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Do graphics affect loading of a website?
kallayprasanth05
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Joined: 05 Jan 13
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16 May 13 11:25 am

Do graphics affect loading of a website?

It is indeed true that a website looks exquisite if it is decked with lovely graphics. What is more important is that graphics should be added only if necessary and should be relevant to the content and the niche of the site. At the same time do they affect the loading of the site?
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toprecruit
Posts: 103
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16 May 13 1:44 pm

 Yes, every image affects the load time of your site but as long as you keep the size very low for each image you wont even notice. My images usually have 20-40 KB data.
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michellerana
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16 May 13 3:47 pm

 Graphics affect your website speed. The larger the byte size, the slower the reading of the page. Thus you should use image files that are clear even if it has low resolution.
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promocode
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16 May 13 11:36 pm

 "At the same time do they affect the loading of the site?"

as others have noted, yes indeed, images with indeed slow down a webpages load time which can affect your seo results and these days people will just click back rather than wait.

If you are creating your images with photoshop, you can keep the bytes down by selecting "save for web" rather than simply "save as png, jifs or gifs" - alternately you can use a number of online solutions to optimize and shrink the file size. One that I have used is:
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/
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jimcoe
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17 May 13 5:58 pm

 As noted above, the file size of your images has a big impact on page load speed. I recommend JPEG compression to as small a file size as image quality will allow. I try for a max image file size of 20 KB to 50 KB (30 KB or less if at all possible).

As a Visual Communication expert and Photoshop master, the "Save for Web..." jpg compression in Adobe Photoshop is the best compression I've seen.

Sometimes using a GIF image file format and lowering the color palette to the fewest colors possible will beat JPEG compression though. In the PNG file format, I find it more difficult to reach small file sizes.

I also recommend using the "Pingdom" page load speed test to see the affect of image file size for each of your page's images. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

Be sure to set the Pingdom server city for your tests with the "Settings" link.

Hope this helps...
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Site Admin
maryt
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Joined: 16 Apr 12
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22 May 13 10:22 am

 I agree with every comment above. Each content (including graphics) that you put in your website has a corresponding file size that affects your site loading speed.

Jim Coe is right that you need a website speed test analyzer/tool to know which files are too large enough that contributes to your site loading speed.

Mary
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