libimagequant
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Description:
Palette quantization library extracted from pnquant2
Type: Formula  |  Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Multimedia
Tags: image-processing c-library graphics png quantization
Install: brew install libimagequant
About:
Libimagequant is a small, portable C library for high-quality conversion of RGBA images to 8-bit palette with alpha channel. It provides a lightweight and fast implementation of the median cut algorithm, optimized for speed and low memory usage. This library is the engine behind the popular pngquant tool.
Key Features:
  • High-quality color quantization with support for partial transparency
  • Small, fast, and low on memory usage
  • Simple C API for easy integration into other applications
  • Portable across multiple operating systems
Use Cases:
  • Reducing file size of web images (PNGs) without significant quality loss
  • Creating optimized assets for games and mobile applications
  • Building custom image processing pipelines that require palette-based formats
Alternatives:
  • pngquant – Libimagequant is the core library, while pngquant is the command-line tool that uses it.
  • ImageMagick – A much larger, general-purpose image processing suite that can also perform quantization.
Version History
Detected Version Rev Change Commit
Sep 12, 2025 9:29am 0 VERSION_BUMP 2817b73d