Image Compression Imagify vs Riot.exe

Imagify from WP-Media is one of about a half dozen image compression online apps which also  have WordPress plugins. This review compares Imagify compression versus the reigning compression champion, Riot.exe. Imagify runs as an app and as a plugin for free up to 50MB of compressions per month then there are a variety of plans to choose from for additional compression. Riot runs as Windows only program or as a plugin for Irfanview, Gimpp, XnView and other photofinishing tools. Riot is free.

Our Tests

In our tests we have used JPG, GIF, and PNG files both color and B+W images. Here is is a sample of the results:

In this example we see a precursors of all results – Riot outperforms Imagify in aggressive compression mode by a wide 400kb margin. the table below shows the overall results. 

Image	Type & Size	Imagify	Riot
	928kb animated gif	751kb	Fails to compress all 3 gif images
	6kb b&w gif -6kb	3.7kb	2.5kb
	18.1kb b&w jpg	18.1kb	15.0kb
	24.8 kb gif	21.4kb	18.7kb
	198.6kb png 10 colors	75.9kb	61.9kb
	472.2 png 256 colors	140.6kb	123.5kb
	3.89mb png 1694 x 1080px, True Color	1.15mb not True Colors render	1.23mb
	1200kb jpg 3696 x 2448px b&w	265.0kb	205.7kb
	608.5kb jpg  960 x 600px	242.8kb	161.5kb
	381kb jpg 805 x 404px	242.5kb	94.4kb

As the test results show, Riot outperforms Imagify in all the .JPG compressions and often by a wide margin. In the PNG tests, Imagify does slightly better on a True Color compression, but the Imagify compression is to 256, colors not True Color. Finally, Imagify is able to compress animated.gif files which Riot cannot do.

Interface Features

On the interface side, Imagify has two advantages. First, it runs in a browser so Linux, Mac and Windows users can use Imagify directly. Second, there is a WordPress plugin that largely automates the process of compressing your files as they are added to the Media Gallery. The downside is that you can optimize for free 25MB of images (about 250 100kb images) every month but any overages each month must be paid for with a plan with Imagify/WPMedia. Here are the current offering:

o for $5US/month one can get automated compression of all your media files in WordPress up to 1GB in total image files compressed per month. You can also use the app to do special image compressions and down load the compressed fies for use anywhere on your system or websites. 

The tradeoff is that Riot does a better job of compression, often by 20-30% better for JPGs. Also as seen in the screenshot users have with Riot more precise control of the compression:

In screenshot Riot provides a before and after view of the compressed image and added settings for each of the JPG, PNG, and GIF file compressions. This allows users to obtain much better compressions of particular value for large page wide and Hero images popular o the Web today.

Summary

Imagify is both a WordPress plugin and a online app for compressing image files in an automated fashion after 25MB of image compressions per month users have to pay $Month per GB of images – so small to medium sized websites with just a feature image per page or post, Imagify can automate compressions, but the downside is that Imagify does not achieve the precise control and substantially larger compressions available with the free Riot tool.