Pngyu For Mac

PNG was designed as a lossless format, and you can’t normally shrink the size of PNG files like you would with JPG images, by reducing their quality. This becomes an issue when you need to use the PNG format for various reasons (such as its support for alpha transparency) but need to bring down file sizes.

Pngyu is an older app, but it’s still a useful one. It’s a GUI for pngquant, a command-line utility and library that allows lossy compression of PNG images. It can reduce file sizes by 60-80% on average, and the effect on image quality is difficult to notice, at least not without careful analysis.

Since Pngyu was released a long time ago and hasn’t been updated for many years, it ships with an older version of pngquant. It’s still functional, but it won’t produce results as good as those possible with the latest version of the utility.

Before using Pngyu, you should download the latest version of pngquant from here. Then, either replace the executable in Pnguy’s Resources folder or head to the app’s preferences and direct it to the location of the new version of pngquant you have downloaded.

Once you’ve set everything up, you can go ahead and load the images you wish to process. This can be done via drag and drop or by navigating to their location. Then, set the output location and, if you like, customize the compression settings.

The results can be previewed, and the app allows you to quickly switch between the original and output image to compare their quality. After processing, you will be able to see how much each image was compressed.

Optionally, you can have the app run the output images through ImageOptim as well, if you have it installed. This will shrink them even further by optimizing them without further quality loss.

Despite its age, Pngyu still works well even on Apple Silicon. The compression results are entirely dependent on pngquant, and you can always use the latest version of the command-line tool to make sure you’re getting the best possible outcome.

From my experience with the app, it’s very stable, and the lossy compression it provides should be excellent for all but the most stringent quality requirements, while reducing file size considerably.