How to Reduce PNG File Size of a Photo.
Although PNG images are optimized for the web, they can still be cluttered with a lot of unnecessary metadata, colors, and more. By removing all of this, you can significantly reduce the image file size without losing quality, depending on your settings. The advantage of compressing PNG images is that they not only take up less space on your hard drive, but they also load faster and use less bandwidth.
In this post, I will show you how to reduce the file size of a PNG image on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and directly in your browser using a web app.
Related: How to Convert a Screenshot to a Jpeg on a Mac
1. Reduce PNG online
There are many online applications that allow you to reduce or compress PNG images without much loss in quality (lossy compression). TinyPNG is one such website that I use on a daily basis. What TinyPNG does is scans the uploaded image and intelligently reduces the number of colors in the image. This, in turn, drastically reduces the size of the image. In case you’re wondering, because the way TinyPNG chooses colors, the compressed image is almost indistinguishable from its original counterpart.
To start using, hover over TinyPNG and drag and drop the PNG images you want to compress.
As soon as you drag and drop, TinyPNG starts compressing the uploaded images. Going down, click the Download link next to the name of the image you want to download. If you have uploaded multiple images, you can download them as a zip file by clicking the Download All button. Optionally, you can even save the compressed images directly to your Dropbox account by clicking the Save to Dropbox button.
Besides PNG, TinyPNG can also compress JPG images. Moreover, if you have Photoshop installed on your system, you can install the TinyPNG plugin for Photoshop and use it from there. This eliminates the need to manually upload and download images. However, this is a paid plugin.
2. Reduce PNG in Windows
For Windows users, you can use a free app called PNGGauntlet. This free Windows software combines various tools like PNGOUT, OptiPNG and DeflOpt to reduce the size of your PNG image as much as possible. Unlike the TinyPNG web app, which has a slight loss in image quality, PNGGauntlet compresses a PNG image without any loss in quality (lossless compression).
To compress PNG image on Windows, go to the official website, download PNGGauntlet and install it like any other Windows software.
Once installed, launch PNGGauntlet by searching in the Start menu. Once opened, just drag and drop the PNG images you want to compress.
Before you can compress, you need to set the output folder. To do this, click the “Browse” button (three horizontal dots) next to the output field and select the desired destination folder. Once you have selected the output folder, click the Optimize button.
After compressing the image, PNGGauntlet will show the reduced file size in the same window. You may see different compression rates depending on the image.
If you want to customize your compression options, you can do so by going to Tools Options. However, I recommend that you don’t mess with these settings unless you know what you are doing.
3. Reduce PNG in macOS
To reduce the PNG file size on macOS, we will use ImageOptim, a free and open source application. Like PNGGauntlet for Windows, ImageOptim compresses PNG images without losing quality. Besides PNG, the program can also compress GIF and JPEG images. So, download ImageOptim from the official website, install and run the application.
As you can see, the user interface is very simple and minimal. One thing to remember when using ImageOptim is that it compresses your images in place. those. it will replace the original images with compressed ones. So, before compressing, create a copy of the original images.
To compress images, drag them to the main window. Once you do this, ImageOptim will automatically compress the images. You don’t need to press any buttons at all.
After compression, you will see a green check mark next to the image name. At the bottom of the window, ImageOptim will show you how much disk space you have saved through compression.
If you want to customize the quality settings, you can do so by clicking the Options icon that appears in the main window and then clicking the Quality tab. The default image quality for JPEG, PNG and GIF formats is set to 80%, which is sufficient for most situations.
You can also change the optimization level by going to the Optimization Level tab.
4. Reduce PNG on Android
Android has an app for everything. To reduce the PNG file size in Android, we are going to use a free app called Photoczip. This free application allows you to compress, resize and archive all your images. First, install Photoczip from the Play Store and launch it.
On the home screen, the application will display all the folders it contains. Select the folder where you placed the images. Since I put all my images in the “png” folder, I select it.
Here, select all the images you want to compress by clicking on the checkmark icon that appears in the upper right corner. After selecting the necessary images, click on the “Compress” button that appears at the bottom of the screen.
As soon as you click on the button, the application will compress the images. Then click the Finish button to close the pop-up window.
By default, Photoczip saves compressed images in its own folder. To find out where a folder is located, tap the Menu icon (three horizontal lines) on the home screen and select Settings. You will see the default save location under “Save Image To”. Optionally, you can change the default save location by clicking on it.
5. Reduce PNG in Ubuntu (Linux)
Last but not least, you can do the same in Ubuntu and any derivatives like Linux Mint using Trimage. This free application uses optipng, pngcrush, advpng and jpegoptim to compress and reduce the file size of the image. First, open a terminal by pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + T. Now run the command below to install Trimage. sudo apt-get install trimage
After installation, launch the application. As you can see, the user interface resembles the Mac ImageOptim application.
So, just like on Mac, drag and drop the images you want to compress and the app will automatically compress them.
Again, Trimage compresses images in place. So, before compressing, create a copy of the original images. It helps if there are errors or quality loss.
That’s all there is to it and it is very easy to reduce the PNG file size on Windows, Mac, Linux and the web. If you think there is a better way to do this, please share it in the comment form below.
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