Image Compression in Laravel

November 21, 2025
maulik.jadvani@gmail.com
Software Development
0

Image Compression in Laravel: Improve Speed, Save Storage, and Deliver Faster Websites

Images play a major role in the performance of any modern web application. Whether you’re building an e-commerce system, a blog, or a product management platform, large images can slow down pages, increase bandwidth usage, and consume unnecessary storage space. That’s where image compression becomes essential.
Laravel makes it easy to implement image optimization through powerful libraries and a clean architecture. In this blog, we’ll look at why image compression matters and how you can implement it effectively—with two small code examples.

Why Image Compression Matters

There are two main types of image compression:

1. First item on the list

Preserves image quality completely while reducing some file size. Ideal for logos, icons, and UI graphics.
2. Lossy Compression

Removes some unnecessary data to dramatically reduce size, often without visible quality loss. Best for photos and product images.
A good strategy typically combines resizing, lossy compression, and converting into modern formats like WebP.

1. Laravel does not compress images by default, but it integrates easily with libraries such as:

Intervention Image – resize and manipulate images
Spatie Image Optimizer – compress using popular optimization tools like jpegoptim and optipng

A simple compression workflow looks like this:

1. Validate the uploaded image
2. Resize it to a maximum width
3. Compress/encode it
4. Store WebP and JPEG versions
5. Optionally optimize it further using a background job

Small Code Example #1: Resize + Compress

Here’s a minimal example using Intervention Image:

use Intervention\Image\ImageManagerStatic as Image;

$image = Image::make($request->file(‘photo’));
$image->resize(1600, null, function ($c) { $c->aspectRatio(); });
$image->save(storage_path(‘app/public/photo.jpg’), 80); // quality 80

This keeps quality high while reducing file size significantly.

Small Code Example #2: Convert to WebP

WebP often reduces images by 50–70%, making it perfect for modern apps:

$image = Image::make($request->file(‘photo’));
$image->encode(‘webp’, 80)->save(storage_path(‘app/public/photo.webp’));

Serving WebP to supported browsers gives major performance gains.

Best Practices for Laravel Image Optimization

1. Always resize before compressing – reducing resolution saves the most space.
2. Store the original image – allows reprocessing with better techniques later.
3.Use queues for large or frequent uploads so your UI stays fast.
4. Serve images via CDN for global performance.
5. Use <picture> tag to deliver WebP with fallback to JPEG/PNG.