Image size (in kB)

-- url of the page with the problem -- : on local dev server
-- HikaShop version -- : Business 2.3.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.2.3
-- PHP version -- : 5.3.27
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : irrelevant
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : none

Dear Support,

I went back into last year searching here for similar posts, but maybe I'm the only one noticing that HikaShop seems to tend "inflating" image size in kB? I guess we agree that we want to keep file (= image) sizes as small as possible to keep page loads fast.

At this point it's about category/manufacturer images - haven't checked product images yet, though I suspect it'll be an issue there as well. Which is why I'm making this such a lengthy post...

FYI, I won't use images for product categories, but for manufacturers. There'll be many, and I'll do a logo listing page with div's (img_title). However, the largest pixel size I'll ever use on the site for these pix is 120x120px.

So, I set the size in the div settings accordingly: 120x120px.
Then I went through the effort of prepping images as small as possible. PNG with 8 colours and no transparency appeared to be the best quality at smallest size: the test image size turned out to be 2.661kB (here attached as "a.png").

After uploading it via the manufacturer page, I find the following:

• The image displays correctly with max 120x120px in the frontend - good.
• It's still PNG, thankfully no format change has happened.
• When copying the frontend image, it's 7.424kB in size = almost 3 times as large! (I'm attaching it here, too: a_882777240.png)
• Checking the "upload" folder, I do find this very same image in it, plus 2 more versions in these subfolders:

• upload/thumbnails/120x120f: 4.397kB
• upload/thumbnail_100x100: scary 40.221kB!!!

Have other things to do but couldn't wait, so I looked at what happens to product images.

Since it proves to be best for my page width and layouts with div's and product page, after initial tests and measurements I configured the image settings as per screenshot:

1. An image of same name and pixel size (1080x1080px), but over 199kB large!!! Which is the one used on the site in the popup...
2. The 560x560px version of just over 51kB. The one used on product page. Guess it's then logical that it's also the tiny "real thumbnail" next to the large image on the product page.
3. A 280x280px version of over 43kB! Which is seemingly nowhere used.
4. Another 280x280px version of 20kB, which is the one used in div's.
5. The mysterious 100x100px thumbnail of almost 9kB.
6. Another 100x100px version (in folder '100x100f') of little less than 5kB.
7. A magic 50x50px version of just over 2kB.

Thank you very much for your response, Nicolas! That's what I need to know.

Been diagonally through the image.php before, but didn't see this. Will do the needful.

Thanks again!

Sorry Nicolas, need to get back to you on this again:

Tried it out with 2 extremely different quality value sets in image.php.
One like this (this was the default):

$quality = array(
			'jpg' => 95,
			'png' => 9
		);

$quality = array(
			'jpg' => 10,
			'png' => 1
		);

• a 17kB PNG was saved in */upload at a whopping 585kB at the same pixel size (!!!)
• a 83kB JPG became 127kB at same pixel count

Hmm, good if it cannot be a bug in HikaShop, and rather fortunate, I'd say, haha! And if you say so, then it must be true... I was only wondering if something could have been wrong with the handover at your end, but great if not.

Well, then I haven't touched MAMP's guts other than increasing memory and the occasional glance at the logs, and if there were a bug with GD, I'm sure the huge user community would scream. But instead it's silent there, too.

Unless I find time and another extension utilizing GD, let's leave it there at least until I finally move to a hosting server. In dev world a few kB more or less don't matter, and I hope it later proves to be limited to my environment here.

Thanks again so far!

P.S.: Forgot to say, I had deleted thumbs and regenerated them from scratch.

Oh thanks, interesting read on GD.
Hey, I sure didn't expect GD to exceed Photoshop fiddling, haha. But it's shocking to see 17kB exploding to 585kB. That's difficult even with Photoshop without a change of format.....

Interestingly, I was gonna shoot for '70' with JPG's anyway... but that was just a wild guess then. Maybe I should go play the lottery, it seems to be my lucky day... - or can you give me the winning numbers too?

The thing is - well, actually 2 things:

1. With the most extreme swings when testing the Q factor in between HikaShop and my environment there wasn't as much as 10 byte difference. So, something is definitely wrong in the present combo. As said, more testing later with the host server.
2. High numbers for JPG = larger files, better Q. Vice versa for PNG's! Hmm, perhaps you want to keep that in mind for your default settings?
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]Thanks & cheers - now go have a weekend!