download more than 3.2 MB to see the Home Page, despite the fact that for such interesting content people always view other pages. A dial-up user with a speed of 56K would have to wait 9 Minutes to view the home page. Whereas, if the same pictures were optimized more than 1.5 MB per visitor could be saved. Now probably Ken and people like him do not know how to optimize a picture, so know I’ll show you how to optimize a picture for use on a website/blog, you just can’t put a picture that you just took from your camera on the website. I’ll be using a picture from Ken’s home page for this.
It is very simple, but you need to have Adobe Photoshop for this which is a professional software used for editing and making new pictures and graphics. Once you have opened it, press Ctrl+O and select the picture you want to optimize. Once the picture is opened go to File > Save For Web or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S, then you shall be able to get to the screen below and click on the picture below to know what to do next:
A simple test on one of his images, below are 2 links the first to the original image, and the second to the same image which was optimized by me, the difference is of 1.13 MB which is a lot:
- Original Image ( Size = 1362KBs)
- Optimized Image ( Size = 122KBs )
View both images, and decide for yourself if you can spot any difference between the two, as there wasn’t even a reduction in the size. It is not only for Ken but some other bloggers also upload their picutres in raw state, so it is better that you follow these easy steps and save your bandwidth. So do yourself and your reader a favor.
*This information and image from Ken’s blog was taken on 7th November and current display may differ.
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It is a well-known fact that 9/10th of your downloading while browsing is of pictures and the bigger their size is the more bandwidth will be used for both the Client and the Server. Recently I checked out Ken’s Blog where he showed the fruit of his 17 years of hard work in building a Lamborghini Countach following a life-long dream. Now a story like this would grab heaps of Spikey traffic to the website in minutes, and it actually did. It did so to such an extent that the extra traffic cost him $957 because of a limited bandwidth account for which he normally paid $8.
Now, others may take out various reasons for this overage bill, but I’d give just two reasons:
- The hosting package had a pretty low bandwidth transfer, i.e. 300 GB per month.
- Most images on the website are not optimized and are more than 1 MB per image(Approximately)
The front page has three of these pictures which means any visitor to the front page would have to simply download more than 3.2 MB to see the Home Page, despite the fact that for such interesting content people always view other pages. A dial-up user with a speed of 56K would have to wait 9 Minutes to view the home page. Whereas, if the same pictures were optimized more than 1.5 MB per visitor could be saved. Now probably Ken and people like him do not know how to optimize a picture, so know I’ll show you how to optimize a picture for use on a website/blog, you just can’t put a picture that you just took from your camera on the website. I’ll be using a picture from Ken’s home page for this.
It is very simple, but you need to have Adobe Photoshop for this which is a professional software used for editing and making new pictures and graphics. Once you have opened it, press Ctrl+O and select the picture you want to optimize. Once the picture is opened go to File > Save For Web or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S, then you shall be able to get to the screen below and click on the picture below to know what to do next:
A simple test on one of his images, below are 2 links the first to the original image, and the second to the same image which was optimized by me, the difference is of 1.13 MB which is a lot:
- Original Image ( Size = 1362KBs)
- Optimized Image ( Size = 122KBs )
View both images, and decide for yourself if you can spot any difference between the two, as there wasn’t even a reduction in the size. It is not only for Ken but some other bloggers also upload their picutres in raw state, so it is better that you follow these easy steps and save your bandwidth. So do yourself and your reader a favor.
*This information and image from Ken’s blog was taken on 7th November and current display may differ.
i was right....
I am Abdulrehman Agha, the guy behind 3arn.Net. I am 16 years old, study in grade 10 and live in Pakistan. I started this blog in the hope of making money on the internet, sharing my computer experiences and proving that despite many barriers, one can make money on the internet.
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hey nice useful information……
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hey nice post i think it will help the bloggers….
at free time visit my blog …if possible give ur suggestion to improve
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yea abduls right optimizing blogs pic helps alot cuz nowadays copy rights are no longer protected n in my opinion 3arn.net is the best source to earn as well as gain knowledge and in IT so best of luck Mr Abdul cuz i Know ur blog will reach huge heights.
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the later one definitely be faster and also there are not much visually difference.
reduce your file size do work perfectly.
: )
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Just because more people have access to DSL and Cable doesn’t mean sites should abandon dial-up visitors. There are still vast regions of the united states and definately in other countries that have access no fast than dial-up. Cutting them out of the picture isn’t a smart marketing move.
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A usefull tool for those of us without photoshop is evjo pic resizer. Works with single pics or whole directories at a time. You can get it from evjosoft.com for free although it is donationware.
Another alternative is to use a photohosting site and load the pics from there. Saves me a ton of bandwidth and also earns a bit. You can see it in action on my site.
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its the most useful info every blogger needs.if u find time pls comment on me.
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Thats a good trick.It really saves a lot of bandwidth.
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Oh yeah this is an important tip. Saving bandwidth means saving money!
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