How to optimize photos for the web
You took a great photo. Edited, cropped, done. You upload it to your website and a day later someone else looks at it. What that person sees depends not only on how good the photo is. It also depends on how fast the page loads. That sounds like a technical problem, and it is. But it is a technical problem that directly affects photographers, because a slow website costs you visitors. And if you present your work online, sell workshops or want to reach clients, that is not a minor detail.
Why file size matters
A photo straight out of Capture One or Lightroom is large. Not large in terms of pixels, but large in terms of megabytes. A RAW file is easily 30 to 50 MB. An exported JPEG at high quality quickly lands at 8 to 15 MB. On a website, you do not need that. A screen displays a maximum of 72 to 96 pixels per inch. A print needs 300. All that extra information in a web photo does nothing except increase load time. Google looks at load time as one of the factors for search engine optimization. A page that loads slowly ranks lower. And a visitor who waits three seconds clicks away. That applies to everyone, but especially to photographers who have portfolios or workshop pages with multiple images on a single page.
Where things go wrong
The most common problem is simple: photographers export for web using the same settings as for print. High resolution, high quality, large file. It looks great, but it loads slowly. A second problem is format. JPEG has been the standard for web photos for years, but WebP is now supported by all major browsers and delivers smaller files at equal quality. Many photographers do not know this, or export to JPEG by default because that is what they have always done. A third problem is dimensions. If you upload a photo that is 4000 pixels wide, but your website displays it at 1200 pixels, the browser still downloads the full file and only scales it down afterwards. That is wasted data.
What the right settings are
For most websites: export your photos at a maximum of 1500 to 2000 pixels wide, JPEG or WebP, quality between 75 and 85 percent. That is more than enough for most screens, and the file size stays manageable. If your photos are meant for a fullscreen background or a large hero image, you can go to 2400 pixels, but do not go higher than necessary. The quality percentage is where photographers most often get it wrong. They set it to 95 or 100 because they are afraid of quality loss. But the difference between 85 and 95 percent is barely visible on a screen, while the file at 85 percent is noticeably smaller.
Not just smaller, but smarter
Compressing is one thing. But there are two more things that help when optimizing web photos. First: give your files a descriptive name. Not IMG_4823.jpg, but portrait-woman-amsterdam.jpg. Search engines read file names. It costs nothing and it helps your visibility. Second: fill in the alt text when you upload photos to your website. That is the text a screen reader reads aloud and that Google uses to understand what is in a photo. Many photographers leave this empty, while it is an easy way to get more out of your existing content.
How I do it myself
I export from Capture One to a separate folder for web. Maximum 1800 pixels wide, JPEG at 82 percent quality. I set that once and have not touched it since. It works for everything I put online: portfolio images, workshop photos, blog images. For compressing after export, I use the image optimizer at apps.michielheijmans.com. You load your photos in, the tool compresses and scales them without visible quality loss, and you download them ready to upload. No installation, no subscription for the basic version, just in your browser. The tool is connected to the website checker, so you can also see directly whether your pages are loading fast enough. And if you are working on your crop, you can move straight from the same environment to the crop tool. That sounds like advertising, and it is a little. But I built the tool because I needed something that worked quickly without hassle. If it works for me, it will probably work for you too.
What you can do today
Open your website. Load a page with multiple photos and see how long it takes. If you are waiting more than two seconds on a normal wifi network, there is work to be done. Check the file sizes of your uploaded photos. Most CMS systems, such as Squarespace or WordPress, show that information in the media library. Anything above 500 kilobytes for a regular web photo is too large. And if you want to upload new photos: take a moment to optimize them first. It is a small step that makes your website noticeably faster, and gives the people viewing your work a better experience. The image optimizer is ready when you want to get started.