Magento increases image sizes on the front end

Question

I've noticed that images being served to the front end are bigger than the image is on the server. From what I can tell, Magento runs the images through some filter that does things like adds watermarks, adjusts colors, etc. Is there a way to disable this feature?

edit: Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm referring to product images, and actual file sizes, not height/width. The file size of the product images being served are bigger than their original files.

I've also noticed this behavior which strikes me as rather odd. The images have the exact same dimensions but the file size of the one on the front end is about a third larger. Have you found out anything about it? — Louis B.
Same here. It increases some file sizes by almost 500%. Its really disturbing. I am yet to look into their code though. But its strange. — burntblark

Axel Axel · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-20T20:56:04

The catalog/product image tags are defined in Magento's template files. The image sizes defined will vary, depending on what images you are referring to.

These templates call the images like this:

In app/design/frontend/base/default/catalog/product/list.phtml

<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'small_image')->resize(135); ?>

If notice on the end, there is a resize function that has a set number in there. This number will tell Magento to automatically resize the image it retrieves to that dimension. You can pass a height and width to the resize function, like so:

..->resize(height, width);

As far as I know, there is no configuration setting that will globally disable this resize function. You would have to override and void the function using a overwritten file or extension. I would recommend just uploading the correct sized images (larger than the minimum sizes seen on the site). Magento will then properly scale them down without loss of quality.

Magento increases image sizes on the front end

1 Answers