Unsplash and Squash 2

When using Unsplash in the resource manager is there an option to use Squash 2? Should you use it before dragging into a project?

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Squash is a separate application, not a part of RapidWeaver. So, yeah, you should squash your images before you put them in RW’s Resources.

When I use Unsplash in RW8 it would be nice to have a link to send to Squash.

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I like the idea, but the problem is the Unsplash image is not on your site. The new resource manager just links to Unsplash. Even if you “add to project resources”.

You can go to Unsplash and download the image(s) you want, optimize them and drag them to resources.

You can change the image size in preferences:
2018-08-17_10-11-21

So, I really should not need to optimize those images.

You are mixing up image size (in kilobytes) with image dimensions (in pixels).

RW lets you change image dimensions, but it has nothing to do with image size (and optimization). Squash is one of many apps that do optimization by compressing image files.

Remember that the more you compress, the worse the image quality becomes. So, you need to balance image quality with image file-size.

Another thing to remember is that JPEG images lose quality every time you open and save them, so they are not a good source for image manipulation of ANY kind except compressing for final use. If you need to do correction on an image (brightness, contrast, color, etc), use lossless TIFF or PSD file format and then convert to JPEG.

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Rob is right on.
Image size and image compression are 2 different things.

You should resize your images first, so they are no larger than the maximum size(width) they will be displayed at any breakpoint. Resizing as long as you don’t go smaller than the display size is lossless optimization. If you send an image to a browser that is larger than the area it can be displayed on the browser is going to resize it anyway, and you sent a larger file than needed.

The second step would be to optimize the image with a product like Squash. This is definitely a balancing act of quality vs file size(speed).

Unfortunately, there’s no way to do this “on the fly” if the images are being loaded from another website like Unsplash.

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Thanks!
I meant I should not need to optimize Unsplash images.

@dan Hey Dan, this should be a new feature for the next big update. Helps getting smaller pictures within RW and makes Squash more famous. Big deal? :laughing: Sort of: download for further processing … or send to “Squash” for optimizing …

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