January 18, 2008...12:02 am
Free Fridays #9 PNG Optimizer
This week’s recommendation is very small and compact just like the software it describes. It’s a graphics optimiser and converter for windows called PNGOptimizer and as its name suggests one of it’s main functions is to optimise PNG graphics.
PNG is a very high quality format for graphics which has become more common on the web in recent years as browser support has improved. The reason that PNG is such a good format is that it combines characteristics of both JPEG and GIF. It is not limited to 256 colours like GIF and unlike JPEG it can also have a transparent background. So it provides rich colour graphics with the ability to have a transparent background.
Reduce PNG File Size
The downside is that it PNG can create rather large files in comparison to the other two web graphics formats. This is where PngOptimizer comes in to its own.
Simply drag your PNG files on to the programme window and it removes unnecessary information and reduces the file size. Not only that, it’ll perform optimisation on batches of files and will even convert BMP, GIF and TGA files to PNG as well.
The current version (1.6) is tiny, only 106 KB, and can be downloaded from http://psydk.org/PngOptimizer
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