As a long time user of Adobe Photoshop, I missed the boat on a very important discovery in image optimization – PNG-8 supports full alpha transparency!

Alex Walker wrote a great article on PNG and included a nice example on creating PNG-8 images with a full alpha transparency layer with Fireworks – yes, Fireworks. Stoyan Stefanov points out this ability in his image optimization mistakes presentation as well. Thanks to you both for enlightening me!

Before Stoyan and Alex, I like probably many other thousands of Photoshop users believed, or still believe, that PNG-8 is identical to GIF, i.e. an all or nothing scenario when it comes to transparent pixels. In Photoshop, we are left with the usually bloated, heavy PNG-24 format that I typically steer folks away from.

However, in applying PNG-8 to my favorite PNG transparency techniques, I came to a different conclusion than Alex and Stoyan. This article shows there is no silver bullet when it comes to saving out PNGs (are you listening, Adobe?).

PNG Transparency Text Effects

One cool technique we can do with alpha PNGs are text effects, as detailed here by Nick La. The technique involves layering an empty element containing the horizontally tiled background gradient over system text.

• Download the Glossy Text PSD (189 KB)

Using this CSS and HTML, we can pull off the desired effect:

<style type="text/css">
.glossy-text
{
	font: 45px 'arial rounded mt bold';
	margin: 0;
	position: relative;
	color: #f30;
}

.glossy-text b
{
	background: url(glossy-text-photoshop.png) repeat-x;
	position: absolute;
	width: 100%;
	height: 27px;
	top: 4px;
	display: block;
	_background: none;
	_filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='glossy-text-photoshop.png', sizingMethod='scale');
}
</style>

<div class="example">
<h2 class="glossy-text"><b></b>PNG Can Overlay Text</h2>
</div>

Here are the results…

And another using the same image, with blue text…

The optimization win here is clear – use only 1 image across multiple headers to pull off a polished design for headings!

The PNG Image

I created the PNG image in Photoshop using a Gradient Fill layer. This gives us a fine deal of control over the gradient and the level of transparency to apply at each point. We can visually see how much transparency is applied by looking at the shade of the Opacity Stops. White is 0% Opacity (invisible), while black is 100% Opacity, or fully visible.

Now, we will head on over to our trustworthy Save For Web tool, and notice how our PNG-8 doesn’t support full alpha, as usual.

PNG-8	PNG-24

I will save out the PNG-24 version, which comes out to 156 bytes, not too bad at all. Let’s see if Fireworks and its PNG-8 format can do better.

Now, if you are new to Fireworks (like me), the workflow is a bit different than Photoshop. Let’s start by opening up our PNG-24 image saved out of Photoshop, and switching to the export Preview view.

The Export Preview is essentially the same thing as Photoshop’s Save for Web tool. Look over to the right in the above graphic at the Optimize and Align panel – those are the settings it’s using. Let’s update that to PNG-8, and the Alpha Transparency option.

To export the image, we can go to File…Export, but we can also see the expected KB in the lower-left corner of the panel, a file size of 248 bytes. After exporting, we see it was actually 238 bytes. (Adobe, why can’t this be completely accurate?)

Photoshop PNG-24, 156 bytes
Fireworks PNG-8, 238 bytes
Fireworks PNG-8 (dithered), 278 bytes

Now, this brings me pause, because the PNG-24 I saved out of Photoshop was a mere 156 bytes – 37% smaller in size! You can also clearly see that the Fireworks image is banding, which I would not expect to happen on such a low color image. I also dithered it, and it got larger and the pattern was still noticable.

It would seem that for this design purpose, the glossy text overlay, Photoshop’s PNG-24 is the better choice. My luck indeed!

Gradient Header Backgrounds

Similar in design to the text overlay image, the same finding is bound to hold true for gradient background techniques, right? Read on…

• Download the Glossy Background PSD (40 KB)

I’m going to create another Gradient Fill layer, and overlay a fade to white, and a fade to black over a layer filled with red. Notice I added a Color Stop in the center to ensure one side is white, and the other is black.

Just to be fancy, I will go ahead and add some fully opaque rounded corners using our selection tool. First, I’ll make a circle selection with a 10px diameter, giving us a 5px corner radius.

Next, we’ll add to the selection along the top and left hand sides of the circle selection.

Next, we’ll need to use Select…Inverse to flip the selection so we can fill it in.

Using our pencil tool with at least a 5px radius, we fill in our rounded corner with white.

Notice that it also nicely anti-aliases against the layer below. For the other side, we’ll simply make a selection around it, and copy it over to the other side of the header.

Move it over to the other side and do Edit…Transform…Flip Horizontal.

And finally, position it in the right spot.

It is time to save out our PNG. Let’s go ahead and disable our layers and crop the image.

And now for the PNG-24 vs. PNG-8 test.

Photoshop PNG-24, 399 bytes
Fireworks PNG-8, 397 bytes
Fireworks PNG-8 (dithered), 411 bytes

The tables have turned – PNG-8 wins by 2 bytes! However, notice again there is banding going on, which is bothersome to me for such a low color image. I played with all the settings I could in Fireworks to no avail, and the dither is larger in size and looks worse, so again I will have to hand this one to Photoshop’s PNG-24.

ImageOptim, a GUI PNG Tool

And then, I thought about messing around with some programs Alex mentioned in his article, the programs PNGQuant and PNGNQ. PNGQuant and PNGNQ take 32-bit or 24-bit PNG images and "quantize" them down to 8-bit, or PNG-8. Now, what sucks is that the tools are command line, although PNGQuant has a GUI version for Windows, it is difficult to install and doesn’t help OS X fans like myself and many other designers.

I couldn’t get either of these to work on OS X, because I am chobo and didn’t want to spend more then the 30 minutes I did trying to compile the source code on OS X.

In my Googling for GUIs, I discovered ImageOptim. Now, I have no clue what language the developer speaks, or what the tool does exactly, but if you want to help me translate for my readers, be my guest:

If I had to guess, it appears to try various PNG algorithms until it gets one that compresses the best. The tool is very user-friendly, and would fit nicely into any process as you simply drag and drop your files into its window, and it takes care of the rest.

To see how we fare, let’s take our full quality Photoshop PNG-24, and drop it in.

Viola! ImageOptim crunched our PNG-24 down to 355 bytes, a savings of 11%. Recall this is also smaller than our Fireworks PNG-8 (397 bytes).

The resulting file was smaller and identical to the original:

Photoshop PNG-24, 399 bytes
Fireworks PNG-8, 397 bytes
ImageOptim PNG, 355 bytes

Let’s go back and see if we can save anything from our Glossy Text image.

Looks like we didn’t gain anything, oh well.

My one beef with ImageOptim is that I have no clue what it did. Did it throw away information? What program did it use, OptiPNG, PNGCrush, AdvPNG? And why is their logo of a man getting impaled by credit cards?

Okay, with that we’ll use the ImageOptim version of the PNG to complete our design, along with the following CSS and HTML, for those interested.

<style type="text/css">
div.glossybg
{
	width: 250px;
	font-family: verdana;
	margin-bottom: 1em;
}
div.wide
{
	width:500px;
}
div.glossybg h2
{
	color: #fff;
	height: 32px;
	font: 18px/30px verdana;
	margin: 0;
	padding-left: 12px;
	background: #f30 url(glossy-background-imageoptim.png) repeat-x;
	text-align: center;
}
div.glossybg h2 b
{
	display: block;
	background: url(glossy-background-imageoptim.png) top right; /* Tricky bit! */
	background-color: #f30;
	padding-right: 12px;
	font-weight: normal;
}
div.glossybg h2.cold, div.glossybg h2.cold b
{
	background-color: #0066b3;
}
div.glossybg p
{
	border: 2px solid #ccc;
	border-width: 0 2px 2px;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 10px;
}
</style>

<div class="glossybg">
<h2><b>A Red Header</b></h2>
<p>Some text inside the skinny box.</p>
</div>
<div class="glossybg wide">
<h2 class="cold"><b>A Blue Header</b></h2>
<p>Some text inside the fat box.</p>
</div>

Notice the tricky bit of CSS indicated above. We are layering the image in <b> element of the header to pull off a rounded corner on the right side, allowing us to stretch the image to various widths, a favorite technique of mine.

Transparent Image Overlays

For my final experiment, I will create a banner header with a logo overlay, to demonstrate a more complex application of PNG.

• Download the Image Overlay PSD (185 KB)
• Download the Banner Artwork PSD (1.13 MB)

We’re going to create a website banner for a fan site of a well known American politician. I downloaded some free artwork from his campaign website.

For our transparent overlay, I will need to cut him out of his poster and copy and paste him on a black background.

Then, we switch our document to Lab color mode.

This gives us a nice Lightness channel which we can use to create our overlay. In the Channels panel, select the Lightness channel, we’ll then make a selection using Command + Click (Windows Ctrl + Click).

This selects the light areas of the image, and also includes transparency information. Visually, you will see anything greater than 50% white with a marquee around it. If we wanted the dark pixels, we could simply select the inverse to obtain it.

This is also why we created him on a black background, to maintain the outline (transparent pixels are counted as white).

Now that I have my selection, I am going to switch back to RGB mode, create a new layer, and fill the selection in with white. I disabled the color layer to show the end result.

We now have a layer with white transparency information in the shape of our political figure. Disable the black background, and save it out as Photoshop PNG-24. Export it through Fireworks and ImageOptim as outlined above.

Photoshop PNG-24 16764 bytes	Fireworks PNG-8 4542 bytes (73%)	Fireworks PNG-8 (dithered) 5265 bytes (69%)

ImageOptim was unable to gain any savings, so I didn’t include it. It seems as though ImageOptim doesn’t include a quantizer that will reduce the color palette like PNGQuant and PNGNQ, which is what we really want.

But I think we are finally getting somewhere on the Fireworks front. Our Fireworks PNG-8 was 73% smaller than our original PNG-24, though that banding is back (see his shoulder).

I exported another image out of Fireworks with a 100% dither, and think it looks much better. While a tad larger, I would recommend going with the dithered Fireworks PNG-8 image.

Let’s see how our finished product looks.

And if the boss said to make the background more patriotic, we can do so without affecting our transparent image.

What a catchy campaign slogan!

The Drop Shadow

I almost forgot the drop shadow! Well, I did forget it, I am editing this post just after I published it. Here is how a two color logo faired with a drop shadow.

Photoshop PNG-24 25232 bytes	Fireworks PNG-8 7150 bytes (72%)	Fireworks PNG-8 (dithered) 8615 bytes (66%)	ImageOptim 23255 bytes (8%)

In this one, my vote is for the Fireworks PNG-8 dithered with a whopping savings of 66% and a decent looking shadow.

Let’s add a gradient to the logo, and see how that looks.

Photoshop PNG-24 42264 bytes	Fireworks PNG-8 11049 bytes (74%)	Fireworks PNG-8 (dithered) 13909 bytes (67%)

At first glance, the dithered version would be my choice. However, if you look close enough, you see some odd dark specks here that just don’t belong. I tried to get rid of them in Fireworks, but my skills there are lacking. In this situation I would probably modify the source image to get the result I wanted. 1/2 point for effort, Fireworks.

PNG8 Graceful Degradation in IE 6

The final thing I’d like to echo with Stoyan and Alex about PNG8, is how gracefully it degrades in IE6.

Notice that all pixels that had transparency applied (the drop shadow) disappear, allowing for a graceful degradation in IE6. For most cases, this will be entirely acceptable and allow us to avoid the performance penalty and CSS hack associated with AlphaImageLoader, the traditional way to enable alpha transparency support in IE 6.

Take a look at how wide your IE6 audience is, and make a call on if it’s worth the design/performance tradeoff to fully support it.

Findings and Conclusions

At the end of the day, the score was +1 for Photoshop PNG-24, +1 for ImageOptim, and +2.5 for Fireworks PNG-8 (dithered). Because of Fireworks’ poor performance on the first two scenarios, there is no clear winner.

With my late discovery of Fireworks PNG-8, I went into this article thinking I would have the end all answer for saving out PNGs. If you’ve been reading, you know that it’s not quite so simple. We simply need better tools; preferably, one tool.

My final thought on a designer-friendly transparent PNG workflow:

1. Save out your transparent PNG out of Photoshop as PNG-24, and take note of the size.
2. Open the PNG-24 in Fireworks, and export it as PNG-8 with Alpha Transparency (play with the dither option), and take note of the size(s).
3. Run your Photoshop PNG-24 through ImageOptim, and see if you saved anything.
4. Make a final decision based on quality, size and longevity (e.g. how long will the image be around, how important is it?).

There seems to be a big gap on the GUI PNG tool side for saving out high quality, low file size PNGs. While command line tools exist, they are not a realistic answer for designers who haven’t ever launched a terminal window, and for developers who don’t have the time or patience to compile source code.

I want to encourage Adobe to look at the available open source PNG tools and get them into Photoshop CS4’s Save For Web, where it belongs.

Until that happens, I am going to have to respectfully disagree with Stoyan and Alex that PNG-8 is the clear winner, as in 2 of the important use cases above, it wasn’t.