Auto-generated image file sizes larger than original

Thank you, Victoria, but, unless I missed something in those posts, these do not address my issue.

I want to keep all the thumbnails, but when they are created, many of them have file sizes considerably larger than the original. It is the file size issue that is problem.

I am running the latest version of everything, and php is using imagick. Image optimizer plugins do not solve this issue.

Is there anything that can be done about this?

Thank you.

Yow. Thank you. That’s nutso, though. Forcing 100% quality on an image that has already been compressed doesn’t make any sense. It does not improve the quality of the original, and only makes the site harder to download using cellular data.

By way of comparison, an original image with a file size of 330k, for the 1320×748.jpg thumbnail / featured image, at 100% is bloated to 1 MB, and at 80% compression is reduced to 206k, with no visible difference in the image.

At any rate, thank you for finding that for me. Adding this to functions.php in the child theme was the answer. Compression rate is changed by adjusting where it says “return 80”. In this example, 80 is 80% compression.

/**
* Sets the default image to 100% quality for more beautiful images when used in conjunction with img optimization plugins
*
* @since 4.3
* @added_by Kriesi
*/
function av_return_100(){ return 80; }
add_filter('jpeg_quality', 'av_return_100');
add_filter('wp_editor_set_quality', 'av_return_100');