Photoshop CS3 Gem

Just a quick note that connects with my Using PNGs post. I happened to notice that now when you export out a PNG (of any type) from Photoshop CS3, it does not include the gAMA chunk anymore!

Applause to Adobe for making the use and implementation of PNGs easier on the web! Although I have to wonder if the PNG development team is all that happy about a powerful feature of the format being removed from the most ubiquitous image processing program out there. I realize it makes the usage easier but that was intended to be a part of the format, from what I understand, with a good goal in mind. (Speaking of which, here is a lengthy article about the format from the W3C, talking about how the gAMA information can be used for good)

Either way, now what’s your excuse for not using PNGs instead of GIFs? (unless you’re making animations or the image is extremely small)

Speaking of PNGs, here is an article from Coding Horror that expounds on the format and a whole lot more information that I attempted to cover in brief for the sake of real life step-by-step implementation. It covers how to compress your PNGs even more than they currently are and in the comments you will find something like 7 different programs that will do it.

In fact while I was going through the list I found a little utility that I will repost about if it works as claimed How’s that for a cliffhanger?

Update: The free utility wasn’t really worth much to me, mainly because it’s just not something that works well with my workflow, although I’m still hoping for something to help compress my xHTML/CSS/JS files after I’m done with development. Also I wanted to point people to this article on SitePoint explaining how you can actually get semi-transparent colors within a PNG-8 file using Fireworks. It works in all the big boy browsers and is just flatly ignored in kiddie ones. I’m not sure I feel as strongly about it as SitePoint does, but I will say it’s another trick in the bag. PNG is teh win!!1!!

Can’t get enough? You may be interested in these posts as well:

Design is…

Using PNGs

Hide hard coded image with CSS