It’s tempting to get killer photography back from your latest shoot and post it straight to your website, but DO NOT do it! Trust us… Uploading large files will not only slow your website down, but it KILLS your Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Don’t worry though, it’s easy to resize images with PicMonkey!
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Resize Images with PicMonkey Before You Upload Them to Your Website
Step 2: Once your image has loaded, choose ‘Save’ or ‘Export,’ depending on the version of PicMonkey you are utilizing. A dialogue box will appear with all of the details regarding your image (see left-hand image below – this is the original aspects of your image file). As you can see, our original image is HUGE – it’s 3318px x 2212px. PicMonkey automatically selects their mid-grade ‘Pierce’ setting – this is a DPI, or resolution setting. The current file is 1.6MB. No Bueno for your website!
Pixels are a unit of measurement typically used for web graphics.
Step 3: Let’s begin to manipulate the photo to decrease the size. Lower the dimensions to the a size that is acceptable, but isn’t the smallest that it could be for your website. PicMonkey will balance the photo automatically – if you reset the length, it will reset the width automatically. Now, our file is 800px x 533px and is only 157.0KB. Much better, but not there yet!
Step 4: Change the image settings to PicMonkey‘s lowest resolution setting, Roger. This setting is fine for the web and will drastically lower the file size of the image, in most cases. NOTE: We have seen this setting affect certain colors, such as red. Be sure to look at the image preview as you are resizing. In this example, our image is now at 122.5KB. Can it get any better? We would like the image to be under 100KB.
Step 5: Change the dimensions to what is acceptable to your website’s theme. If you can tolerate a smaller image – do so! The smallest size and file size that your website will display appropriately is what you want to choose. In this case, our image is now 675px x 450px and under our 100KB goal, at 96.8KB. It’s now a go!
Best Practices for Uploading Images to Your Website:
1. Images for the web are not the same as images you would print. Since we view websites and online content on our computers, tablets and most frequently, on our phones, the image depth or resolution is less than would be required to be printed.
2. NEVER upload an image to your website over 200KB. Always, always, resize images. One or two of that size won’t kill your load speed, but almost all of your images should be 100KB or less – why risk it?!
3. Read the #1 Mistake Bloggers Make with their Images – and don’t make it!
4. Be sure to include Image Alt Tags with ALL of the Images you add to your website.
Is this how you resize your photos? What is your favorite method?
Tiffany
Oh this is a lesson I need… I have not figured out picmonkey yet! You’d think a caveman would be able to do it! 😛
gwingal
I haven’t used Picmonkey since high school; it looks like its functions have improved since then. I will have to check it out again! Thanks for the great information 🙂
This is great to know! I had no idea that my photo size affected my SEO. I’ll have to do this in the future.
I use Canva and picmonkey and there are things I like about each of them!! Pic Monkey is amazing tho!!
Just pinned this because I need all the help I can get. You make it look so easy!
I love Picmonkey! I use it for so much more than people give it credit for