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15 Best Free Image Optimization Tools for Image Compression

by Alexandra Bateman on Sep 10, 2023

Do you want to compress your images before uploading them online? Optimizing your images for your photography website will help your site load faster. And, faster loading speeds mean better search engine rankings! In this guide, we will share the best free image optimization tools for image compression.

Speed Up Your Website with Envira Gallery’s Compression Tool

The Compression Tool directly inside Envira Gallery lets you to optimize your images and reduce their file sizes.

The image compression tool is available for users with any paid Envira Gallery subscription (Pro tier or higher).

If you’re using Envira Gallery Lite, head over to our documentation to learn more about upgrading your Envira Gallery license.

If you’ve already upgraded, you’ll just need to update the Envira Gallery plugin before you can begin compressing your images.

Learn how to set up the new Compression Tool inside Envira Gallery so that you can speed up your website and page loading times.

Many photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop optimize images. But, depending on your budget, these programs may be an expense you can’t afford. Luckily, there are a variety of online tools that are free to use and deliver amazing results.

Why should you optimize images? Full size images add considerable load time to your web page, which annoys your users. In fact, studies have shown that users navigate away from pages if they take more than 3 seconds to load! Optimizing your images will greatly help to speed up your website so that you can keep your users on your site.

Let’s take a look at the best free image optimization tools for image compression:

Best Free Image Optimization Tools for Image Compression

1. JPEG Optimizer

JPEG Optimizer

JPEG Optimizer allows you to upload and compress your photos online. This simple tool works, as its name implies, only on JPEG files.

What’s great about JPEG Optimizer is that it allows you to resize your images before you optimize. Resizing your images will save you even more loading time, and with this online platform you don’t have to split your workflow into two steps.

JPEG Optimizer also allows you to select your own optimization level, which lets you control the quality of your optimized image. This feature is especially important for photographers, since you’ll want to find the sweet spot between preserving quality and saving space.

2. Optimizilla

Optimizilla

Optimizilla manages to reproduce great quality in your images with lowest file size possible. And you can compress both your JPEG and PNG photos with this tool. 

Optimizilla also features a slider which shows you the before and after version of your photo. That way, you can preview the quality of your image before continuing. With the slider, you can decide how much you want to optimize your image before you experience any noticeable quality loss.

This online tools is great for batch processing. Optimizilla allows you to upload up to 20 images at a time and to set the compression level for each photo separately.

Unfortunately, since Optimizilla only works on JPEG and PNG files, you won’t be able to use it to optimize your PDFs. Some others on this list will be better suited for PDF optimization.

3. Kraken.io

Kraken.io

Kraken.io is another bulk image optimizer. With Kraken.io, you can optimize bulk quantities of JPEG, PNG and animated GIF files.

Unlike other image optimizer on this list, Kraken.io optimizes your files for the lowest size. That is, with Kraken.io, you’ll always get the smallest file size version of the image you input. Then, you can download the compressed photos one at a time or in a .zip format. 

Kraken.io also allows you to export files to Dropbox or import files from Box, Dropbox or Google drive.

If you’re looking for more advanced features, Kraken.io offers a pro version that comes with a slew of other perks like image resizing capabilities, the ability to input multiple image sources at once, unlimited image size uploads and more.

The free version allows you to compress photo files up to 32 MB each in size and up to a total 100MB of photos. So really, how well Kraken.io will work for you depends on the initial size of the images you want to optimize.

4. Optimole

Optimole is a popular image compression and optimization plugin, made by the same people behind ThemeIsle.

Optimole is a popular image compression and optimization plugin, made by the same people behind ThemeIsle.

It can compress, resize, lazy load and host your images on their CDN.

Of course, the SAAS services aren’t free, but there is a free Optimole plan for you to get started with their system.

The best part is you can install the WordPress plugin on your site and easily optimize your images without having to do much.

Let it roll behind the scenes.

5. ImageRecycle

Image Recycle

ImageRecycle compresses your JPEG, PNG, GIF and PDF images with impressive results. Their drag-and-drop interface lets you drag photos from your desktop to the optimizer for an easy workflow.

The site also offers free website analysis. When you request an analysis, ImageRecycle returns a free report designed to help you understand which images on your site would benefit from optimization to improve your site’s performance.

ImageRecycle has WordPress plugin, Shopify app, Joomla Extension and a Magento extension. If you use any of these other sites, you can use ImageRecycle’s extensions to compress your images instead of navigating to a separate site.

With ImageRecycle, you get access to a 15-day free trial with a 100 MB limit. After that, you can choose to purchase a paid plan — $10 for 1GB, $20 for 3GB and $50 for 10GB.

6. CompressNow

Compress Now

CompressNow is another easy to use optimization tool that allows bulk upload. Simply upload your JPEG, PNG and GIF images from your computer, set a compression percentage for the images and download them to use on your site.

You can drag and drop up to 10 images at a time. But, unlike Optimizilla, CompressNow applies one optimization level to all the photos you upload. If they all require the same compression level, then CompressNow makes your job even easier!

7. Trimage

Trimage

Trimage works well for Linux users to remove EXIF and metadata from images. This image compression tool then compresses your JPEG and PNG images to the highest level possible.

If you’re a Mac or PC user, the other options on this list will be a better bet for your system. Trimage is best suited for Linux users.

8. Online Image Optimizer

Online Image Optimizer

Online Image Optimizer, a Dynamic Drive product, helps you easily optimize images of all major formats, so your photos load faster on your website.

This tools also includes image conversion features, which can help you turn your JPEGs into PNGs for use online.

Unlike some other image optimizers, Online Image Optimizer also lets you upload images via URL. That means you can optimize images already on your website! In the long run, that saves you time and the effort of replacing the old image with the optimized version online.

Online Image Optimizer only permits you to upload one image at a time, though, and that image can have a maximum file size of 2.86 MB.

9. Tiny PNG

Tiny PNG

Tiny PNG is one of the oldest and most popular free image optimization tools. With tons of possibilities to compress images for your site, this online tool works great for JPEG and PNG image files.

It allows you to upload up to 20 images in one go and up to 100 images a month. The image size for each image cannot exceed 5 MB, but for most that won’t be an issue. After the compression, you can download the compressed images to your computer or easily save them to Dropbox.

Tiny PNG also offers a WordPress plugin and Magento extension, so that you don’t have to go to navigate away from your own website to compress your images.

10. Resize Photos

Resize Photos

Resize Photos is yet another free image compression tool for image optimization. You can also use Resize Photos to resize your images for use on your site, in emails or on forums.

Simply upload your images to the online page and set the compression level between 1-100. Then, download your compressed photos!

You can also use their site to apply image effects from their gallery during the optimization process. These effects include captions, photo effects, borders, reflections, shadows and rounded corners.

11. GiftOfSpeed

Gift of Speed

GiftOfSpeed offers a host of compression tools to optimize your PNG and JPEG images. It applies multiple image compression techniques to minimize the file sizes to lowest size possible.

With GiftOfSpeed, you can resize images for a greater performance online, as well.

The downside of this tool is that you can only upload multiple files for PNG optimization, not for JPG optimization.

12. Compressor.io

Compress io

Compressor.io makes sure that you don’t loose the image quality while also achieving the high compression levels.

It’s an amazing tool known for its flexibility to optimize JPEG, PNG, GIF and SVG files easily. Compressor.io has the ability to reduce file sizes up to 90% or more!

Once again, Compressor.io’s downfall comes in its upload restrictions. You can’t use Compressor.io to optimize more than one image file at a time.

13. JPEGmini

JPEG Mini

JPEGmini sends your images on a diet! It shrinks the file size of your images, so you can enjoy the best image loading speed online. It has a better interface than some of the other choices, with an option to upgrade to their Pro version.

Upload your image, then use the slider to view the before and after versions of your photo. You’ll see that JPEGmini maintains the quality of the image after compression.

14. Convert Image

Convert Image

Convert Image compresses JPEG images on the go. This online image optimization tool allows you to convert the JPEG photos into other image formats like BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG and more. It even has some onboard settings which can reverse your image, crop, straighten an image and more.

15. PNGGauntlet

PNG Gauntlet

PNGGauntlet works specifically with PNG image files. This downloadable software combines with multiple compressors like PNGOUT, OptiPNG and DeflOpt to compress your images without effecting the image quality. It will also work to convert and compress JPG, GIF, TIFF and BMP to PNG files. 

On the downside, it does take a little longer to optimize than some of the other options.

Free Image Optimization is Within Reach with These Free Image Optimization Tools

We hope this guide has helped you to find the best free image optimization tools for image compression. After you’ve optimized your website photos, you may want to check out our popular guides on optimization:

Or, try our top articles for more information on photography and photo editing:

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author avatar
Alexandra Bateman

Comments

  1. For me what works best on mac is a combination of Jpegmini and optimimage.
    I usually do it 2-3 times each for the same photo until I get what I want.

  2. I am just learning the basics of on-site SEO, I was surprised by how
    it was so in-depth-luckily I had a few useful blogs though
    Bookmarked your blog, I have to keep up to date with your posts

  3. Hello friends , I find a new online tools to compress my image size and i got speedup my page loading , i mean you should try it to reduce your image and speedup your webpage loading.

  4. I am using image compresion api’s for a while now . Tiny png and cloudinary are the best out there . I dont understand how cludinary did,nt make it to the list. No other vendor can resize and compress image faster and better then cloudinary . Cloudinary is a premium service by the way . But it deserves a look.

  5. I would have loved some offline utilities/apps. Online ones come with a lot of limitations for free users and recurring monthly/yearly fees, whereas most applications are a one-time buy and you don’t need to be online the whole time to work with them.

  6. I use JPEG optimizer tool, which compress the image better.. when i have png image with transparent background then use the tinypng site.

  7. This is a great help. I use Adobe Fireworks which works great at cropping & optimizing but it stripes out the all exif data. It can be added back in but there is so much camera data, I’m looking at alternatives.

  8. There are many online image optimizer. The challenge is to ensure the quality so that there is no significant impact for end user. This has good compression and does not deteriorate quality

  9. Interesting and valuable article. I am always wondering if the sites from which we receive services like these keep – if they care – our images in this case. It is impossible to read the contracts.

    Thanks for the info!

  10. I have had good results with a program called Turbo Image Compressor. I don’t like uploading my images to random websites and so I prefer to use offline utilities.
    Turbo Image Compressor has a nice feature set such as compressing JPEGs based on a desired file size in Kilobytes, compression quality slider, shrink by max width or max height in pixels and batch processing of course. I like my images around 250-300kb for my web pages and this application is perfect for this use case, I don’t have to fiddle with settings to get the desired file size and it’s very easy to use. It is available to download from Softpedia

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