Server scaled images affecting web speed

Hi platingpixels. Ah, the wonderful world of managing images in WP. There are so many variables at work when images get uploaded/resized/cropped that it’s easy to become frustrated. Here’s a reference to give you an idea of what happens. Don’t know how much help I can be, as there’s no “silver bullet”, but hopefully you’ll find something useful here.

Image Height and Width
I don’t know if specifying these attributes are necessary; here’s one take on it:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-specify-image-dimensions?replies=7

Image Sizes
This is how the image sizes are calculated on the home page:
Site width 1380
sidebar – 340
30px padding – 30
———————–
post row = 1010
article 50% = 505
30px margin – 30
———————–
post width = 475

The theme uses the thumb-medium (520×245) image for the default post layout. The image is scaled proportionately to fill 100% of the post width (475px) so the height works out to 224px. Your GTMetrix report stated:

http://i1.wp.com/www.platingpixels.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/15-Brilliant-and-Unique-Breakfast-Recipe-Ideas-2.jpg?resize=520%2C245 is resized in HTML or CSS from 520×245 to 287×135. Serving a scaled image could save 15.6KiB (69% reduction).

Not sure where it sees a 287×135 image. In any case yYou might try using an image optimizing plugin like EWW Image Optimizer or WP Smush.it and see if that helps.

Remove Query Strings
Here is a plugin you can try for removing query strings:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/remove-query-strings-from-static-resources/