Hey everyone!
I had another friend alert me to another tool out there on the Wild, Wild Web that automates the process of optimizing .jpg, .gif and .png files. The tool is called punypng, and is made available by Conrad Chu, the Design Director at Ask.com. According to the description on their web site:
“punypng is a free optimization service that can dramatically reduce the file size of an image by converting it into a highly-compressed, lossless PNG image. That translates to outrageously efficient web page loading, and just makes the web more puny.”
Very cool. I tried it out on a few images, and it does a solid job at reducing file sizes. None of their automated, optimized .png output was able to get as small (or smaller) than the files that I have optimized with PNGSlim…but punypng does a decent job nonetheless.
One test I haven’t had time to perform yet is taking an unoptimized .png file, running it through Smush.it, then running it a second, separate time through punypng. Maybe my buddy Stoyan will be curious enough to give that a try and report back via comments…although my guess is that Smush.it might get those files just a hair smaller.
Regardless of how that potential “test” shakes out, I do want to publicly say THANK YOU to Conrad for introducing yet another easy-to-use optimization tool into the public domain. The optimization message lost a bit of momentum in the late 1990s after Internet connection speeds increased substantially (while there was a simultaneously large increase in the availability of bandwidth). However, now that we are nearing the end of the first decade in the 21st century, people are again realizing the benefits of optimizing electronic imagery…primarily related to the exponential increase in internet-enabled handheld devices that have flooded the marketplace.
We’ll get there…one tool and one “convert” at a time… 
Thanks for sharing! The service looks cool. It didn’t work for me, probably a temp glitch, I tried a GIF and PNG.
Left by Stoyan on July 7th, 2009
ok, i know this is nasty, but smush.it reduced the puny sprite by 22%. It’s probably intentional. I know on smush.it there’s one unoptimized image, on purpose, just to show that everyone can benefit from a little image diet
Left by Stoyan on July 7th, 2009
Stoyan, I have to also admit…with EVERY optimization site, service or article I’ve ever come across, the first thing I do after reading what they are about is running their imagery through some of the tools I use, to see how close what they have on their web sites is to the "maximum" or optimal optimization levels.
It’s not in effort to be mean or criticize…but rather to experiment and educate. Heck, I LOVE it when people email me and say that they saw something on my site or in a blog posting and know that there is a better way of accomplishing it! I don’t feel bad or belittled. I say ‘Thank you!’ and then try and replicate their results, so I can share it with the readers of this blog.
I don’t make much/any money doing this…so I suppose if my livelihood depended upon claiming to be the best at ________, I might be more sensitive to criticism or people "showing me up" a bit!
That said, any time that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (Bing) or others want to come calling and turn me loose for a month or two on some of their millions of image tiles in their online mapping services, I’ll say "How high?!" when they ask me to jump.
Left by datonn on July 7th, 2009
Website’s friend ; maybe you’ll find tips for imagery optimization here : http://www.css-ig.net/
Left by Franck on July 8th, 2009
Hi datonn,
Glad you liked the tool. I’m planning more enhancements in the future. Unfortunately, right now the site is down… getting a little more attention than I thought, so I"m working on some scalability improvements.
Conrad
Left by Conrad Chu on July 8th, 2009
I dig your blog, Derek, and have learned a lot from it. Thanks for keeping it up and sharing!
Left by Stoyan on July 8th, 2009
Hi Datonn,
Try out punypng one more time, it’s back and I also a few more optimization logic. I added some more JPEG optimizations as well. For example, punypng will test if the JPEG is better off as PNG or not, and if not, will run things like jpegtran and jpegoptim on it to at least get you a puny jpeg.
Left by Conrad Chu on July 9th, 2009
Howdy
Just a little update ‘pngslim’:
http://www.jonof.id.au/forum/index.php?topic=846.msg11799#msg11799
Cheers
Andrew
Left by Andrew Dent on September 23rd, 2009
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
Left by Polprav on October 22nd, 2009
Absolutely Polprav! Anything in this blog or on our graphicsoptimization.com parent site is in the public domain…so quote-away! The more we spread the word about some of these tools and techniques, the better we all will be in the end.
Left by datonn on October 22nd, 2009