PNG-8 that acts like PNG-24 without Fireworks | commadot.com

PNG-8 that acts like PNG-24 without Fireworks | commadot.com

Ok, the instructions on the site are pretty clear, but I will repeat them just in case.

1. In Photoshop save your files with alpha transparency as PNG-24 files. Test in a modern browsers.
2. Download PngQuant (Tested) or the newer version (I didn’t try this one) and put the .exe file in your c:\windows\system32 folder. Also, there is a GUI you could use (untested) called Manfred.
3. Put the PNG-24 files in a folder like c:\png-transform
4. Run a command prompt and type: pngquant 256 filename.png
5. This will create new files in the same directory that are PNG-8 but act like PNG-24 in a modern browser. These look pretty good in IE6. (See below)

pngquant Home Page

pngquant is a command-line* utility to quantize and dither 32-bit RGBA PNGs down to 8-bit (or smaller) RGBA-palette PNGs, usually with a significant reduction in file size. (Other PNG image types, even colormapped images, may also be processed, but they will first be expanded to RGBA, which isn't the most efficient way to do so.) This is the same technique used for many of the images on the Miscellaneous Transparent PNGs page, and the results are often indistinguishable from the original, truecolor PNG images.