Can you make sense of the “model release” page on their website? For example, this image is free for commercial use, but I see nothing about a model release. Would that mean the image could not be used on a commercial website or in a printed flyer or product package, etc?
@JDW and therein lies just one of the problems in using these images. You have people uploading images to websites like Unsplash without having the slightest clue about issues, such as property or model releases that place others at risk when publishing those images on their own websites.
Without wanting to get off topic, all these image compression tools are to my mind just a way to avoid doing the job properly. Often I see sites with images that render at max 768px wide on the screen (when a col stacks), yet images over 2000px are used. Checking the sites it’s not a re-use of a full size render elsewhere, it’s just been pulled straight from Unsplash and dropped in. This is just bad practice: Resize your images to the max needed in a photo app and save with a sensible level of compression.
I’ve been using Affinity Photo lately and even if I run the images thru ImageOptim afterwards it never compresses it further, and that’s with IO set to compress by the most possible. So I’ve concluded the compression tools in Photo are pretty good (certainly better than PS IMO).
My other bugbear is adding images as backgrounds when there is no need. You’re wasting SEO!
So do I, but only on PNG images and using the Optimization Level set to “Insane.” Most of my PNG files almost always get smaller after being run through ImageOptim.
It would be worth comparing ImageOptim with TinyPNG and noting that all compression is effectively a compromise between quality and file size. You reach a point where you might save a couple kb but the image looks like a dogs dinner.
Due to changes in the way that website content is delivered nowadays, page weight is not quite so important as it used to be and we need to look more at points like reducing latency.
Blocs 3 with Pulse CMS (although testing Volt CMS)
Oxygen & Divi for Wordpress Sites
2DO for project task tracking (Only task app that supports start dates!) - on SetApp
Airmail (has 2Do integration) although testing Spark
Devonthink 3 - Asset management
ImageOptim with “Guetzli tool” enabled - nothing beats it!
TapForms - Created Database to track every project setting, a lifesaver!
Pixelmator - for image editing (“Pro” won’t work on my Mac…)
Toggl - For time tracking. Free version is enough for my needs
WaveApps - for biz accounting/bookeeping/invoiceing (and it’s free!)
Forklift FTP - after Yummy disappeared… - on SetApp
Google Drive - for all my “office docs/spreadsheet” needs
Busycal - for all my Calendar needs - on SetApp
Bartender - keep that menu bar organized! - on SetApp
CleanShot - screen capture and recording - on SetApp
Mosaic - keeps my desktop organized - on SetApp
Yoink - for moving files between apps - on SetApp
A big chunk of these are all on SetApp - an awesome subscription to have! Other software that I use from time-to-time are mostly on Setapp like “Be Focused” - “Cloudmounter” - “Dropshare” - “PhotoBulk” and a bunch of others
First of all I made a mistake with the name. was typing fast. I apologize on any lost time trying to track that down…
The name is Crunch
Crunch is a customized version of pngquant with a shell script and some extras. When Crunch came out imageOptim did not do lossy compression and it does now. It also did not run as a service which I preferred. But you have to know what your doing and most people will convince themselves they don’t need lossy anyway. Crunch now runs as a service on my Mac.
I love imageOptim but I still use Crunch for some things. You probably don’t need them both if you are satisfied with imgaeOptim.
First understand that this is for specific use cases hence my use of “super aggressive”. It’s going to strip out the data and has a lossy approach to compression.
To understand how this compares with imageOptim read this.
That huge caveat basically undermines the entire premise of Pixabay and one would be foolish to rely on the service. Think about it. Even if you don’t need to use photos of people right now, you might grow accustomed to the service and then use a photo of a person in the future without thinking, and then you won’t have the silly model release and it could come back to bite you really hard. It’s crazy. It’s kind of like luring people in with all of the free photos only to trap them indirectly by means of a legal gotcha. Let’s be honest. We want the free photos without the legal gotchas.
I usually pass my 24-bit PNG files through tinyPNG to drop the color depth to 8-bit (to reduce the file size). I then pass the resulting 8-bit PNGs through ImageOptim for further compression, which usually takes them down another 10%. But again, you need to make sure you are ImageOptim setting is set to Insane.
And if you’re wondering, yes, tinyPNG does the best conversion of 24-bit PNG’s to 8 bit PNG‘s – even better than Photoshop.
