Ask HN: Best toolchain for image-heavy, static websites?

Recently, I've taken on several contracts to build portfolio websites for people in the graphic design and architecture sectors. Currently I'm using Jekyll to generate the sites themselves and hosting them on a shared VPS like GoDaddy, but I'm finding it really difficult to optimize all the images they are sending over (bulk resizing + compression).

I'm curious to hear what tools people use to solve similar challenges in addition what hosting solutions that could allow me to better cache + serve these images.

Thanks!