We are excited to announce that we have now added automatic image optimization to all product and other images uploaded through the dashboard. When the image is uploaded for a product it will automatically be sent to our online tool kraken.io which will in real time optimize the image and then send it back for resizing and use on your website. The file is losslessly optimized which basically means it removes the data of the image that is not seen to the normal eye and no reduction in visual image quality is shown. From Krakens's website Reductions in terms of file weight are usually in the 15%-20% range, however sometimes greater savings can be achieved, especially where images have uniformly coloured backgrounds and/or pack lots of metadata. Optimizing Images is also very important to achieve a high speed insight score from Google which is a factor in your SEO Google rankings.
Reduced File size = Faster Loading Times!
For images already on your website you can individually optimize each image by clicking the image optimization option under the image. The optimized image along with the file weight savings will be displayed. 
If the image has already been optimized there will be no difference in the file size of the optimized and original image.
Once you review the image click the option to Save the Optimized File.
Real World Example
For example we took the following product image from one of our customer's websites.The original file size was 88kbs
Original Product image 88Kb - The new optimsied images was only 62Kb a saving of 26kbs almost 30% less file size.
Optimised image 62Kb a saving of 26Kb
In real terms if you have twenty images on a product page that could be a saving of half a mb downloads significantly increasing the speed of your website. You may notice a small increase in the time it takes to upload a new or edit a product image as the image must be sent to the image optimizer and then retrieved in real time.
