Other Conversion Programs

The converters we've discussed so far barely scratch the surface of what is available. If one includes image editors and viewers that can convert images in addition to dedicated conversion tools, there are well over one hundred applications capable of converting to and from the PNG format.[38b] Many of these were listed in the previous two chapters and are well worth considering, particularly for users who may be uncomfortable dealing with command-line programs.

Here is a list of some of the other dedicated (or nearly dedicated) image converters that support PNG. The most recent version as of January 1999 is given wherever possible.

ColourEdit

Version of April 3, 1997, Julian Highfield. Available as an OpenDoc part for Mac 68k/PPC (mostly tested with OpenDoc 1.1 and Mac OS System 7.1.2); read/write support for PNGs.

http://www.stile.lboro.ac.uk/~cojch/ColourEdit/

Creator

Version 3.22, John Kortink. Available for Acorn RISC OS; read/write support for PNGs; no alpha or gamma support.

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/indexsw.htm

dicom2

Version 1.8, Sébastien Barré. Available for Windows 9x/NT, Linux x86, SunOS/Solaris SPARC; write-only support for PNGs; supports conversion of 12-bit medical formats to 16-bit grayscale PNGs.

http://www.hds.utc.fr/~barre/medical/dicom2/

Ghostscript

Version 5.50, Aladdin Enterprises. Available for Unix, VMS, OS/2, Windows 9x/NT, and Mac 68k/PPC; older versions available for Windows 3.x, DOS, Amiga, Atari, and possibly Acorn RISC OS; write-only support for PNGs.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

gj2png

Version of February 13, 1997, Neil Aggarwal. Available for any platform supporting Java 1.1 or later; write-only support for PNGs.

http://www.anet-dfw.com/~neil/gjFrame.html

Icons Control 95

Version 7.02, Chris Doan. Available for Windows 9x/NT; read-only support for PNGs (converts various image formats to Windows .ico format).

http://members.aol.com/doanc/icnctrl.html

Image Arithmetic

Version 2.2a, Richard van Paasen. Available for Windows 9x/NT; read/write support for PNGs.

http://huizen.dds.nl/~buddha/imgart.html

LatinByrd

Version III v6, Stefan Schneider Software. Available for NeXTStep/OpenStep on 68k/x86/HP-PA/SPARC; write-only support for PNGs; can quantize 32-bit RGBA TIFF images to 8-bit RGBA-palette PNGs.

http://members.ping.at/stefan/LatinByrdProductInfo.html

PicCon

Version 2.50, Morten Eriksen. Available for Amiga; read-only; requires a PNG datatype such as those from Cloanto or Andreas Kleinert.

http://www.aminet.org/pub/aminet/gfx/conv/PicCon250.lha
http://www.aminet.org/pub/aminet/util/dtype/PNG_dt.lha
http://www.aminet.org/pub/aminet/util/dtype/akPNG-dt.lha
http://home.t-online.de/home/Andreas_Kleinert/support.htm

PNG-Box

Version 3.25, Andreas Kleinert. Available for Amiga 68k/PPC; write-only support for PNGs; supports interlacing and single-color transparency. PNG-Box is a graphical ``any to PNG'' conversion utility that uses Andreas's own SuperView Library for its image support instead of datatypes.

http://www.amigaworld.com/support/png-box/
http://home.t-online.de/home/Andreas_Kleinert/support.htm
http://www.aminet.org/pub/aminet/gfx/conv/PNG-Box.lha

!Png2Spr

Version 1.14, Tom Tanner. Available for Acorn RISC OS; read-only support for PNGs (converts to Acorn sprite format).

http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/ttehtann/

ptot

Version of March 10, 1995, Lee Daniel Crocker. Available as portable source code (does not require libpng or zlib); read-only support for PNGs (converts to TIFF); full gamma support (writes TIFF TransferFunction tag); full alpha support for true alpha channels (no palette-alpha or ``cheap transparency'' support).

ftp://swrinde.nde.swri.edu/pub/png/applications/ptot.tar.gz

SmartSaver

Version 3.0, Ulead Systems. Available for 32-bit Windows; read/write support for PNGs; full alpha support, including at least single-color palette transparency (not clear whether full RGBA-palette translucency is supported); reportedly cannot write 1-bit (bilevel) images.

http://www.webutilities.com/ssaver/noslip.htm

Spr2Png

Version 0.04b, Darren Salt. Available for Acorn RISC OS; write-only support for PNGs; full alpha support via secondary sprite that is used as a transparency mask or alpha channel; supports interlacing and background color. An older version was reported to produce streaks in conversions of newer (post-RPC) sprites, but this appears to be fixed in the current release.

http://www.youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk/progs.html#spr2png

ThumbNailer

Version 5.2, Smaller Animals Software. Available for 32-bit Windows; read/write support for PNGs; supports transparency, background color, and text; claims full gamma support.

http://www.smalleranimals.com/thumb.htm

Ultraconv

Version 3.0p1, Felix Schwarz. Available for Amiga 68k/PPC; read/write support for PNGs (natively since version 1.6, or via a datatype for earlier versions); no alpha or gamma support.

http://home.pages.de/~uconv/

New conversion utilities and updated information on the ones listed here can be found at the Image-Conversion Applications with PNG Support web page at the PNG home site, http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapcv.html. This URL is expected to be stable for years, but of course there are no guarantees on the World Wide Web! Use a search engine to look for the title string or for one of the more oddly named utilities listed if the link should ever break.