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You could try using <link rel="preload" as="image" href="important.png"> but I don't think there is suppor for images preload outside of newer chrome versions
<link rel="preload" as="image" href="important.png">
but I don't think there is suppor for images preload outside of newer chrome versions<head>...</head>
tags, you can use hooks (that is the preferred way) but you can also add it directly in between those tags