Optimizing PNG Images

Optimizing a bunch of images in a directory

I found these commands here coincidentally on a pull request at Github. I found them quite handy ;-)

find . -type f -name "*.png"  -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} optipng -nb -nc "{}"
find . -type f -name "*.png"  -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} advpng -z4 "{}"
find . -type f -name "*.png"  -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} pngcrush -rem gAMA -rem alla -rem cHRM -rem iCCP -rem sRGB -rem time -ow "{}"

Quickly optimizing only one image

I’ve set up a function in my .zaliases file for this to be done on a single image aswell:

function opti() {
  optipng -nb -nc "$*";
  advpng -z4 "$*";
  pngcrush -rem gAMA -rem alla -rem cHRM -rem iCCP -rem sRGB -rem time -ow "$*";
}

To run all three commands on a single image I just call it like that:

opti image.png

That’s all the magic it needs.

Use jpegtran for JPG images.

jpegtran -copy none -optimize -progressive -outfile output.jpg input.jpg

Install these tools on your system

On debian or ubuntu

sudo apt-get install optipng pngcrush advancecomp

On macOS

sudo port install optipng pngcrush advancecomp

or if you use homebrew

brew install optipng pngcrush advancecomp

You may know other package managers commands, but I only use these.

An example

By filesize

The files taken from the snapshot tool on my macbook.

 33K 00_locales.png
 61K 01_control-software.png
157K 02_mmdvmhost.png
184K 03_general.png
187K 04_dmrconfig.png
 69K 05_exp_mmdvmhost-dmrnetwork.png
212K 06_exp_dmrgw-dmrnetwork1.png
236K 07_exp_dmrgw-dmrnetwork2.png

Three to four minutes later (all three commands):

 17K 00_locales.png
 33K 01_control-software.png
 81K 02_mmdvmhost.png
 98K 03_general.png
 97K 04_dmrconfig.png
 32K 05_exp_mmdvmhost-dmrnetwork.png
127K 06_exp_dmrgw-dmrnetwork1.png
144K 07_exp_dmrgw-dmrnetwork2.png

By view

 25K opti_01.png
 13K opti_02.png

This is the unmodified image: opti_01.png

And this is the optimized image: opti_02.png

Do you see much difference?