Should I use variations of one image or create multiples?

Keep in mind, that while minimal, the larger image may work for a smaller image with retina display but may hurt the performance of your website. But seriously, unless you have a ton of images I can’t imagine that this would apply. I’d say go for the image that will provide the best display, just know that it’s hypothetically taking up more space than it needs to.

But to answer your actual question, from what I have read it doesn’t seem that it will matter using a bigger image.

I do have a lot of images, though not always on the same page.

I have galleries that I notice are slow to load, but as these are galleries I’m hesitant to put in lower-quality images.

For less important images, I have already remade a number of images at a higher compression level but kept the pixel count; this has reduced the file size. Not sure how that will look on a Retina screen.

Still wondering, though, if I need to make duplicates at different sizes.

Im sorry for the super long wait.. I wasn’t 100% educated on retina displays, so I did a little research.

Click HERE after you read below if you want more information about it all.

This link explains retina displays and how the pixels are condensed. To make it shorter and more aimed to your question, I will paraphrase. BASICALLY, as you already know the images are condensed down to the size you want with at least double the original size, so that there are two pixels in retina for every one in normal view. Any that are above and beyond the double, are just used to make even better clarity of the image. So if you have pictures more than double the size of what the images will show as on a retina screen, then they will most likely look two times better than another websites with the same image but an original that is smaller.

Hope this cleared this up for you, again, sorry that I didn’t know my stuff earlier and had to do some research for you!

Let me know if there is anything I didn’t answer.

Thanks for taking the time to perform additional research. It is much appreciated.

I did, unfortunately, discover one drawback to my chosen theme: the featured image does not downsize to fit, so if I use 2x pixels for Retina, the image is cut off. Sigh.