Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with png

Why does opening PNGs from JungleDisk kill Photoshop?

deern the headlice — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:32:09 -0800

If I'm in Photoshop and try to open a PNG file from JungleDisk, why does Photoshop freeze indefinitely? This doesn't happen with any other file type, just PNGs. It only happens when I'm opening directly from JungleDisk. If I move them to my local drive, they open fine. I have asked on the JungleDisk forums, but no responses. Thanks for any insights you've got!

BMP to PNG

Dreamcast — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:20:56 -0800

Looking for a free Windows program that will batch convert a bunch of BMPs to PNGs without making the colors darker. I have a couple hundred BMP files I would like to convert to PNG. The problem is, all I've found are programs that either cost money, or ruin the colors (the outputted PNGs wind up being darker than the BMPs). I never encounter this problem when saving PNGs with GIMP (which is the program I generally save my PNGs in -- I don't think GIMP can do batch conversions, though). I've also tried IrfanView, but I encounter the same dark PNG problem.

I'm looking for a program that will run in Windows XP (Windows command prompt programs are fine), is free, can do batch conversions, and won't screw with the colors. Any suggestions?

mangled email signature...

dance — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:59:58 -0800

Why would a PNG, sent as part of an email signature, look compressed and distorted and generally horrible when included again in the recipient´s reply? This is through MS Exchange but I think it´s more than one Exchange. Googling for Outlook´s image compression ´feature´ doesn´t return anything useful. I can send a sample mail to anyone who´s interested in helping. Of course I could make a GIF, but I wanted PNG, damnit! ;-)

Thanks!

insert page break into screen capture?

bbranden1 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:57:03 -0800

Printer filter: a Snagit screen capture of a web page yields an 8.5 x 22" (96dpi) document in Photoshop 7. What can I easily do (short of using Photoshop to break the one document into two 8.5 x 11" documents) in order to print it out as a two page document, thus keeping the same width? Photoshop, Snagit, and Windows Picture Viewer all want to print it all out on a single 8.5 x 11" page by shrinking the width and length, which makes the content nearly unreadable. Converting it to a PDF document yields the same result. So, what's a quick and easy way of inserting a page break where I want it into a screen capture (JPG or PNG format)? OS: Windows XP

Screenshots into b&w LaTeX Figures

Alterscape — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:30:09 -0800

How do I best prepare color .png screenshots for publication as figures in a LaTeX document that will be printed in b&w conference proceedings? My paper includes several color screenshots from an application I'm building. I've captured the screenshots using OS X's Grab feature (cmd+shift+4) and converted them to EPS3 using ImageMagick's convert commandline tool (convert figure.png eps3:figure.eps) and successfully inserted the figures into my LaTeX document, which renders legibly using pdflatex.

Concerns: I'm fairly certain that the conference proceedings will be printed in b&w; my screenshots are color. I presume I'm going to have to convert them to halftone (probably in Photoshop, since I imagine I'll have to rescale them anyway). Is it safe to assume 300dpi?

Rendering halftones implies that the images will have to be printed actual size; what's the best way to ensure this when marking up an \includefigure{} in LaTeX? I know specifying no height or width will render the image in its native height and width, but is that height and width in pixels or inches? How do I prevent rescaling that will mess up the halftones for the printer?

Right now I'm using the subfigure package and printing two figures side by side on the page with \includefigure[height=.45\textwidth]. How can I cause LaTeX to output this width, so I can manually resize the screenshots before converting them to b&w?

What's the best way to preview this output? I have access to a color laser printer; will it render the halftoned images approximately as they will appear in print or should I try something else?

Expat life in Papua New Guinea?

Sticherbeast — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:33:35 -0800

In finer detail than simply "dangerous," what would it be like to be an Anglo expat in Papua New Guinea? What would the daily grind of an expat or a non-raskol native be in Port Moresby? What jobs and lifestyle would be available to someone who was willing and able to perform white collar work in an unfamiliar land? I'm not asking for myself (the price of a plane ticket alone is a little prohibitive); I'm researching a story.

How do I force Firefox to cache PNG files?

Doofus Magoo — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:03:29 -0800

How do I force Firefox to cache PNGs? So there's a website that I visit from which I was recently blocked due to excessive hits against the server (something painful like 90+ hits per minute over 30+ minutes). I checked with the site administrators, and after going through their server logs, they reported there were a "lot of PNG files being opened over and over again," and that they (PNGs) probably weren't being cached properly.

Further they told me that:

In Firefox, the default action for PNG files is to open them using QuickTime instead of SaveToDisk. You will need to change the default action to SaveToDisk as there were a lot of files with PNG extensions in your log file. They may not have been cached properly which could have caused all the hits against our site because Quicktime was intercepting the default action.

This seems a little hand-wavey to me -- I guarantee I'm not the only person using Firefox on this site, and to complicate things a bit further, I don't even have QuickTime installed on this computer.

Can anyone else think of anything that would cause my computer to not cache PNG files correctly? I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Windows XP SP2, and don't have any extensions installed that aren't too off the wall (AdBlock Plus, NoScript, del.icio.us, Firebug, Google Browser Sync, Sage, Web Developer, ChatZilla).

Animating Still Frames with ffmpeg

potch — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:34:43 -0800

Could someone show this Linux n00b to use ffmpeg to convert a folder full of PNGs to an MPEG? The system I'm running doesn't have Mencoder, and I don't have root (it's a Dreamhost shell account). Thanks!

How to configure a PHP script that generates Twitter images?

empyrean — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:45:32 -0800

Need an assist from the PHP gurus. I'm trying to set up a PHP script that generates an image from the latest Twitter status. I'm working off an example here.

Followed the instructions there explicitly -- tried saving the script as a PHP file and got errors like this:

Warning: filemtime(): Stat failed for twitter.txt (errno=2 - No such file or directory) in [...] on line 30

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: simplexml_load_file() in [...] on line 34

I assigned the correct permissions to the file. When I tried renaming the file as a PNG (as suggested for using on forums that require an image extension), it just gives me a corrupt PNG file when I access it. Trying both versions of .htaccess suggested in the example did not fix this.

Other possibly relevant info: test site is hosted on GoDaddy and I'm not sure if there's any PHP issues with them.

So, is there something obvious I might be missing that isn't listed on the above linked site? Is there an easier way to generate an image of Twitter updates?

How to convert ANM format to GIF

meehawl — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 11:17:21 -0800

How to convert late 1980s/1990s vintage ANM Deluxe Paint animations to animated GIFs/PNGs? I have been doing a spot of archeology on my server's disks (long overdue!) and found a whole cache of "ANM" format animations. These were created, using the old Electronic Arts program, Deluxe Paint, on a PC around 1990-1992. Although I can run the viewer under DOSBox, I'd really like to strip out the bitmaps and convert them into animated GIFs or PNGs. Any ideas? I've tried EA's own very old "anim2pcx" utility under both native Windows and DOSBox and it just silently dies without producing any output. Neither Irfanview or XNView recognise the ANM format. I can't find an old copy of Deluxe Paint for the PC. Am I out of luck?

Help me learn to create semi-transparent PNGs for use on the web.

weston — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:53:39 -0800

Help me learn to create semi-transparent PNGs for use on the web. Those I'm creating in Macromedia's Fireworks don't seem to work in IE -- even when I use the appropriate IE-specific image filters. It would seem that I know how to use semi-transparent PNGs as css-specified backgrounds, but not how to create them. I've been succesful when someone else has created them first -- but my own attempts at creating them in Fireworks seem to result in totally transparent failures.

For example, I've tried to copy the fine article on daltonlp.com:

Failed Transparency Example Set 1

Note that both examples on that page work when viewed in Firefox. Note that only the first one works in IE. The same technique is used in both examples in that set. I believe the only difference is the image.

I also tried the IE-only, inline-styled example with fewer moving parts from the canonical ALA article:

Failed Transparency Example Set 2

Note that again, the first example works in IE, and the second doesn't (neither example works in anything but IE).

So: other PNGs work, my Fireworks-spawned PNGs do not. Has anyone else had this kind of problem? In two of the comments after the daltoplp.com article, some individuals mentioned they'd had this same problem using Photoshop, but no one followed up with a solution.

My conclusion is that either (A) there's something I don't know about how to properly export PNGs from Fireworks, or (B) IE struggles with something specific about Fireworks PNGs.

Either way, I could "clearly" use some advice on the semi-transparent PNG creation process.

vector graphics perspective effect in Final Cut Express

planetkyoto — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 05:06:39 -0800

Mac Final Cut Express and vector graphics, maybe Flash: How to make a vector graphics motion sequence to be incorporated into a Final Cut Express video. I am making a kind of travel guide video (final destination DVD and web) and want to animate a vector graphics city map that I am making (in Fireworks). I want to have the map skew from flat overhead view to a foreshortened perspective as shown here. I know I can make a sequence in Flash and import it to FCE. This kind of skew is simple to do in Fireworks or Photoshop, but in Flash (me not so good) when I choose "skew" it just tilts the graphic sideways.

Is there a way to do this in Flash that I am missing, or is there a free or cheap OS X program I can use to edit a sequence like this. Bonus if I can then zoom in to show a single city block or intersection.

Table tennis, anyone?

vers — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:32:44 -0800

Table tennis has recently become a competitive sport in the office I work in. There are over 250 of us; word has it I am in the the top 5. This is coming down to a girls vs. boys thing (i.e. men in IT and Marketing). How do I win, or at least put on a good show? Oh, and I'm the girl.

Creating Little Buttons/Banners for Blogs

abbyladybug — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 14:34:16 -0800

I have a feeling that somewhere online is a place where I can easily create those little buttons (or banners or whatever they are called) that live at the corners of everyone's blogs. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here for an example. What I'm imagining is a site where I can put in my text, select colors, then quickly create one of these. I'm sure I could do it in Photoshop, but the little tool I'm imagining seems so likely to exist that I thought I'd start by asking here. By the way, what DO you call those little things?

How can I make Internet Explorer correctly implement full alpha transparency?

signal — Sun, 14 Mar 2004 19:41:44 -0800

Is there any easy to implement, close to 100% reliable, HTML, CSS, JS or whatever -hack to make IE correctly implement full alpha transparency in PNGs? It would make the life of this web developer much more happy and carefree.

ActiveX Plugin to Make IE5.5/IE6 Support PNG Alpha Transparency

Grod — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 14:48:49 -0800

PNG and IE6. I seem to recall reading about an active x plugin that enabled IE5.5+ on PC to properly support alpha transparency in png files. After googling, I couldn't find one. I did find lots of work arounds and hacks that are ugly and difficult to implement. There must be a solution.