png use
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- mr740
any web designers use pngs in your projects instead of transparent gifs? The seem so powerful, I don't know why I don't see more use of them around.
- madirish0
yes, whenEVER possible i do. much better compression rates and the alpha channel control is way better.
you do not see more of them around because IE does not support the use of them. there are CSS hacks though to get around this though.
- fowler0
any links to these hacks?
- JazX0
not compatible with all browsers, plain and simple. but great to use with Flash
- instantok0
you can use them in all browsers...what is not supported is the alpha chennel and that is only (i believe) an issue with IE/PC...strange because the alpha channel is supported in IE 5.2 on a mac...to get around it in IE/PC you need to use an activex and javascript/css fix:
- ldww0
i have a small js file which will only run on ie which allows the use of alpha channel pngs in ie.
love png.
- blackspade0
go png!
- ribit0
we use PNG only in processing photos for our site.. it seems to be the only way to drop a faded-edge watermark over any photo in a batch process?
- thismanslife0
"it seems to be the only way to drop a faded-edge watermark over any photo in a batch process?"
... if the image needs alpha transparency when exported, yes, PNG is the only way... otherwise, no... you can batch modify and export as JPEG or GIF too. Right?
- ribit0
no, I mean we drop a PNG watermark with dropshadow onto our JPEG photos, and export as JPEG... it is the only way right?
- thismanslife0
Oh right, erm.... no it's not the ONLY way (in photoshop)... there are other formats that support alpha transparency (but not "web formats"), buuut... PNG is as good as any I guess....
- ribit0
this isnt in Photoshop.. its in a CMS image processing system... I need to supply an image file as watermark.
- thismanslife0
In that case, yep, probably the only way :)
- monNom0
as cool as an 8bit alpha is, 32 bit .pngs are way too big to be used for anything other than tiny stuff. You're hardly saving anything on a LZW compressed .tif and that's just too big.
I say fake it whenever possible. having all that extra data just for a fuzzy shadow/anti-aliasing is a bit daft.