When converting or compressing images in PHP, what are the best practices to maintain quality while reducing file size?

When converting or compressing images in PHP, it's important to strike a balance between reducing file size and maintaining image quality. One common approach is to use libraries like GD or Imagick to resize the image dimensions and adjust the compression level. Additionally, saving images in the appropriate format (e.g., JPEG for photographs, PNG for graphics with transparency) can also help reduce file size without sacrificing quality. 

// Example code snippet using GD library to resize and compress an image
$sourceFile = 'image.jpg';
$destinationFile = 'compressed_image.jpg';

list($width, $height) = getimagesize($sourceFile);
$newWidth = $width * 0.5; // Resize to 50% of original width
$newHeight = $height * 0.5; // Resize to 50% of original height

$source = imagecreatefromjpeg($sourceFile);
$destination = imagecreatetruecolor($newWidth, $newHeight);

imagecopyresampled($destination, $source, 0, 0, 0, 0, $newWidth, $newHeight, $width, $height);

imagejpeg($destination, $destinationFile, 75); // Compress the image with quality level 75

imagedestroy($source);
imagedestroy($destination);

Keywords

image compression PHP quality preservation file size reduction libraries

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