In my endeavor to start a blog with WordPress, I’ve come to realize how important it is to resize images. A smaller file size means less bandwidth for you and your viewers and consequently affects load times. In this blog post, I show you how to resize images using the GIMP image software. It’s wonderful to use, has tons of features and did I mention, it’s free!
GIMP can be downloaded here. Once installed, download the Save for Web plugin. Unpack the zip file and you should behold an executable or .exe file Next, and the toughest part, locate your GIMP plugin directory by going to Edit > Preferences. You should see something like this:
GIMP Preferences
As you can tell from above, my system plugin directory (the second one in the list) is in the following directory:
C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins
So that’s where I’d copy it to. For good measure, quit and restart GIMP and you should now have a new item in File > Save called “Save for Web…”
GIMP Save for Web Window
Using PNG-8, a sample file I had lying around shrank from 186kb to 48kb, a decrease in size of 74%. Of course YMMV depending on the image used and color palette. Bare in mind, there is a way to do this without the plugin by going to Image > Mode > Indexed and playing around with the settings.
What you used for this blog post:
- GIMP
- Save for Web Plugin
- A sample file (of course…)