If you have large images, you should resize images before uploading to WordPress. Although WordPress will display image size based on your settings, large images can slow down your website even though they may be displayed as small.

For example, when working on a new website about my cat Pebbles, I had a picture taken from my phone that was 1.7MB and 1536px X 2048px. Resizing this to display at 300px x 225px and then cropping it to remove extra space reduced the size of this picture to 49K.

Any graphics editor should be able to resize your images. While Photoshop is a standard option that many people use, it is fairly expensive and has a steep learning curve. For those wanting an easier, low-cost option, you might want to consider PicMonkey.

PicMonkey is a low-cost photo and graphics editor that is easy to use and has the functionality to meet the needs of most bloggers and website creators who don’t need the extensive options of Photoshop.

Compare Photoshop costing between $20 and $50 per month depending on your package to PicMonkey which has a free solution or a premium solutions at $40.00 per year. PicMonkey is also easier to learn than Photoshop.

PicMonkey is an online editor, so as long as you have Internet access and a browser, you can use it. It is not specific to Windows or Mac.

Video Demonstrating Using PicMonkey to Resize Images

Steps for Using PicMonkey to Resize Images

To resize an image in PicMonkey,

Log into your account, and select Edit from the PicMonkey menu.

Select the graphics file you want to edit.

This opens the PicMonkey Basic Edits menu alongside the picture.

In the basic edits menu, select Resize.

In our case the original picture is 2048px X 1536px. To resize it, change the width to your desired width. In our case, 300.

By default Keep Proportions is selected. Keep this in order to make sure the image resizes without skewing. In this case, when 300 width is selected, the height automatically resizes to 225.

Note that you can also work with percentages and change the size based on a percentage not to specific pixels. For our purpose, we are setting specific pixel widths.

Click Apply to make the change.

You may now save your resized image, or make additional changes such as cropping. For this image, we’re going to save it without cropping.

From the top menu, select Save to save this to your computer. Note that there is an option to share directly from this menu, also.

When saving the image, enter the name of the image.

You are given three options for resolution: Roger – a very small size with low resolution which may look fuzzy, Pierce – a medium resolution which is small enough to help your website’s speed but also has good clarity for most website uses, and Sean – a little larger in size (still much lower than the large image we started with) with a higher resolution having more clarity. Select the option of your choice and click Save to My Computer. You’ll be able to select where to save the image then save it.

In this case, I selected the medium resolution. The original image was 1.3MB and the smaller image was 32K, a significant decrease in size.

Once saved, you’ll receive a notice on the screen with the PicMonkey logo reading Masterpiece Saved. It is now ready to use.

Click the X at the top right of the screen to close out editing the picture and return to the main PicMonkey screen.

By resizing your images before uploading to WordPress, you can help your site run faster and provide a more optimal experience for your site visitors.

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