While doing some research on front end website performance, I came across this presentation
http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2008/public/schedule/detail/2405
[The presentation is a ppt link from that page].
Some of the details are pretty interesting.
Executive summary: Make images smaller in size.

I'm not sure whether imagecache or imageapi is the proper module that could make use of the suggestions.

I'm also aware that the maintainers are probably aware of all the issues, but none the less, it might provide some ideas for increasing performance.

Thanks for the work on the modules!
Regards
Alan

Comments

dopry’s picture

dopry commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

Can you break your request into several simple implementable ideas that contributors may be able to work on? The pngcrush action for imagecache, metadata stripper for imagecache, and image conversion could all be great features.

Can you spec out each feature in a bit of detail, and write up what will be gained by each?

.darrel.

drewish’s picture

drewish commented

yeah i think there were some great points in that slide show but it should really be broken up into an issue for each.

open-keywords’s picture

open-keywords commented
Title: Better Image performance » Intelligent image processing ?

Following up on this presentation, I would suggest to have some intelligence in ImageAPI

For example:
- convert by default any GIF to PNG8
- convert by default small dimensions PNG images to PNG8
- enforce by default the resolution of images to 72dpi (or 96dpi ?) (imagemagick defaults to 100 dpi which results in un-necessary file size for example)
- convert to the target resolution before scaling up or down
- optimize the filter being used for upscale versus downscale
- consider that jpeg are raster images while gif/png8 are composed/built of line drawing, vector graphics, and then use the most appropriate filters when scaling/sharpening/etc... see http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/ for examples
- choose to preserve or not the EXIF information

drewish’s picture

drewish commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (won't fix)

i think these are all great ideas but most would require additional tools to be installed. if people want the various parts please open a new issue for each.