Increase size of previously Smushed images

Hi @mattatnicolebarkerva,

We believe Google did an update in January with regards to certain type of search results that are image heavy.

Is there any doc or article regarding this you could share, so that we could have a better idea regarding the concern you have?

Is there a way to have Smush go back through my media folder and change those previously optimized images to be larger?

If you have “Backup original images” enabled under Smush > Bulk Smush page then you could use the “Restore Thumbnails” feature on the plugin side to revert the images to their original state.

Please do note the above option only provides an option to revert to the original state which would be an uncompressed image which would be large when compared.

If the above option isn’t enabled, you could use a Regenerate Thumbnails plugin instead:

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails/

I can’t seem to find the configuration settings to tell the system to do less compression / resizing of images going forward. Is there a setting somewhere I’m missing for compression defaults?

If you have any of these options enabled before, you could try disabling these settings under Smush > Bulk Smush page and see whether it helps with lesser compression.

ie “Super-Smush my images“, “Strip my image metadata”, & “Compress original images“

I hope this helps in moving forward.

Kind Regards,

Nithin

Thank you for the response!

There is no specific Google documentation on this topic. We have just found through evaluating many sites that certain image sizes are getting significantly better results in Google Discover traffic.

Unfortunately, I had all the default settings turned on which I believe does not have “Backup original images” turned on. So, my original images are all Smushed already. I can reload them and then I would guess I will have to add the new images again to every page? Can you verify that would be the process…

1. Change default Smush settings to larger sizes
2. Delete existing images
3. Upload full size images again
4. Add images back to all pages they were originally on

Please verify….it would be great if item #4 wasn’t part of this process and once the originals get Smushed again they would automatically replace the ones that are already on pages. Please verify.

Hi @mattatnicolebarkerva

Thanks for response!

If you didn’t have “Backup original images” option turned on then:

1. if you also didn’t have “Compress original images” option enabled – then it shouldnt’ be necessary to re-upload images. The “Regenerate Thumbnails” plugin mentioned earlier should suffice and the preferred process would be:

a) change Smush settings to match your needs
b) disable Smush temporarily
c) run regeneration via Regenerate Thumbnails” plugin, making sure that it is set
– to recreate missing images
– and to NOT skip existing ones (this is very important)
d) enable Smush back and run bulk smushing again

2. but if you had the “Compress original images” options enabled – then yes, if there’s a risk of loosing quality after regeneration, you may need to re-upload images just like you described; but I’d suggest a slightly different way:

a) just like above – first set Smush to your target/necessary settings and disable it temporarily

b) then re-upload original images using FTP directly to the server – make sure that the filenames and image locations are correct (exactly matching existing ones) and just overwrite existing ones (no need to delete them from Media Library)

c) then do also run Regenerate Thumbnails process (using aforementioned plugin) – so it would regenerate uncmpressed/unoptimized images (same as in case 1 – make sure it’s not set to skip existing images and it is set to recreate any missing images)

d) and then re-enable Smush and run bulk-smushing.

Note please: in both cases I’d strongly recommend taking backup first, just to stay on the safe side.

Best regards,
Adam

Adam.

Thank you for the detailed response. I believe I can make the 2nd process work as “compress original images” was on originally. I will give it a shot.

Thanks again for the support.

Matt

Hi @mattatnicolebarkerva,

Since we haven’t heard from you for a while. I’ll mark this thread as resolved for now. Please feel free to re-open the thread if you need further assistance.

Best Regards
Nithin