kode80 LLC has released Image Crushr, a free OS X application for developers and designers of mobile software. Image Crushr improves image quality, optimizes memory usage and enables previewing of images outside of the device.
The majority of mobile devices that exist today can only display a limited range of colors compared to their desktop counterparts. Beautiful artwork with millions of colors can be reduced to a mess of harsh banding when viewed on the device. Bit depth reduction with dithering is the common solution yet the number of applications that provide this capability is surprisingly low.
Ben Hopkins of kode80 LLC, creator of Image Crushr said “while working on HoloToy for the iPhone and iPad I realized that the common problem of color reproduction on low bit depth devices still didn’t have a readily available solution so I built Image Crushr. It has been a great tool in my workflow and I hope it will be as useful for other developers and designers”.
Image Crushr enables anyone working with mobile devices such as smart phones or portable gaming systems to quickly compare and optimize their art assets and is available now for free download. Image Crushr is lightweight with only a 1.6 MB footprint, and requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard or later.