A Case for PNG

[Lee]

Okay, I'm on-board. Just downloaded (and switched) my PS PNG plug-in with the Super PNG plug-in. Now for some experimentation - always a dangerous undertaking at my level of PS knowledge. [confused]

Film at 11

[Lee]

UPDATE:

Well, I must admit, I confused now (nothing new there). I downloaded the SuperPNG plug-in and got it exchanged with Adobe's PS PNG plug-in. No problem. I then downloaded the PNGQuant and it says to put it in the Windows C:/System 32 folder. I got as far as the Sys. 32 folder but can't find where to put the downloaded file. I also downloaded the DOS optimizer PNGCrush but don't know what to do with that either.

Without using any of the above downloads I opened PS and saved an image using the new SuperPNG option. Seems to work fine but then again I don't have a clue what the hell I am doing.

Any suggestions.

[Moltas]

PNG is, and always will be free; it uses lossless compression, unlike JPEG, it’s capable of either 24-bit saving with or without an alpha channel, or 16-bit (HighColor, 16,000 colors) with or without a 1-bit mask. And it supports animation, although no program to my knowledge will write a multi-image png. And no Web browser—Explorer, Firefox, or Safari—is capable of displaying an animated png if you could easily create one.

Aren't you talking about MNG instead of PNG? MNG is the precessor of PNG
http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/
There is something called aPNG but what I have heard it isn't really stable yet...I found this on the web:

Not everything smells of roses when considering PNG. Lately, animated GIFs are all the rage on the Internet. Unfortunately there is no animated PNG format and there will never be an official one. The PNG consortium does allow extensions to the format, but this may lead to a multitude of animated PNG formats being made (which is bad, because there will be no standard). In this case it probably is better to still use GIF.

If you want transparent PNGs you can get them to work with IE but it involves some nasty tricks. I made a small web application that uses transparent PNGs for a local company.
http://www.renmarksmaleri.se/2004/fiona/index.cfm
It's in swedish but you can try to click the different images to change foreground and background.

With that said, I still agree that the support for PNG is suprisingly poor. The PNG format is very interesting and has a lot of potential.

/Moltas

[theKeeper]

Mark, how?s about offering png upload attachments?

I've always had PNG support here Gary. I LOVE PNGs!

In fact... in case anyone's interested, here's a list of the file formats you can upload on the Forum.

PS: take a look at the extension on my attached image below.
And Sue uploaded a PNG as well. ;)

When uploading any files, just click the text "Allowed Extensions and Sizes" to see what you can and can't upload. :B

[gare]

Hi, Mark--

My oversight. Attached is a png, with the stars as a transparency.

Moltas--I've never heard of mng; what I was mentioning in my original post was png, but I'd certainly love to learn about a new file format.

Lee, I'm sorry that the plug-in was causing so much headache, but if you've got a lot of tiffs hangin' around your hard drive, alphas or no, converting them to png will save you hard disk space, with little or no system performance hit when opening or saving the images.

Hi, Welles! Nice composition!
I see you're using Aurora--I got version 2 a while back. Expensive, but as you can see in this image, Aurora 2 does nimbus clouds in 3D space. IMO, the upgrade is worth it...

My Best,

Gare

[Welles]

Hi, Welles! Nice composition!
I see you're using Aurora--I got version 2 a while back. Expensive, but as you can see in this image, Aurora 2 does nimbus clouds in 3D space. IMO, the upgrade is worth it...

Haw, you recognized that preset. It is #1 in the list and I was just doing a quick image. ;)

I love the 3D clouds too. Occasionally I'll use Aurora for making an image background but more often I'll use it for making a new and dramatic sky for a photo.

The helicopter was just one of the stock models which came with Digital Element's Modelshop. I like all three of their plugins but they are expensive. }:\

[gare]

Moltas, please excuse my ignorance, and Mark, thanks for the link! I see Steve Rimmer is still hackin' away at animation formats, and still trying to sell his sci-fi novels . He's done much better with mng animation tools than his gif predecessor, but ya still need PS to color reduce well.

I tried ImageReady GIF, at 32 colours and a one bit mask---terrible dithering, and 78K saved (9 frames). The mng equivalent is about the 59K, but with pattern dithering (doing this helps disguise banding on gradient fills), the images are a lot cleaner, and 256 colors.

I'm uploading the GIF, cuz your board sez mng extensions are not allowed! So how's about it, oh Keeper?

BTW, Microsoft should encorporate the mng plug-in in the next rev of IE, no?

I did the animation frames using trueSpace.

My Best,
Gare