MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Need to compress a load of images as much as possible, mainly PNGs and JPGs. Converting anything to GIFs isn't an option because of loss. Must be local app, as opposed to online. And the ability to do a batch would be cool to, but not a necessity.
Have tried apps like Image Optimiser and other random stuff but not found the right thing yet.
Windows only.
Any ideas?
TVM
PaintShopPro has a bactch converter and there are some free options here:
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/categories/graphics_and_photo/
Oh and you might want to do a bit of background reading. GIF uses lossless compression technology, jpeg is (usually) lossy.
I suspect what you mean as that the reduction in number of colours required to make a GIF doesn't suit the image type.
As a rule of thumb. PNG / GIF for illustrations and images with fewer colours. JPEG for photos and where you need more colours.
Irfanview is free and does all the things you asked for.
Cheers guys. On the case - I forgot I used Irfanview in the past.
I suspect what you mean as that the reduction in number of colours required to make a GIF doesn't suit the image type
Yep, GIF loses too many colours, hence unworkable.
Photoshop 30day trial?
It can do everything you want. And use it with Adobe Bridge to simplify the process further.
JPG is already pretty good image compression and you won't find much that can significantly compress a JPG image without any further loss.
Best options for making JPG files smaller are to keep them as JPG and make the actual image dimensions smaller and/or decrease the JPG quality level.
Both of these are obviously lossy though - but you may not notice a drop in JPG quality from say 100% (huge file) to 90% (pretty reasonable file).