Will splitting one big image into 4 smaller images reduce load time?

You have a large image saved in PNG format, its size lies around ~600KB. It takes quite a few seconds for the image to completely load when a visitor comes, which is definitely not okay.

I was c开发者_StackOverflow社区urious if splitting up the image into smaller sections will reduce overall load time for the visitor.

If you split the image and then split that image over different domains the images should be downloaded in parallel. It's still a better alternative to use a smaller image though because of the people with slower connections, which there are still quite a lot of.

Slicing big image into smaler images can reduce loading time because modern browsers can load these images in the same time (in pararell). But each image takes time in loading flow:

1. Browser makes reques
2. Waits for response,
3. Then loads.

So for smaller images: it's better to make bigger one: called sprite (only one HTTP request needed). For Really big it's better to slice it (better UI experience when loading).

If your webserver can provide the whole bandwidth of a visitor, than can be no difference in loading time. But as mentioned above it is better to use a good compression with a small size. You could provide a possiblity (like a zoom button) to make the "high-quality" version available to the visitor.