Recommendation for compressing JPG files with ImageMagick

Question

I want to compress a JPG image file with ImageMagick but can\'t get much difference in size. By default the output size is bigger than the input. I don\'t know why, but afte

Answer 1

If the image has big dimenssions is hard to get good results without resizing, below is a 60 percent resizing which for most of the purposes doesn't destroys too much of the image.

I use this with good result for gray-scale images (I convert from PNG):

ls ./*.png | xargs -L1 -I {} convert {} -strip -interlace JPEG -sampling-factor 4:2:0 -adaptive-resize 60%   -gaussian-blur 0.05 -colorspace Gray -quality 20  {}.jpg

I use this for scanned B&W pages get them to gray-scale images (the extra arguments cleans shadows from previous pages):

ls ./*.png | xargs -L1 -I {} convert {} -strip -interlace JPEG -sampling-factor 4:2:0 -adaptive-resize 60%   -gaussian-blur 0.05 -colorspace Gray -quality 20 -density 300 -fill white -fuzz 40% +opaque "#000000" -density 300 {}.jpg 

I use this for color images:

ls ./*.png | xargs -L1 -I {} convert {} -strip -interlace JPEG -sampling-factor 4:2:0 -adaptive-resize 60%   -gaussian-blur 0.05 -colorspace RGB -quality 20  {}.jpg 

Answer 2

I would add an useful side note and a general suggestion to minimize JPG and PNG.

First of all, ImageMagick reads (or better "guess"...) the input jpeg compression level and so if you don't add -quality NN at all, the output should use the same level as input. Sometimes could be an important feature. Otherwise the default level is -quality 92 (see www.imagemagick.org)

The suggestion is about a really awesome free tool ImageOptim, also for batch process.
You can get smaller jpgs (and pngs as well, especially after the use of the free ImageAlpha [not batch process] or the free Pngyu if you need batch process).
Not only, these tools are for Mac and Win and as Command Line (I suggest installing using Brew and then searching in Brew formulas).

Answer 3

I added -adaptive-resize 60% to the suggested command, but with -quality 60%.

convert -strip -interlace Plane -gaussian-blur 0.05 -quality 60% -adaptive-resize 60% img_original.jpg img_resize.jpg

These were my results

• img_original.jpg = 13,913KB
• img_resized.jpg = 845KB

I'm not sure if that conversion destroys my image too much, but I honestly didn't think my conversion looked like crap. It was a wide angle panorama and I didn't care for meticulous obstruction.

Answer 4

I'm using the Google Pagespeed Insights image optimization guidelines, and for ImageMagick they recommend the following:

-sampling-factor 4:2:0
-strip
-quality 85 [it can vary, I use range 60-80, lower number here means smaller file]
-interlace
-colorspace RGB

Command in ImageMagick:

convert image.jpg -sampling-factor 4:2:0 -strip -quality 85 -interlace JPEG -colorspace RGB image_converted.jpg

With these options I get up to 40% savings in JPEG size without much visible loss.