Web Analytics
Take a Tour of Windows Guides on www.mintywhite.com   Tour    Why Should You Subscribe to this Site   Why Subscribe?    Download a copy of Windows Vista - the Pocket Guide   Free Vista Books    Get the mintywhite Windows Guides toolbar for your browser   Toolbar   Donate a Dollar to Pay for Next Year’s Web Hosting

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu

Freeware, Windows Vista Guides Add comments

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu
Most of the images I use on this website are PNGs (Portable Network Graphics.) The reason I use them is because they are lossless and look great when they are transparent. Most modern browsers support transparent PNGs and they can help make a website look great. However, when you create a PNG in MS Paint, Photoshop, etc. you may find they’re a lot larger in size than JPG of GIF files. In this guide you’ll learn how to compress the files from the right-click context menu in Vista.

Download PNG Crush Here
(Get pngcrush-*.*.*-win32.zip)

1. Download and install PNG crush

2. Extract pngcrush.exe to C:\Program Files\PNG Crush (if you choose another location, you will need to modify the registry key)

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 1

3. Download this registry key and install it to your registry.

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 2

4. Now right click on any PNG file and select PNGcrush. You can compress many files at once if you like. All compressed files will be put in a folder named Crushed within the directory that your PNG files are in.

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 3

PNG Crush in Action

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 4

File Size Before Compression

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 5

File Size After Compression

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 6

Download PNG Crush Here (Get pngcrush-*.*.*-win32.zip)

Further Reading:

Take a Tour of Windows Guides on www.mintywhite.com   Tour    Why Should You Subscribe to this Site   Why Subscribe?    Download a copy of Windows Vista - the Pocket Guide   Free Vista Books    Get the mintywhite Windows Guides toolbar for your browser   Toolbar   Donate a Dollar to Pay for Next Year’s Web Hosting

7 Responses to “Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu”

  1. Casmir says:

    This is helpful…
    Thanks for sharing, I will try out the PNG Crush

  2. Thiago Christof says:

    This is great! A question: does it also remove the PNG chunks? Like in the command line:

    pngcrush -rem cHRM -rem gAMA -rem iCCP -rem sRGB infile.png outfile.png

    Thanks!

  3. Rich says:

    Yes, it removes unwanted ancillary chunks.

  4. Erin says:

    this is so much easier than doing it manually

  5. kush says:

    good tip

  6. badcrocodile says:

    Tried pngcrush on a few files (from 50kb to just over 300kb). Found that Fireworks naturally compresses png’s to within 5kb of pngcrush. I only tested 3 or 4 files though… still a cool program… your reg hack makes things simple as well

  7. badcrocodile says:

    Okay, quick update… ran crush on one more file- just for fun- it took this fireworks png from 66kb to 42.???
    Ran it again on another similar file, same thing: about 25% reduction… but still almost nothing on my 300kb header image that I was really hoping to shave some weight off of. Oh well, cool tool.

Trackbacks (Trackback URL)

    Leave a Comment

    If you have a computer help question, click here to leave it on the forums instead.