[Ian Jones]

Hi there.

I have been experimenting with the *.png format (pronounced 'ping' btw ). You can use it with Flash in a particularily exciting way. Goto Phong.com and check out his tutorials for flash.

Basically the tutorial shows how you can export a *.png file from photoshop with full dynamic transparency! unlike the crappy all or nothing *.gif format. It is awesome because when you bring a raster graphic into flash it can have dynamic transparency. I hope you can see the posibilities there. I have tried it myself and it works a charm.

Problem is that it doesn't work for me anywhere else but in flash. eg.. on the web in IE. I even visited the *.png official page, it seems to indicate that you can have dynamic transparency images on your website!... Thing is that this doesn't work for me. Furthermore I have never seen this anywhere on the net anyway...

You can only do it with Photoshop 5.5 save for web option. The file format has RGBA, that is Red,Green,Blue,Alpha. When you re-open the saved file, you can go into the channels pallette to see this.

Is there something I'm missing? Why doesn't it work?

This would be so ridiculously simple for a web browser to incorporate. Is it just simply that they haven't done it yet?!

[elam]

It depends on what browser your using.

Most browsers don't implement .PNG's properly.
Most do it pretty well, but not 100%.

I'm using Mozilla right now and it works fine.

What version of IE are you using?

.PNG's are also non-proprietary, unlike GIF's and JPEG's.

[Ian Jones]

*.png displays for me, but it does not have full alpha support.

I'm using IE5. It is not the cause of the problems as far as I know. I just found some info about it anyway...

Apparently M$ and Netscape seem to overlook the vast potential that the *.png alpha transparency offers. Mozilla is supposed to support it fully! Which is cool, but until the vast majority of users get the effect it is just useless.

I can't believe they haven't implemented it. It is just so, so, damn stupid!

Why does everything computer related always come down to F--k M$! *sigh*

[eyewoo]

My experience with pngs -- they are fantastic for fully gradient transparencies, but they are large graphic files and therefore not very useful for commercial websites where load time is important.

[Dr. Bang]

Ian, how bout importing the png file into a piece of flash? I know that flash's transparency works well on most of the major browsers.

[Pat]

.PNG is cool because the file format also supports internal gamma correction, theoretically allowing the image to appear the a same regardless of platform. Someone was thinking...

-Pat

[Dr. Bang]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pat:
.PNG is cool because the file format also supports internal gamma correction, theoretically allowing the image to appear the a same regardless of platform. Someone was thinking...

-Pat

---

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR THE PAST FEW WEEKS LOVER?!

[B3AND1P]

another problem with pngs is that the filesizes are HUGE. Thats probably why they haven't been implemented on the web that much, they are just too much for a 56k user to download. What we really need is a jpg compression with full alpha! does anyone know if jpg2k has full alpha support?

[Agrajag]

PNG doesn't necessarily mean bigger files. When it comes to true-color photo-like images, JPG is of course first choice IF you can accept the lossy compression. PNG compresses lossless, which may be an advantage sometimes, but is paid for with a bigger filesize for true-color images.
If you compare GIF with PNG (i.e. 256 colors), the latter almost always wins in every respect. Mostly better compression, alpha-channel, gamma correction...
I personally use PNG for every job I previously used GIF for (like color-reduced Thumbnails or images like lineart (below hi-color)).
The browser issue: With IE being a Micro$oft product, and PNG being an open source development if I'm not mistaken, it seems only natural that the browser needs to have problems with PNG ...
AFAIK, Mozilla displays all types of PNG correctly, and even throws in MNG, which is the not-so-well-known animated form of PNG.
Opera cannot handle MNG, but doesn't have problems with PNG (at least I never came across any).
Here's an interesting link, if you don't already have it:
http://www.libpng.org/

[Ian Jones]

Thx guys.

Seems as though it doesn't work for browsers. Flash works with it brilliantly though. Hopefully they will support its great features in the future. I doubt it though. What amazes me is that it has fantastic features, and it is free! unlike the LZW compression that gifs have... which Unisys sells licences for use. You'd think that at least the mere mention of a cheaper, alternative would ring alarm bells back at M$.

Dr. Bang:

"Ian, how bout importing the png file into a piece of flash? I know that flash's transparency works well on most of the major browsers."

Yeah I know that works... read my first post!

[Frost]

PNG is a rather cool format.

On a funny side note, apparently Photoshop 7 can finally properly load 16 bit-per-channel PNGs! They've only been trying since version 4 or so... (not that you can actually EDIT anything decently in 16BPC, but I'm sure Adobe will make that possible in version 15.0 after they incorporate an HTML&Java editor and embed audio mp3s in GIF89 files.)

[enough ranting]

[JFreak]

�Pings� are sweet indeed.
A unique use I've found for them is in powerpoint shows. Pngs are much better than gifs (like you said) for transparency, and they don't have to be in boxes likes jpgs. So as photo-objects, Pings work wonders.
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to try them in Flash