Easily reduce the Size of your PNG files in Photoshop without a loss of quality.

When I tried to upload my Santa Claus with Scrolls, the PNG file was a whooping 10 MB, exceeding my servers 7 MB embed limits. So I had to optimize the image in order to share it with you. Afterward the graphc was only 5.6 MB, nearly half the size of the original, and it was easy to do.

If you have a website or if you share graphics online, or even if you want to save some disc space, this technique will be helpful to you.

BTW, browsers can now read PNG files–I’m old school HTML and there was once a day when I dreamed of this ability.

What’s the advantage of using PNGs in web design?

PNG files display beautifully, without degrading image quality the way that JPGs and GIF files do. Even better, PNGs allow transparency. The trouble is, PNGs have a large file size due to the transparency and the more colors in the file, the larger the file.

Though there are a lot of programs out there that will reduce the size of PNG files, if you have Photoshop you don’t need them.

Here are the insructions to reduce PNG files in Photoshop.

1. open a PNG file in Photoshop. You may want to save this test file under another name in order to preserve the original.

2. Go to image adjustments and select “Posterize.” Make sure the “review” box is checked and move the bar to the right as little as possible to reduce the size without altering the image quality.

You’ll need to experiment with the setting. The default setting of 4 will probably make your image too bright. I used a setting of 14 on a flower image, and it came out perfect, but I didn’t have as much luck when I tried it with the Santa image and had to move the bar to 33. As long as you set it below 40, your file size should be smaller, and your image will still look great.

Give it a try!