Note from 29 September 2022

I accidentally moved my hero image onto Cloudinary (who I also adore!). But, a less-optimised image served from the same origin is always faster than a more-optimised image from a third party. Self-host your static assets! csswizardry.com/2019/05/self-host-your-static-assets/

True!

But most images are currently not or badly optimized. 😔

They would benefit a lot from an image CDN: resize, compression, modern formats, etc.

  1. Note from 4 April 2024

    Most mentions of the magical CSS object-fit: cover; in development tutorials should be accompanied by a warning: in most situations, it means the browser will download an image that is larger than required (at least in one direction), and optimization on the server side could be a better option.