What does TinyPNG do?
Dec 16, 2018 ImageOptim is a front-end (GUI) for set of tools for optimisation of PNG and JPEG images. Optimization makes files smaller (in terms of disk space) by finding optimal compression parameters and by removing unnecessary information, like file comments, EXIF tags, and color profiles. Optimizilla is the ultimate image optimizer to compress your images in JPEG and PNG formats to the minimum possible size.
ImageOptim Web Service (HTTP API) — resize and optimize images in your web applications. Online interface — a JPEG compressor that produces smaller, higher.
TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!
Why should I use TinyPNG?
PNG is useful because it’s the only widely supported format that can store partially transparent images. The format uses compression, but the files can still be large. Use TinyPNG to shrink images for your apps and sites. It will use less bandwidth and load faster.
Can anyone tell the difference?
Excellent question! Let me give you a side by side comparison. Below are two photos of my cousin. The left image is saved as 24-bit PNG directly from Adobe Photoshop. On the right is the same image processed by TinyPNG. Spot any difference?
vsHow does it work?
Excellent question! When you upload a PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file, similar colors in your image are combined. This technique is called “quantization”. By reducing the number of colors, 24-bit PNG files can be converted to much smaller 8-bit indexed color images. All unnecessary metadata is stripped too. The result better PNG files with 100% support for transparency. Have your cake and eat it too!
In the above image the file size is reduced by more than 70%. I have excellent eyesight but can’t spot the difference either! Use the optimized image to save bandwidth and loading time and your website visitors will thank you.
Is it supported everywhere?
Excellent question! The files produced by TinyPNG are displayed perfectly on all modern browsers including mobile devices. Still need to support Internet Explorer 6? It normally ignores PNG transparency and displays a solid background color. With TinyPNG the background becomes transparent again. Binary transparency without any workarounds!
Is it safe to use animated PNG?
Excellent question! Chrome, Firefox and Safari all support APNG. Only Microsoft Edge does not support the format yet. If you have an Edge browser you can vote up APNG support on the Microsoft Developer Feedback site.
Apple added animated stickers to iMessage with the release of iOS 10. If you want to create and compress stickers under 500 KB take a look at the iMessage Panda sticker example on Github.
What about Photoshop?
Excellent question! Only Photoshop CC 2015, 2017 and 2018 can save images as indexed PNG files with alpha transparency. With other versions it is impossible and Photoshop CS5 cannot even display them properly.
You can use Save for Web to export your images as 24-bit transparent PNG files and upload them to TinyPNG. We’ll convert them to tiny indexed PNG files. You can also install the TinyPNG Photoshop plugin. It allows you to scale, preview and save compressed PNG and JPEG images straight from Photoshop.
Why did you create TinyPNG?
Take the pain out of building site search with the Algolia hosted API. Start free now!
I’m forever trying to make my local image workflow easier. I work with images as part of blog posts, images as part of sites I’m working on, images headed to social media… images everywhere. Almost always headed to the web. If we’re taught one thing about images and the web, it’s that they should be optimized.
For me, that means dragging every single image onto ImageOptim before using it. Monotonous repetitive tasks are fertile ground for computerization, so let’s computerize it.
The Desktop is my staging area
It’s just how I work. Things I’m actively using go on the Desktop. I do whatever I’m doing with them, then move them away. I keep it pretty tidy. Images are one of the most common things that end up there. Perhaps it’s a screenshot that needs to get resized, then optimized, then uploaded somewhere, then deleted.
The Desktop is a convenient place, for me, for all that to happen.
Making any image on the Desktop automatically optimized
What if we didn’t need to optimize images because any image that was on the Desktop was automatically optimized? That’s what we’re shooting for here.
One way to approach this would be to set up a Grunt/Gulp/Webpack/Whatever watch task to watch the Desktop. Then if an image file appears there, run an image optimization task. A lot of us probably already do this with the web projects we work on. This wouldn’t be much different.
Except… that we’d need to gulp watch (or whatever) from the command line every time we restarted. I bet there is some trickery to avoid that. Like putting the command into `~/.bash_profile` or something. I didn’t go down that road, though, because…
Enter Hazel
A number of recommendations from folks turned me onto Hazel. It’s basically a watch task for macOS, with a UI to set up all the stuff you want it to do. For example, you can watch your Downloads folder, and if the type of file is a Movie, you can automatically move it to the Movies folder. Cool.
That makes what we want to do real easy. We watch the Desktop folder and if the kind of file is an Image, open it in ImageOptim.
Simple, indeed
Imageoptim Reviews
This is a pretty simple and obvious thing that I could have done years ago. That’s why I’m blogging it, I suppose. It’s a simple thing that has helped me a ton and might help you. Most importantly, I’ve actually stuck with it. Sometimes I try out some workflow optimization and it doesn’t stick. This has.