Shrink your PNGs

[pyrozen]

While investigating various methods to compress PNG files so newer mods can be more easily downloaded, i stumpled across this nifty program.
http://benhollis.net/software/pnggauntlet/

nearly lossless compression of PNGs, i had success in decreasing the total size of the WMRP by around 12%(10MB) using the slowest algorithim. Not to shabby and they still look the same ingame. Just thought i would share this with anyone who is making massive mods similar to TA that have massive installers.

lee

[Covarr]

How does this program compare to OptiPNG? I mean, obviously, OptiPNG is lossless, which itself makes a difference, but do you think perhaps it may be wise to use them both in tandem?

[Kranmer]

well PNGGauntlet does give slightly better compression then OptiPNG and it also uses lossless compression (if selected), but its basicly a frontend for PNGOUT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNGOUT
The results in compression are quite close to OptiPNG, i tested with a 628kb PNG and with PNGGauntlet i got a 398kb and with OptiPNG i got a 401kb file, but the major difference is that PNGGaunlet can compress 32bit PNG's, if you try with OptiPNG it converts it to 24bit (well this happens to me but if anyone else doesnt have this problem it could just be me)

[Kudistos Megistos]

Question:

Why is this in tech related?

[pyrozen]

Question:

Why is this in tech related?

seemed appropiate to me since it was directly related to the "tech" behind most of the mods that are being released.

also, i re-compressed the WMRP files with a different method, and i manged to get the total to go from 90MB, down to 67MB. Pretty sweet!

lee

[DLPB_]

Hang on a second... if you are compressing a png losslessly with so much success, doesn't that mean PNG algorithm is fundamentally flawed?

[nfitc1]

Hang on a second... if you are compressing a png losslessly with so much success, doesn't that mean PNG algorithm is fundamentally flawed?

Not necessarily. If it's faster to read before compression (it usually is) then it's usually considered to be more efficient. It's about balancing size vs speed.

[pyrozen]

one thing i can note about this, i dont really notice any difference when ingame.

Also, once you compress them with this tool, you simply cannot gain anything by putting the images into an archive of any type, regardless of compression. However, a maximum compression ZIP got me to only 83MB, while this method put me down to 76MB.

lee

[Aali]

Watch out for bit depth reductions, some of these tools can do them even in a lossless manner but the driver will not take anything other than 24- and 32-bit PNGs.

[Timber]

nearly lossless compression of PNGs, i had success in decreasing the total size of the WMRP by around 12%(10MB) using the slowest algorithim.

Nearly lossless? No thanks
I'm sure most people won't mind downloading 12% more to ensure good quality.
It's not like file hosting or hdd space is an issue these days.

[Aali]

If the end result is not worse than what is going to be displayed, why not? I assume that almost everyone is using texture compression, that leaves your high-quality .png to be displayed exactly one times before it gets replaced by a very lousy but very very fast compression algorithm that doesn't come anywhere near "lossless".

[sl1982]

Personally i do not use texture compression, but i think it is good to have the best possible source to create that compressed texture from.

[Bosola]

Hang on a second... if you are compressing a png losslessly with so much success, doesn't that mean PNG algorithm is fundamentally flawed?

Compression algorithms are all about the art of compromise. Speed, quality, compression - pick two. This algorithm isn't lossless. It's gaining a little in column 3 at the cost of column 2.