If this sounds like your week
Page weight is a product decision with an image-shaped bill.
“Compress harder” is easy to say and annoying to do honestly at scale. Webcomic ZIP downloads punish readers when panels stay 4K PNG straight from tablet.
Where tooling usually breaks
Per-file heroism does not clear a backlog.
You need a batch mindset and a batch engine.
Budget, honestly
Goal: LCP in budget Reality: hero images in MB Action: batch compress, local disk Tracking: your analytics, not a third party server