Ardfry Imaging, LLC (http://www.ardfry.com), has released the PNGOUT plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements for the Windows platform. The PNGOUT file format plug-in can create optimized PNG images that are usually smaller than those created with Save for Web and ImageReady. The plug-in also offers broad support for reading and writing PNG images.

The plug-in can optimize PNG images, which can reduce bandwidth costs, shorten download times, and improve the page load times of a website. The PNGOUT plug-in can remove all ancillary chunks from image files including the gamma chunk and also set the background chunk for broad browser support of PNG transparency. Open and save 8-bit Indexed+Alpha PNG images (i.e., 256 colors with 256 levels of transparency) without having to use another tool.

The PNGOUT Plug-in is available for $29.95 from Ardfry Imaging, LLC. You can acquire a free trial download at http://www.ardfry.com/png-plugin.