CODEWITHSUNDEEP
apachehttp-headerscompressionmod-deflate
Agusti-N
Agusti-N

Reputation: 3973

Why I should not compress images in HTTP headers?

I read some articles about HTTP headers compression. Today I installed YSlow and it recommends that I compress the resources (text/html, javascript, css and images). Now I'm reading the documentation for Apache mod_deflate but in the example don't compress images.

Should I or should I not compress images in my site?

Upvotes: 17

Views: 15105

Answers (3)

Phil
Phil

Reputation: 595

SVGs should be compressed by Apache mod_deflate as

AddType image/svg+xml svg

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml

More information at https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_deflate.html.

Upvotes: 0

Skilldrick
Skilldrick

Reputation: 70869

Your images should already be compressed - any extra compression won't have any noticeable effect on filesize, but will increase processing time.

Compressing files that have already been compressed very rarely results in a reduction in filesize, and can often increase filesize.

Upvotes: 42

SirDarius
SirDarius

Reputation: 42959

Images such as GIF, JPEG or PNG are already compressed via highly specialized algorithms that achieve better result than general purpose algorithms such as deflate.

Therefore, re-compressing them yields little to no gain in size, and can even make files bigger, with the added cost of server-side processing.

So, in other words... do not compress images.

Upvotes: 3

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