Resizing and compressing images for web

One of the most common questions I get when I’m working on someone’s website is “how big should my images be?”. Great question! The quick answer is as small as possible.

There are two things to consider – image size (eg, 1920×1080 pixels) and file size (eg, 5MB, 250KB etc). I usually resize images to roughly 1920×1080 pixels (or 1080×1080 pixels for things like instagram) and compress files down to about 200KB.

The main thing to remember is this – the bigger the file, the longer the image takes to load on your website. So in this case, small is best!

Most stock images you download will be fairly large (anything from 5MB upwards). In this video I’m using an image I downloaded from Unsplash as an example of how to resize and compress your image ready for use on your website. I’m using a free online tool called ImageResizer.com. You can do the same thing using loads of different free and paid apps, including Canva, Photoshop, TinyPNG … the concept is the same regardless of the app you use.