Image Optimizer for Visual Studio

Download this extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace or get the CI build

Uses industry standard tools to optimize any JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, SVG, and GIFs - including animated GIFs. It can do both lossy and lossless optimization.

Features

Adds a right-click menu to any folder and image in Solution Explorer that lets you optimize all images in that folder.

• Optimize PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, SVG, and GIF (including animated GIFs) images
• Optimize embedded images inside .resx resource files
• Convert PNG and JPG images to WebP or AVIF format
• Works on single image files or entire folders
• Resize images easily
• Copy any image as base64 dataURI to clipboard
• Real-time progress in the Output Window and status bar
• Smart caching to skip already-optimized files
• Backup support to preserve original files

Optimize Images

Simply right-click any file or folder containing images and click one of the image optimization buttons.

You can also right-click a folder to optimize all images inside it.

Best Quality (Lossless)

If you choose best quality optimization, the tool will do its optimizations without changing the quality of the image. This is ideal for production assets where every pixel matters.

Best Compression (Lossy)

If you decide to sacrifice just a small amount of image quality (which in most cases is unnoticeable to the human eye), you will be able to save up to 90% of the initial file weight. Lossy optimization will give you outstanding results with just a fraction of image quality loss.

You can control the quality level (60-100) in the options.

Convert to WebP / AVIF

Right-click any PNG or JPG file (or a folder containing them) and choose Convert to WebP or Convert to AVIF from the Image Optimizer menu.

• Creates a .webp or .avif file next to the original
• Original file is preserved — you decide when to remove it
• New file is automatically added to the project
• Works on single files, folders, projects, and solutions
• Uses the lossy quality setting from Options (default: 85)

WebP and AVIF typically offer significantly better compression than PNG/JPG, making them ideal for web assets.

Optimize .resx Embedded Images

WinForms and WPF projects often embed images directly inside .resx resource files as base64-encoded data. Image Optimizer can extract these embedded images, optimize them, and re-embed the optimized versions back into the .resx file.

Simply right-click a .resx file (or a folder/project containing them) and choose Optimize for Best Quality or Optimize for Best Compression.

• Supports PNG, JPG, and GIF images embedded as bytearray.base64
• Handles BinaryFormatter-serialized image resources (binary.base64)
• File-reference entries (ResXFileRef) are ignored — those files are already optimized through the normal image optimization path
• Results are shown per-resource in the Output Window

Image Resize

You can resize images by using the Resize Image dialog. You get to it by right-clicking any single image (JPG, GIF, and PNG only).

Output Window

The Output Window shows detailed results in a formatted table as files are optimized in real-time. Progress is also displayed in the status bar.

The output shows each file's before/after size, bytes saved, and percentage reduction.

Performance

Optimizing an image can easily take several seconds which feels slow. This extension parallelizes the workload across multiple CPU cores available on the machine. This speeds up the optimization significantly.

Additionally, the smart caching feature remembers which files have already been optimized, so subsequent runs skip unchanged files entirely.

Options

Configure the extension via Tools > Options > Image Optimizer.

Compression

Performance

Cache

Safety

User Interface

Error Handling

API for Extenders

Any extension can call the commands provided in the Image Optimizer extension to optimize any image. The Markdown Editor v2 extension uses this API.

public void OptimizeImage(string filePath)
{
	try
	{
		var DTE = (DTE2)Package.GetGlobalService(typeof(DTE));
		Command command = DTE.Commands.Item("ImageOptimizer.OptimizeLossless");

		if (command != null && command.IsAvailable)
		{
			DTE.Commands.Raise(command.Guid, command.ID, filePath, null);
		}
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		// Image Optimizer not installed
	}
}

The commands are:

• ImageOptimizer.OptimizeLossless - Optimize for best quality
• ImageOptimizer.OptimizeLossy - Optimize for best compression
• ImageOptimizer.ConvertToWebP - Convert PNG/JPG to WebP
• ImageOptimizer.ConvertToAvif - Convert PNG/JPG to AVIF

How can I help?

If you enjoy using the extension, please give it a ★★★★★ rating on the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Should you encounter bugs or if you have feature requests, head on over to the GitHub repo to open an issue if one doesn't already exist.

Pull requests are also very welcome, since I can't always get around to fixing all bugs myself. This is a personal passion project, so my time is limited.

Another way to help out is to sponsor me on GitHub.