JPEGmini - Is it worth it?

You may have heard us singing the praises of a piece of software called JPEGmini. But is it really worth it? JPEGmini is a Mac and Windows app that reduces the file size of your jpeg images. 

The TL;DR summary is: yes, go out and buy it if you are serious about volume or event headshots!

For those that have an extra minute, let’s discuss why we can’t live without this one-trick-pony app.

First, we love JPEGmini because it does what it says it will. It claims to reduce image file size WITHOUT compromising quality. It certainly reduces image size - How much? Well that depends on what you are starting with. Often, I’ll have a non-optimized jpeg image and throw it into jpegMINI and it will spit out an image that is over 50% smaller. You’ll see a big reduction when using Photoshop and Lightroom since they don’t compress their exported jpegs as much as some software. You’ll see a smaller reduction when JPEGmini-ing a file from Capture One, as they have a more efficient jpeg processing engine, but we still see over 20% reduction from what Capture One spits out.

This is all fine and good, but what about the “without compromising quality” bit that they boldly claim? We are not scientists, nor do we claim to be image quality experts - but we cannot for the life of us pick out the difference between an image that has been reduced in JPEGmini and an image that’s straight out of Photoshop / Lightroom / Capture One, etc. There are lots of videos floating around the internet testing the resulting images blown up and printed - and pretty much no one can tell in a blind test. It magically throws aways ones and zeros that have nothing to do with the visible quality of an image. Impressive.

Second, we love that it is simple. When using the stand-alone app - you have the ability to shrink the file size of a jpeg with or without changing the number of pixels. So if you want everything left the same, it will just replace the original with the new, lighter (in file size) jpeg. But if you also want to resize it down to say 2048px on the long edge for Facebook - it can do that too, while keeping the original image untouched.

Third, we love the plug-ins. Many of our gigs are based around volume. That means hundreds or thousands of images being uploaded for our clients. JPEGmini fits into our workflow so that all we have to do is “process”, “export” or “publish” our RAW images as jpegs, and JPEGmini will sneak in, do its job, and get out of the way all automatically.

Fourth, we love the savings. Smaller jpegs mean smaller hard drives, less internet bandwidth and less space on our online image galleries.

Basically, we don’t make, or share jpeg files without using JPEGmini, period.

No, we are not on their payroll or sponsored to say any of this, we just think it’s a great piece of software that our business relies on daily.  

If you’re interested in how to use apps like JPEGmini in your headshot workflow we invite you to Join Headshot Method today to receive instant access to all the content we have in store to help you grow your volume and event headshot business.