This article was written in 2014. It might or it might not be outdated. And it could be that the layout breaks. If that’s the case please let me know.

Should you optimise images for retina screens?

Today I asked on Twitter People with a retina screen: do you notice the difference between retina-optimised and normal images on the web?. Immediately people started answering that, sure, heck yes, absolutely, most noticeable with icons, they see the difference. Now I wasn’t really asking about icons because I notice this difference myself. So I rephrased my tweet to during day to day surfing, do you notice the difference between retina-optimised and normal photos on the web?

I wanted to know because I’m working on my own self-hosted photo site, and I was wondering if I should put any effort into serving optimised photos to retina screens. When it comes to photographs it seems like most people don’t really notice the difference. It could be noticeable, but if it is, it’s less annoying. The difference can be seen when you look at different versions side by side, but I wasn’t really asking about studying the difference, I’m interested in casual web surfing. So it seems like no, there’s not really a need to optimise photos for retina screens. I always thought so, and I’m glad to see that more people think that way.

If you really want to optimise, simply using slightly larger photos and scaling them down gives a much better result than doing nothing. Or you can use some extreme tricks in order to show extremely sharp images while keeping file size down. Since I’m lazy, and since I don’t really notice the difference, I decided to leave my site as it is. For now.