How to convert photos?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I know some other tools allow for setting a desired MB output for files, but our system doesn't quite work that way. We care very much about optimizing photos while retaining the highest visual quality - to ensure that the end user sees a great product that isn't degraded.

We consider it a win to deliver a high-quality visual that the end user can't tell has been optimized.

To try this out - upload an image to your media library. Here is a sample in our demo account.

https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/sample.jpg

This is a standard jpeg, not optimized, with a size of 117.43 KB

Adding in two of our most common optimization parameters "f_auto,q_auto", the file size drops to 40.48 KB while retaining the original visual quality.

https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/f_auto,q_auto/sample.jpg

Manually setting the visual quality to q_1 will produce a smaller file - 3.14 KB, but as you can see the visual quality drops significantly

https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/f_auto,q_1/sample.jpg

Another good way to save file size is to make the image dimensions smaller this version with a width of 100 pixels is also a smaller file: 3.79 KB

https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/f_auto,q_auto,w_100/sample.jpg

More information on these optimization parameters here:

https://cloudinary.com/documentation/image_optimization#automatic_format_selection_f_auto

https://cloudinary.com/documentation/image_optimization#automatic_quality_selection_q_auto

https://cloudinary.com/documentation/image_optimization#how_to_optimize_image_sizing