Obsidian - Optimize your Vault and Publish Site

Obsidian vaults used for tabletop RPGs can balloon in size—especially when many notes rely on large PNG images—and that bloat can slow down publishing and page loads. A practical fix is to automatically convert pasted images into a more efficient format, shrinking file sizes dramatically without noticeable quality loss for typical RPG use.

The workflow starts with identifying the problem: the creator’s vault is approaching 20 GB, and earlier website publishing had noticeable delays traced to PNG usage. PNGs tend to be larger and higher quality, but most RPG notes don’t need that level of detail. The only time crisp, full-screen imagery matters is when images are shown to players via a dedicated “open window” setup on a third screen. Even then, the overall goal remains reducing vault weight so backups and GitHub syncing don’t hit storage limits.

To tackle the issue, the approach focuses on automation at the moment images enter the vault. After disabling a previously installed plugin, a test image is pasted into Obsidian. The original PNG is about 1.04 MB. Instead of manually converting files, the solution installs an Obsidian community plugin called “Image Converter” (by xray). The plugin is still under development, but it includes research on compression tradeoffs and recommends WebP as the best balance of smaller size and minimal quality loss.

With the plugin enabled, pasting the same image again converts it automatically—this time into WebP. The resulting file drops to roughly 72 KB, a reduction of about an order of magnitude. Side-by-side comparison shows the difference is hard to spot at normal viewing sizes, while the vault’s storage footprint and published-site load performance should improve.

The plugin also supports a quality-control feature: it can resize images with the mouse, giving users additional control when they want smaller assets than the default conversion. The net effect is straightforward: install the plugin, paste images, and let Obsidian store WebP versions automatically. That reduces vault size, speeds up Obsidian Publish page loads, and keeps GitHub-backed vault syncing from becoming a paid-storage problem.

The takeaway is less about image theory and more about operational payoff. For tabletop RPG vaults—where images are often used as note illustrations rather than high-end artwork—automated PNG-to-WebP conversion offers a low-effort way to keep the library lean while preserving the visual clarity players actually notice.