Dan Counsell

Squash 2 for Mac - The easiest way to compress and optimize images for the web

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Raul Perțe
I'm ballparking, but 2/3 designers that I collaborated with don't compress images before handling them to the developers — and they are top-notch designers. It's like some of us don't name their layers, which doesn't necessarily make a designer good or bad. Most popular reason that I heard when asking „why?” was because „compression screws the image quality”. I'm happy to see products like this that offer lossless compression. By the way, there are many free alternatives out there but the one I really like is ImageOptim. They also have a web API for image compression. — https://imageoptim.com/mac
Chris Messina
@perte ❤️ imageOptim!
Raul Perțe
@chrismessina Oh, I know. That tiny piece of brilliant software saved my ass so many times.
Lee Peterson
@perte I'm a web designer & front-end developer. You'd be amazed to hear the arguments I have with myself over this very issue. It plays out like Edward Norton beating himself up in Fight Club. True story.
Cenk
@perte I’ve been using ImageOptim for years now and really love it.
Ricardo Nunes
Cool product. But what are the advantages in regards to imageOptim, which is free? Also, regarding your comparison of 3.3MB and 0.7MB, I was expecting those images to be those real sizes. They are 205KB and 206KB. Would be a good opportunity to show your product works before investing.
Mike Coutermarsh
@ricnunes_ I'm wondering the same
Mike Coutermarsh
@dancounsell @ricnunes_ Cool, I just bought it and tried it out. Really nice! One thing I wish it had is a progress bar when doing a single image. I put a huge image in there and it took a while to do. Wasn't sure how long it had left. The sounds are fun tho. :)
Steven H
@ricnunes_ the logo is only advantage i see so far 😂
Ricardo Nunes
@dancounsell @mscccc Tnx for your reply. I know it wouldn't be optimal to have a 3.3MB image inline, but in this case I think it would be good for your product ^^
Piero Borgo
Looks interesting, somebody tried comparing results with free software like ImageOptim?
Bruno Martins
@pieroborgo I did test it. In terms of JPG compression, it does really well and beats ImageOptim and as comparable results to JPGMini (which is also a paid app) without any noticeable quality loss. But it won't beat ImageOptim or TinyPNG in terms of PNG compression. I tested a PNG file with 2MB and got 1.8MB with Squash (1.6MB if the 'more compressed' option is turned on but with a HUGE processing time), 1.7MB with ImageOptim and 634Kb with TinyPNG. I'm seeing myself using it to compress a batch of JPG images but will keep using TinyPNG (haven't found anything better so far).
Danqing Liu
@bruno_mart I believe tiny png can do jpg too. My fav tool so far for compression
Bruno Martins
@danqing_liu It does, but the quality is not great.
Martin Kessler
@pieroborgo Almost bought Squash. Fortunately came here and learnt about ImageOptim. Been using TinyPNG before. Ended up comparing all three (used the Squash demo with default settings, except that I enabled PNG compression, same for ImageOptim). Squash wasn't really doing well for either PNGs or JPGs. Here's a screenshot (https://db.tt/DuEheexK). TN=TinyPNG, IM=ImageOptim. After that test I can't recommend Squash despite it's beautiful design...
Martin Kessler
@pieroborgo Just run a comparison, and I have to say that Squash really maintains the quality of the image. Whereas the other alternatives do not. Guess it comes down to whether you can live with the compression artifacts vs file size. https://db.tt/S4HxOLDY (jpg) and https://db.tt/uwybTTPD (png)
Cian Mac Mahon
A heads up - while Realmac tend to make good software, they also have a history of abandoning software.
wojtek
@cianmm They recently abandoned all of their apps besides RapidWeaver. So be careful — abandonware!
Luis Martins
@cianmm I've been burned two times with Little Snapper and Ember. Don't I'll give them a third chance unfortunately, as they do produce quality software.
Patrick Thompson
You really missed an opportunity to make a squash your logo: https://goo.gl/vZ50US. Why an orange....?
Chrissy Collins
mehh... happy with ImageOptim. No mention of SVG compression, which means it doesn't do anymore than ImageOptim?
Paul Boag
@dancounsell can you set it to automatically convert PNG like you can PSD? A lot of programs save as png when a jpg would be smaller.
Yisrael Grimes
@dancounsell You guys are burying the lead here. That combined with the compression would be what pushes it ahead of the competitors. That is, if it compresses 3.3mb down to .7mb without losing quality. That would be huge! (pun intended)
Pietz Prove
the way i see it you're essentially paying 20€ for an arguably awesome processing animation. i believe this application is exclusively aimed at people that haven't heard of imageoptim before. i did a test a few months back with imageoptim, squash 1 and jpegmini. imageoptim was slightly the best in terms of quality and slightly slower than squash in terms of processing speed. there is no magic in JPEG compression, where one company discovers the holy grail of retaining quality. the quantization process in jpeg compression uses a custom matrix to define certain frequencies that will be lost during the encode. many companies including adobe have tried all kinds of different settings and today pretty much all encoders use very similar levels of values. (correct me if im wrong though) theres still a market for this as many apple customers like pretty UIs and animations that the dev is providing here. but on a functional level i wouldnt recommend paying money for something like this, as imageoptim does the same for free and has many different settings that you can tweak for better results.
Satyajeet
This is good, icon looks awesome too! I'm trying this.
Brian Moon
Anyone try out gif compression? Curious how well it work with it. Compressing gifs are a pain
Pedro Lobo
I tested Squash with a a batch of images where quality is of the utmost importance, and was amazed to see no noticeable difference between the before and after (except for the file size of course), so congrats! Truly fun and capable app.
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