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Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu
Most of the images I use on this website are PNGs (Portable Network Graphics.) The reason I use them is because they are lossless and look great when they are transparent. Most modern browsers support transparent PNGs and they can help make a website look great. However, when you create a PNG in MS Paint, Photoshop, etc. you may find they’re a lot larger in size than JPG of GIF files. In this guide you’ll learn how to compress the files from the right-click context menu in Vista.

Download PNG Crush Here
(Get pngcrush-*.*.*-win32.zip)

1. Download and install PNG crush

2. Extract pngcrush.exe to C:\Program Files\PNG Crush (if you choose another location, you will need to modify the registry key)

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 1

3. Download this registry key (64bit included) and install it to your registry.

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 2

4. Now right click on any PNG file and select PNGcrush. You can compress many files at once if you like. All compressed files will be put in a folder named Crushed within the directory that your PNG files are in.

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 3

PNG Crush in Action

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 4

File Size Before Compression

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 5

File Size After Compression

Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu 6

Download PNG Crush Here (Get pngcrush-*.*.*-win32.zip)

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix them.

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Comments

29 thoughts on “Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu”

  1. Casmir says:

    This is helpful…
    Thanks for sharing, I will try out the PNG Crush

  2. Casmir says:

    This is helpful…
    Thanks for sharing, I will try out the PNG Crush

  3. Thiago Christof says:

    This is great! A question: does it also remove the PNG chunks? Like in the command line:

    pngcrush -rem cHRM -rem gAMA -rem iCCP -rem sRGB infile.png outfile.png

    Thanks!

  4. Thiago Christof says:

    This is great! A question: does it also remove the PNG chunks? Like in the command line:

    pngcrush -rem cHRM -rem gAMA -rem iCCP -rem sRGB infile.png outfile.png

    Thanks!

  5. Rich says:

    Yes, it removes unwanted ancillary chunks.

  6. Rich says:

    Yes, it removes unwanted ancillary chunks.

  7. Erin says:

    this is so much easier than doing it manually

  8. Erin says:

    this is so much easier than doing it manually

  9. kush says:

    good tip

  10. kush says:

    good tip

  11. badcrocodile says:

    Tried pngcrush on a few files (from 50kb to just over 300kb). Found that Fireworks naturally compresses png’s to within 5kb of pngcrush. I only tested 3 or 4 files though… still a cool program… your reg hack makes things simple as well

  12. badcrocodile says:

    Tried pngcrush on a few files (from 50kb to just over 300kb). Found that Fireworks naturally compresses png’s to within 5kb of pngcrush. I only tested 3 or 4 files though… still a cool program… your reg hack makes things simple as well

  13. badcrocodile says:

    Okay, quick update… ran crush on one more file- just for fun- it took this fireworks png from 66kb to 42.???
    Ran it again on another similar file, same thing: about 25% reduction… but still almost nothing on my 300kb header image that I was really hoping to shave some weight off of. Oh well, cool tool.

  14. badcrocodile says:

    Okay, quick update… ran crush on one more file- just for fun- it took this fireworks png from 66kb to 42.???
    Ran it again on another similar file, same thing: about 25% reduction… but still almost nothing on my 300kb header image that I was really hoping to shave some weight off of. Oh well, cool tool.

  15. Sir_Xero says:

    Very Helpful.

    I got it to work now.

  16. Sir_Xero says:

    Very Helpful.

    I got it to work now.

  17. Charles says:

    Is there any way that the right-click option appears only when right-clicking on a png file?

  18. Charles says:

    Is there any way that the right-click option appears only when right-clicking on a png file?

  19. SmushIt Reduces Digital Pictur says:

    […] of your pictures without making them smaller or losing quality. I previously showed you how to use PNGCrush, which is limited to PNG files. SmuthIt works with all popular image […]

  20. Best Windows Freebies and Guid says:

    […] Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu […]

  21. Bob says:

    Do you have a 32bit version?
    The version downloaded does not
    work with Vista 32bit

  22. Bob says:

    Do you have a 32bit version?
    The version downloaded does not
    work with Vista 32bit

  23. Mel says:

    Frankly, I’m surprised that PNG hasn’t dominated graphic formats more. Last I checked they seemed to be the only way to achieve everything I wanted to for my web page.

  24. Mel says:

    Frankly, I’m surprised that PNG hasn’t dominated graphic formats more. Last I checked they seemed to be the only way to achieve everything I wanted to for my web page.

  25. webzhao says:

    great tool

  26. webzhao says:

    great tool

  27. sal says:

    I think you use pngfile in place of the asterisk in the .reg file, for example –

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTpngfileshellPNGcrush]

  28. Rich says:

    Thanks Sal!

  29. Kugelfisch says:

    Worked great ! Thanks.

Comments are closed.


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