PicPerf Now Offers URL-Based Image Resizing

PicPerf’s primary aim has always been to make it really, really simple to make the images already on your website really, really fast. That’ll never change, but sometimes, you need the option to exercise a little more control.

To that end, PicPerf now supports URL-based image transformations, starting with width, height, and fill. Tack the parameters into your URLs, and you’re good to go. Here’s a brief example:

You’d like to use a picture of a cool hedgehog as the avatar for your bio on your blog (“why” is another question altogether, but hedgehogs are sick). Using PicPerf, you would’ve loaded like this:

And that would’ve made a big impact. I tried it with a really image of a hedgehog. It was convered to an AVIF and came out 87% smaller. See it for yourself.

The problem, though, is that the avatar has a nice, square aspect ratio, and it’s not very big. Maybe just 200px wide. Instead of resizing & cropping that image yourself and re-uploading it, PicPerf will do it for you:

Done. Now that image is an optimized AVIF, sized appropriately, and still cached like crazy. That’ll translate to more real-life value too, such as improving your Core Web Vitals (specifically things like largest contentful paint), conversion rates, a user’s overall experience on your site (especially those on slow connections).

Remember — these transformations are only the start. Eventually, you’ll have even more control over how your image is sized, oriented, and rendered. More to come on that. For now, take advantage of URL-based resizing by signing up for an account and checking out the documentation.