TinyPNG is an Online image compression tool for advanced lossy compression for PNG images.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless format, & TinyPNG uses a technique called quantization to make the file size smaller by selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image. This technique enables large reductions in file size, while the visual effect of the method remains virtually invisible to the human eye.
By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data, that is the logic on which this tool works on.
PNG is very useful in graphic design because it’s the only widely used format that supports partially transparent images, thus allowing for layered images & separation of the original layers using software & tools like Photoshop.
But it also makes the size of PNG images much larger than your jpegs & other image formats. This is where TinyPNG comes into the picture, converting 24-bit PNG files to much smaller, 8-bit indexed color images without any unnecessary metadata.
The result is a PNG file that’s much smaller & still provides support for transparency. The tool is free for basic usage. You can upload up to 20 images of up to 5 MB each. It will process them Online & you can then download the entire lot in the reduced size.
As of May 2014, TinyPNG had been used to reduce the file sizes of more than 25 million images adding up to 5 TB worth of uploads. TinyPNG managed to get rid of 3.5 TB.
Apart from the Online image compression tool, you can also use TinyPNG directly from within Photoshop if you use the TinyPNG plugin for Photoshop.
You can just as well use TinyPNG directly from within WordPress using a WordPress plugin which requires you to get an API key from TinyPNG. Developers can likewise make use of the TinyPNG API to upload & download large batches of PNG files to be processed.
Developers can convert up to 500 images per month for free, with no limit on file size. If your needs exceed 500 images, these guys have a US $15/month plan under which you can convert up to 3,500 images, & a larger US $100/month plan for up to 50,000 images.
TinyPNG was developed by the Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based professional internet solution provider, Voormedia.
Check out the video here: http://vimeo.com/86512586
Image Credit: TinyPNG
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