That 75% reduction in bits can really crush PNGs even more than was previously possible. Lower the quality slider to use fewer colors, which means even fewer bits and an even smaller file. This feature is powered by Kornel Lesiński's pngquant library, and Kornel has agreed to join me as SuperPNG's co-author.
Another new feature in this version is the Clean Transparent checkbox. It turns out that your transparent pixels may have unseen colors in them that are making PNGs harder to compress, but this feature will wipe them out for you. See the manual for more details.
SuperPNG has always been free, but now it's open source as well. Check out the GitHub repository and see exactly what we're doing.
Enjoy!
29 comments:
Just had a quick go at SuperPNG on Photoshop CS6 & Photoshop CS6 (64-bit).
Placed the appropriate plug-in in the ".\Plug-ins" folder. About Plug-Ins does not show the plug-in how can I confirm installation?
Also experiencing random MSVCRT120 errors or the inability to open .PNG when the plugin is present on both 32 and 64 bit.
Cheers,
Same problem as yours,
solved by installing "Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013"
Here is the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40784
Much appreciated!
Another VC Runtime to add to the list. ;)
Hey everyone, thanks for the heads-up. I had to switch to a newer version of the compiler when pngquant was added, which then relied on a newer version of the runtime that doesn't come with Photoshop.
I changed the configuration and re-uploaded, so SuperPNG shouldn't have that dependency anymore. Sorry for the trouble.
Great app by the way and the compression and quality is really awesome. But I have run into a problem the transparency is not preserved when importing the saved superpng with transparency file in after effects cs6 or cc. instead of the image having a transparent background it just has like a teal background. but when i open it in photoshop the image is fine with transparency preserved. i really like this app as it really really really saves up disk space unlike the regular png file.
After Effects' PNG reader does not properly handle the "quantized" PNGs. Are you sure you want to use them in After Effects anyway? They are smaller, but they are also lossy, unlike un-quantized PNGs which are lossless. Quantized PNGs are usually used for something like a website where you're trying to save as many bits as possible and don't mind a little loss.
If you install the SuperPNG plug-in in After Effects, you can use SuperPNG to read them properly. You actually have to force AE to use SuperPNG in the Import dialog by filtering for "All Files" so you can choose the format in the menu. And you should re-download the build of SuperPNG I just uploaded because there was a bug related to this that I fixed.
Hi there. SuperPNG has always been my go to "Save As..." format. :)
With the new version, I noticed some difference. Use it in PS CS6 64-bit running on Windows 7 Professional.
When viewing the tumbnails in Windows Explorer, the transparent areas are black. (This wasn't the case with SuperPNG 2.0 because the transparents remain transparent). This is just puzzling because they remain transparent though when opened via my image viewer.
Also, my image viewer displays the images produced by SuperPNG 2.5 a little desaturated than when opened in Photoshop.
I use these settings:
Smallest file, Highest Quality, Clean Transparent, Embed metadata and color profile.
When you say "Highest Quality", that sounds to me like you're using the Quantize option. This makes a pretty different type of PNG, so I'm not surprised that Windows explorer may display it differently, even though it really shouldn't.
To get the same kind of PNG you got from SuperPNG 2.0, turn off the Quantize option.
Thank you for the tip. :) Although I'm still not quite sure what the "Quantize" option does.
Check the link in my last post, or here's an even better one.
When you're in Photoshop's 8-bit mode, that's 8 bits per channel, 24 bits total. The PNG you save the regular way is called a PNG24. Add an alpha channel, and you have a PNG32.
With the Quantize option checked, SuperPNG converts your image to a PNG8, which is a 8-bit indexed color PNG that uses a 24- or 32-bit palette. Having 8 bits instead of 32 makes a smaller file, but it also involves some lossy conversion. If you lower the quality slider, fewer colors will be used, so you'll have even fewer bits and a smaller file, but with more loss.
I wish to thank you profusely for the SuperPNG plugin. Today, when I opened Photoshop, I noticed that it stopped reading and writing PNG files. For no reason whatsoever. It worked flawlessly just a few weeks ago. All instructions I could ever find on the 'net were to 'reinstall the Mac OS X operating system and Photoshop from scratch'. Duh! Apparently, it's common for Photoshop to lose the ability to read/write PNGs, and there is no simple solution — reformatting and reinstalling everything from scratch is not an option for me!
Instead, you offer SuperPNG for free. Which is even better than Photoshop's built-in plugin. Thanks so much!
Just wanted to share my thrill after I installed SuperPNG. Great job, friend! Saved me a lot of headache! Cheers!
Just wanted to say, amazing plugin. Thanks a lot. Will definitely share this with my fellow artists.
Hii, I could not find the exact location, where should i sopy the file in Plug-Ins folder (Using cs3)
Also to activate this plugin, With "Save as" or "Save for web".
Regards
@Manish,
What's your OS?
For Windows:
Find your Formats folder.
For CS3, I'm not sure but I think it's this:
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-ins\File Formats"
Put the plugin there.
To use the plugin:
Click on File->Save As...->
And then select SuperPNG as file format.
@ AJ Luna
Thanks for Help :)
I am running WIndows. I copied the plugin to the Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-ins\File Formats"
However it won't appear on "save as" Just the stock dialogue comes and it saves it.
Opened and reopened Photoshop many times, any idea what to do??
Regards
When you do Save As, SuperPNG should appear as a file option in addition to Photoshop's regular PNG.
You can verify SuperPNG is installed by looking for it in the About Plug-In menu, or by reading the report in Help > System Info.
@ Brendan
Thanx for support.
It's not showing the plugin in the photoshop about plugin, however it is there in the disc with other file formats which are showing in photoshop plugin...
I just paste the "SuperPNG.8bi" file into " Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-ins\File Formats" (Whith other plugins which are showing in photoshop)
Did i miss something??
If you're using CS3, make sure you're pasting the 32-bit version. I think CS4 for Windows was the first time there was a 64-bit version available.
Again, check System Info to see if it tells you the plug-in failed to load.
@ Brendan
Thanks a Ton.
Worked like a charm :)
Really nice plugin. I'm working with game development and often use the alpha channel for something completely different than transparency, and at my workplace we are forced to use png over say tga.
I have one small problem though, I can save superpng's just fine, but I've not been able to get the input dialog, no matter what I do, photoshop uses it's own plugin (tried dragging into ps, "Open" and "Open As..."). I saw that I might be able to fix it by deleteing the standard "png.8bi", only problem is that file doesn't exist in Photoshop CC (or CS6 as far as my research show). Any help would be much appreciated.
Thx
Photoshop not rolls its PNG plug-in into something called "Standard Multiplugin". You can disable it, but you'll lose a bunch of other features as well.
So this is Photoshop on Windows? Which version?
Yeah, it's on windows. and it's the newest version of CC I imagine, the subscription based one anyway.
What functionality would I lose besides the standard png plugin?
I haven't been able to get the dialog to appear on opening a PNG either. SuperPNG is available as a file format and is listed in the plug-ins in PS CS6, but holding Shift or Option throughout the file-opening process does not result in a dialog box.
Any ideas? Thanks!
By the way, I'm experiencing the lack of the dialog box on the Mac, under OS 10.9
Thanks for the bug report. I got the same problem on 10.9, but oddly not on 10.8, 10.7, or 10.6. And then I just rebuilt the plug-in and the result worked on 10.9 as well, go figure. So go ahead and re-download it and hopefully it will work for you now.
Hi, just installed, excellent product.
In my PC resets the dpi to 72 (using it with an old Photoshop 8 CS x86 on win 7 x64)
Aside from that it apparently works like a charm.
Seems like the lack of dialog box has returned in Mac OS X 10.11.
I'm experiencing the exact same problems as Palmer Woodrow did last March.
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