Slow image compression, likely because of Newsmag theme

I’m currently having problems on my new WordPress-website to upload new media with automatic image compression. These images are never larger dan 200 kilobytes, but still can take up to a minute (per image!) to upload.

I’ve contacted the developer of the TinyPNG-WordPress plugin (although I also got the same result with Smush It) and said the following:

In the attachment of this mail you can find a basic image (bixby.jpg) which is compressed to around 60-70% using Gimp, a screencapture (Capture.png) of the grey box with the blue bar, and finally of the file compression page you referred to in your mail. It seems around 20 different versions get created. The whole process per images takes well over a minute, so uploading 5-10 images for a basic article is nearly impossible.

They gave me the the following reply:

“There is nothing strange with the image itself. Just compressing that image using the web interface is almost instant for me. I also tried compressing the image using the WordPress plugin using 5 different sizes and that took about 15 seconds. If you have about 20 different sizes then it’s not too strange that it can take a minute or more. There are of course other factors as well that may cause it too take longer but the biggest culprit in this case is the amount of sizes per images that have to be compressed.

My advice would be to check which of these sizes you really need for your site. We see very often that users have themes that have 15+ image sizes for each image but they sometime only use as little as 3 of those sizes. If you can deselect some of those sizes you will immediately gain a huge speedup.”

Could you tell me what the best course of action is?

As it says, disable the image sizes you’re not using from the theme panel.

Also, consider using the built-in compression features of your web server, so that when WP adds items to the media system you have higher compression level than default; and perhaps optimize images in Photoshop prior to upload.

Not sure that helped, but it’s what we do here.

Hey Chris,

Thanks for your feedback. What is the best way to determine which sizes need to be used?

Thanks in advance!

Well, look at the modules you actually use, look at the image sizes, then only enable those. if you were doing new site, I’d suggest turning them all off, and then when you have the default thumbs, then only turn on those sizes.

So, for our site we try to only use ONE size on sidebars, for example, and on home page we try to only use 4 sizes, one of those being same as the sidebar size.

Hey Chris,

Thanks a bunch for your feedback! I’ll first complete building the website (it’s still in development) and then figure out which sizes are being used, after which I will turn the rest off. Just for my information, what happens if I upload an image at a later stage and use a block for which the size has been turned off?

Thanks again and have a good one!

Caitlan’s example with screen shot is what I meant by
…I’d suggest turning them all off, and then when you have the default thumbs, then only turn on those sizes.

Thanks for the information. It’s very helpful!

@Chris S Your answer has cut the waiting time in half, perhaps even a bit more. This is definitely a good solution. Thank you!