Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu

By Rich on September 18, 2008 (29 Comments)

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)

png crush files 01 Compress Your PNG Files from the Right click Menu

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

png crush files 02 Compress Your PNG Files from the Right click Menu

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.

png crush files 03 Compress Your PNG Files from the Right click Menu

PNG Crush in Action

png crush files 04 Compress Your PNG Files from the Right click Menu

File Size Before Compression

png crush files 05 Compress Your PNG Files from the Right click Menu

File Size After Compression

png crush files 06 Compress Your PNG Files from the Right click Menu

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 the problems he creates.

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Comments

Casmir
This is helpful…
Thanks for sharing, I will try out the PNG Crush
Casmir
This is helpful…
Thanks for sharing, I will try out the PNG Crush
Thiago Christof
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!
Thiago Christof
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!
Rich
Yes, it removes unwanted ancillary chunks.
http://mintywhite.com Rich
Yes, it removes unwanted ancillary chunks.
Erin
this is so much easier than doing it manually
Erin
this is so much easier than doing it manually
kush
good tip
kush
good tip
badcrocodile
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
http://www.badcrocodile.com badcrocodile
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
badcrocodile
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.
http://www.badcrocodile.com badcrocodile
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.
Sir_Xero
Very Helpful.
I got it to work now.
http://pkmbrawl.darkbb.com/ Sir_Xero
Very Helpful.
I got it to work now.
Charles
Is there any way that the right-click option appears only when right-clicking on a png file?
Charles
Is there any way that the right-click option appears only when right-clicking on a png file?
SmushIt Reduces Digital Pictur
[…] 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 […]
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[…] Compress Your PNG Files from the Right-click Menu […]
Bob
Do you have a 32bit version?
The version downloaded does not
work with Vista 32bit
Bob
Do you have a 32bit version?
The version downloaded does not
work with Vista 32bit
Mel
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.
Mel
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.
webzhao
great tool
webzhao
great tool
sal
I think you use pngfile in place of the asterisk in the .reg file, for example -
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTpngfileshellPNGcrush]
http://richr.org/ Rich
Thanks Sal!
Kugelfisch
Worked great ! Thanks.

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