The Optimizer

[321]

I started using the Optimizer in Save Options after Page Speed started griping about my web images not being optimized. But could someone please explain it to me? I mean I used to set a compression level that I could tolerate and it was that simple. Now I get a dialog asking for the same old compression level, then I have to run the optimizer that has another compression setting, then I have to change the file extension back to upper case because the optimizer changes it to lowercase (man-o-man, that REALLY sucks). I can see that the optimizer compression monkeys up the image just like the old compression did, so what is this all for??? After thousands of images, I'm finally more than a little fed up with it and my wrist throbs all the time. How do the old compression level and the optimizer compression level interact? Is it best to compress with one and not the other, both the same, or what?

[LeviFiction]

You don't have to run the optimizer.... And if you prefer to use the optimizer you can actually use it as its own command by going to the File menu and selecting Export->JPG Optimizer so you don't have to go to Options and then go to the optimizer.

But if you don't want to use the optimizer you can just use the regular options.

In X4 the JPG engine is different from previous versions so the compression level results in slightly different sizes and I have noticed that the optimizer also results in slightly different sizes. But so long as you set the compression level to a similar value each time you'll get the same general results. No need to run the optimizer.

I am curious as to why you care if extension is upper or lower case. But whatever.

The only reason to run the optimizer is to actually compare final file sizes. And while I wish they still did this in the basic options dialog, you can usually gauge that certain image sizes will result in similar (not the same by any means but similar) file sizes.

[321]

Thanks. I've been overlooking the export>optimize direct option. Now that I see it, it seems that the other compression level is omitted altogether. So now I'm thinking that they're both the same thing and the other compression level setting is ignored any time the optimizer is used. Otherwise, how could it be skipped and ignored? This is a case where the UI is causing unnecessary confusion with unexplained duplication. So "the optimizer" is simply a separate dialog that takes the place of the old checkmark option? Oh brother.

IMHO, optimization is important for web images because it improves Page Speed ranking.

The case of the extension becomes important after a picture database table for a website has been updated with the details of 1000 new photos (and their file names) that were originally mass processed with Digital Photo Professional with uppercase extensions. Then upon review several hundred unsatisfactory pictures get custom processing in PSP but it attempts to change the case of the extensions. It gets old fast.