Neverside

what the point in a png?

Why does anyone use a png?
I have never really messed about with them.

From what little I understand, you can have transparency with them but IE doesn't support that.
When I have tried to save anything as a png the file size is usually bigger than a gif or a jpg.

I'm sure I'm missing something.

I have recently discovered the goodness of png's. PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics and is made for the web. PNG images are crisp and can be smaller than a gif or jpg and still have better quality. In photoshop, go to file > save for web... and then change the settings to PNG 8 (not 24 and put down the colors pretty low and save it and do the exact same for a gif file. You will notice that the png files looks noticably better. Gif was made over 10 years ago so it isn't perfect for what we need now-a-days except maybe animation. Don't worry about the preview that PS produces when you are messing with the colors because it is really off.

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halo2 <3

I find pngs useful when I need to make flash text or something in flash..

png + gif = can have transparentacy

use save for web it helps alot
(sorry for crappy spelling)

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Re: what the point in a png?

Quote:

Originally posted by reregistered
Why does anyone use a png?
(...)
I'm sure I'm missing something.

Of course you are

Quote:

Originally posted by reregistered
From what little I understand, you can have transparency with them but IE doesn't support that.

Thats because IE has always been lagging behind when it comes to conform to real standards. One reason more to ditch that old piece of shít

Quote:

Originally posted by reregistered
When I have tried to save anything as a png the file size is usually bigger than a gif or a jpg.

Thats because PNG is a lossless format - if you open a PSD and save it as a png and bmp the png will be smaller yet pixel wise exactly the same like the bmp (unlike jpeg which uses lossy compression).

This feature alone is pretty useful to me

That's interesting what you say PolishKid about the quality.

So can I assume that the png format is good for all types of graphic? i.e. sharp edges and gradients? Or is it not yet a replacement for jpg's?

communist, please don't turn this into another firefox/IE debate that this forum is riddled with. Not everyone is a developer and therefore not everyone uses FF. Over 90% of my website users use IE. So to not make a site IE compatable is just plain ignorant.

Quote:

Originally posted by reregistered

communist, please don't turn this into another firefox/IE debate that this forum is riddled with.

Dont intend to.

Quote:

Originally posted by reregistered
So to not make a site IE compatable is just plain ignorant.

No! Being a multi-billion company that could easily add a bit standard compliance to their program but yet trying to break standards and stay backwards is plain ignorant.

Oh and there isnt just FF as an alternative - you could aswell use Mozilla or Opera

blah, blah, blah.
I thought this thread was about .png's ?

If your image is transparent background but you cannot save as .png because it won't show the transparent, only .gif on the website

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So I guess it brings me back to the point of, if the advantages of it can't be realized in all browsers, why use it?

Quote:

So I guess it brings me back to the point of, if the advantages of it can't be realized in all browsers, why use it?

Because:

1. It supports more options than the current standards for web, and in fact does away with the need for jpeg and gif other than for compatability. Since PNGs support millions of colors, full alpha transparency, and has specs for animation as MNGs.

2. It's open source, which means that software developers don't have to pay for the rights to use it as they do with JPEGs and GIFs. It also means that more programs can adopt use of it, so generating PNGs is easy for developers.

3. Of the currect versions of browsers, only the Windows version ofIE doesn't support it. Every other browser has some kind of support (actually IE 5 had support but it was removed, thanks MS).

4. We are moving towards using it more and more as the standard for online graphic distribution. So if you get used to using it now, you'll be ahead of the game when it's required.

There are lots of other fine details, but those are the basics.

$0.02

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