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kornelski
pngquant
C2013–2023
kornelski / pngquant

pngquant

Lossy PNG compressor — pngquant command based on libimagequant library

Creative & MediaData & DatabasesScience & EngineeringLibraries & SDKs
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
4Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5.8KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Lossy PNG compressor — pngquant command based on libimagequant library

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year6 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-08-17 18:54:55 UTC to 2023-03-13 03:07:51 UTC.

0122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

6 sources
mwittman·Mar 13, 2023
imgopt - shell script for image optimizing — just a convenience / batch processing wrapper more or less. Nothing earth-shattering, just really handy for me over the past year. https://gist.github.com/wittman/ab90f0eca5124233fa5163a32f89... # Prerequisites: ImageOptim (desktop app) https://imageoptim.com/mac ## pngquant https://github.com/kornelski/pngquant brew install pngquant ## oxipng https://github.com/shssoichiro/oxipng brew install oxipng ## sips (utility provided by default in OS X)
In Ask HN: Small scripts, hacks and automations you're proud of?
pornel·Jan 13, 2014
There is a version of pngquant that uses Wu's algorithm: https://github.com/pornel/pngquant/tree/wucut However, Wu's algorithm requires preprocessing R * G * B * A * int array, which is 16GB of RAM if done at full RGBA quality, so in practice all implementations have to drop alpha and/or heavily posterize colors. pngquant the same goal — subdivides RGBA (hyper)cube to minimize variance in each section — but does it with much less memory and can do it at full quality. Posterization of input is my pet peeve, as it gives images slightly banded and grainy look that we associate with "256-color" images (since VGA only ever supported 6-bit per gun), and presume 256 colors are never enough for photorealistic look — but it often is, and people who use e.g. TinyPNG service think it's magic.
In Pngquant – Lossy PNG compressor
nacs·Aug 17, 2013
The linked page provides this: "Batch processing Available from command line. ImageAlpha is based on pngquant. You'll find compiled pngquant executable in ImageAlpha.app/Contents/Resources directory." So you should be able to script that. Also for people on non-Mac systems, it appears this is available for Linux / Windows as well: https://github.com/pornel/pngquant Edit: Better link to pngquant: http://pngquant.org/
In Lossy PNG

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