There isn’t much you can do to tweak the low-level configuration (besides the quality setting), but one thing you can check is to see which image library WordPress is using. If it’s using GD, you can usually get better results by enabling the Imagick or Gmagick extensions. Check with your webhost to find out how to do that for your particular platform. For cPanel webhosts, there will often be a PHP settings or PHP modules/extensions section where you can find those available.
Thanks for the reply Nosilver! I’ll check on those options. Present quality is nearly unacceptable… MTN
You got me thinking… perhaps I was doing a double or triple Jpeg compression workflow? Sure enough, in functions.php I had following
//add_filter( ‘jpeg_quality’, create_function( ”, ‘return 80;’ ) );
I changed to 100 to disable WordPress default compression, so that all I get is what Imsanity and Watermark do. Much better results.
//add_filter( ‘jpeg_quality’, create_function( ”, ‘return 100;’ ) );
But I’m still not totally happy… I’ll look at your suggestion of Imagick or Gmagick extensions.
Am waiting for you to put Watermark option in your plugin, so we can control any double compression…
Thanks so much, MTN
I’m still not entirely happy with my resulting image quality, it appears the images could benefit from a bit of sharpening. Any way to introduce that? Something in functions.php? Thanks, MTN
Is that with the imagick extension enabled, or still using GD?
I installed a sharpening code snip in functions.php, but the code has a depreciated function in it, I can’t find any updates. In any case, adding the sharpening pretty much does the trick and makes the images pop again, though it’s sometimes too much.
Still using GD, server company says they won’t support either Imagick or GD, but apparently they do install GD by default. Is there any additional overhead, server load, website loading time, with use of Imagick? I’m reluctant to try anything new, as these dang stacks of software seem to be tenuous. Thanks for help.
MTN
If they don’t know what GD is, you need a new hosting company…
That aside, there shouldn’t be any additional overhead with imagick, it’s just an optional PHP module that most operating systems have available with a couple quick commands (and most decent webhosts have available with a simple checkbox). There are some advanced things you can do with imagick that would use more resources, but WordPress has tried to keep things pretty minimal on that front.
I think they knew what it was, just didn’t “support” it. Typical. I’ve been through a lot of ISPs, none are really that great in my opinion. I think Imagick is available as an option, if I want to invoke it, so I’ll check it out. Thanks for the thoughts. MTN
