Optimizing images for web has never been so easy. SmushIt is free online tool for lossless compression of JPG, PNG, GIF files (including animated). Image optimization by SmushIt strips all metadata out of the file as well as applies number of lossless open source algorithms to reduce image size. You can choose to upload your images from local computer or use URL for multiple images which are already online. There’s also Firefox addon that analyzes a whole web page at once.

In my own experience SmashIt shows potential for image optimization of Google logo (6%), Yahoo (9.5%), MySpace (20%) and Youtube (47%). ReadWriteWeb reports that image optimization by SmushIt reduces image size by 10 to 45% with largest improvements by optimizing logos, buttons, and icons up to 90%. The main point about using SmushIt is that it could dramatically reduce your bandwidth as well as pages load time.

Despite a bunch of paid and free image optimizing apps which are already exists SmushIt attracts users with hassle free process. The developers promise to release the official API, open source the code and the command-line version soon. For now there’s already workaround to use this image optimization tool without official API.