What crushing tools does Smush.it use to make files smaller?
Stoyan found in his research that there are many good tools for crushing images. Often, these tools are specific to a particular image format, or work much better in certain circumstances and less so in others. To smush really means to try many different crushing algorithms and figure out which one gives the best result. We are currently using: • ImageMagick to identify the image type and to convert GIFs to PNG. • pngcrush to strip unneeded chunks from PNGs. We’re currently experimenting with other PNG tools such as pngout, optipng, pngrewrite that will allow for even better png optimization. • jpegtran to strip all meta data from JPEGs (currently disabled) and try progressive JPEGs. • gifsicle to optimize GIF animations by striping repeating pixels in different frames. More information of the smushing process is available at our Yahoo! Developer Network page and our presentation slides (Stoyan, Nicole). If there is a tool you think we should add to smush it, please join the discussion
