Radical Image Optimization Tool (RIOT for short) is a free image optimizer that will let you to visually adjust compression parameters while keeping minimum filesize.
It uses with a side by side (dual view) or single view interface to compare the original with the optimized image in real time and instantly see the resulting file size.
The image optimizer is lightweight, fast and simple to use, yet powerful for advanced users.
You will be able to control compression, number of colors, metadata settings and much more, and select image format (JPEG, GIF or PNG) for your output file.
Main features:
- open many image types including rare/scientific types
- save and optimize JPEG, GIF and PNG with a simple, clean user interface
- works in dual view: (original – optimized image) or single view (optimized image).
Automatic preview of resulting image - in-place compare function (alternativelly display the original image over the optimized image to notice small pixel changes)
- compress files to desired filesize threshold
- fast processing (all is done in memory);
see instant results including resulting filesize - batch support (process multiple files at once)
- transparency handling options
- decide if you want to keep metadata (comments, IPTC, Adobe XMP, EXIF profiles, ICC profiles).
Unsupported metadata is removed - transfer metadata between image formats (destination format must support them)
- common tools: pan and zoom, rotate, flip
- basic image adjustments: brightness, contrast, gamma, invert
- visually reduce number of unique colors for PNG and GIF images in order to reduce filesize
(two quantization methods are available: Xiaolin Wu and NeuQuant neural net) - resize image by using well known resample filters (ex: Lanczos3, Catmull Rom, Bicubic, and others)
- out-of-the-box support for external PNG optimizers (optipng, pngout, etc)
- the compression and the results are comparable to those of commercial products, even higher.
- Adaptive logarithmic tone mapping algorithm (Drago) used for HDR images
Input image types
- common bitmap images as well as Adobe Photoshop PSD files
- popular HDR formats and RAW camera images
- rare/scientific types (up to 128 bpp, integer and floating point)
Optimization details
Known issues:
- You should be careful when using in-place compare not to press two mouse buttons at once or click and release too fast.
- UseLatestCommonDialogs is ignored in the DLL version.
Future plans:
- automatic reductions/optimizations
- Convert 32 bit PNG to PNG8 with alpha
- twain scanner support
- jpeg smoothening
- define transparent regions (with variable transparency)
- crop function
- overlay image watermark
- Adobe Photoshop Filter support (8BF) – add GML Matting plugin for object extraction.
You can suggest new features and create polls for implementing them in the official forum.
Available as stand-alone executable (portable app) or dynamic link library for developers.
RIOT is used as plugin for programs like The GIMP, IrfanView or XnView.
This software uses a modified version of FreeImage open source image library. See http://freeimage.sourceforge.net for details. FreeImage is used under the FIPL license version 1.0.
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Recent Articles
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Sneak preview of version 0.5
Here are the highlights of the new version of RIOT (0.5) which is still in development: 1. Automatic Optimization Mode RIOT revolutionizes the way images are optimized by combining the simplicity of automatic optimizations with the power of manual control. The Automatic Mode will select the most suitable format and parameters, still allowing the freedom [...]
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The installer now includes OpenCandy recommendations
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New version released – 0.4.6
The new version of RIOT – 0.4.6 is mainly a maintenance release. Several bugs are fixed, especially affecting the DLL version, the batch mode and the external optimizer implementation. The overall stability of the program was greatly increased by this release, so an update is highly recommended. Another interesting addition is the presence of the [...]
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RIOT 0.4.5 is available
RIOT 0.4.5 was released to fix two annoying bugs: * fixed a bug with Paste from clipboard. Pasted images were shifted a few pixels. * fixed a bug in the DLL version with the toolbar containing rotate, resize, compress to size, etc. The toolbar should be enabled after successful image loading from the host application. [...]
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65 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 11, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Max
I use it as plugin in Irfanview but also using the latest riot.dll the Metadata is always discarded (i tried with several types of jpg images made with several kind of cameras using EXIF and IPTC). I tried opening images directly into the plugin but always the metadata is discarded and all checkboxes flagged and impossible to put out the flag.
Can you fix this, please?
Anyway, congratulations for the plugin, very very useful.
September 12, 2008 at 11:39 am
John
Save as button in the irfan view plugin doesn’t work. What could be the problem ?
September 14, 2008 at 6:20 pm
admin
Answers:
>Jeroen
>Is there a way to create a multi resize for several photos?
This tool was not initially designed to work in batch mode. The support for batch operations will be added in a future release because many users asked for this. (Edit) batch was added in version 0.4
>Max
>metadata is discarded
Metadata is discarded when loading the DIB with IrfanView->Save for web. DIBs don’t have metadata. I am working with Irfan to release new versions of RIOT and IrfanView which can import metadata from files. In fact version 0.3.2 of RIOT is ready for this. Check the irfanview website for updated versions (probabaly 4.24 will include this).
(Edit) Check Options-> Import ancillary data… to import metadata, transparency and ICC profile from the original files
>John
>Save as button in the irfan view plugin doesn’t work.
This problem is related to the incompatibility between RIOT 0.1.X and the Unicode plugin from IrfanView. Open/save dialogs don’t work if the Unicode plugin is enabled within IrfanView options. Disable the unicode plugin.
To use Unicode filenames you need to upgrade to RIOT version 0.2.X or newer
April 3, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Grolo
Reduced size of my website from 2,57MB to 953kB.
THX!!
May 21, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Freesia
Hi there!
Lovely software you have, I use it everyday!
Suggestions:
Could you give us a…
1. Reopen command that opens the original file again, so we can easily resize and save the same file without going through the Open dialog over and over to fetch it. This is good when you want to make several versions of a file for the web!
2. Revert button that undos any selections we’ve made since starting the program, so we can use our defaults again if we want to discard our changes to the image. This is good when you want to work with several images, but don’t want to restart the program to get your defaults back (by not saving settings on exit). Also good if you made changes and don’t like them, or forgot what you did!
Hope you like…Bye!
May 21, 2009 at 9:33 pm
admin
Hello Freesia. Thanks for your suggestions. You can use the forum also to create feature suggestions other users can vote.
BTW Nice and clear explanations
1. Other people suggested this also. Good idea. This will be done.
2. Your problem will be solved in the future version when preset saving will be introduced. You wil be able to add/delete/modify settings presets. This way you will easily revert to any of your favourite settings.
December 6, 2009 at 11:09 am
admin
(Edit) An XnView addon was created by the XnView author. Check it out in the download page.
December 24, 2009 at 4:46 pm
vYk
Hi,
I use (and abuse of) riot since several months but now I’m on mac os x snow leopard.
Are you planning to make an os x version?
Thanx for this beauty
vYk
December 24, 2009 at 7:33 pm
admin
@vYk: There are no plans to create a native Mac Os build.
You can try to use Wine. RIOT runs fine with Wine in Linux (only small display problems of icons), so if you manage to install Wine on Mac, you have good chances to make it work.
http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX/Installing
Note that Wine on Mac is still experimental.
May 25, 2010 at 1:55 am
Lyle
OK; reviewed what I posted on the registry. All I had to do is copy freeimage.dll and riot.dll from my Irfanview directory to my GIMP Plugin directory and it worked. the GIMP plugin itself doesn’t need changing apparently. Kudos to you Lucian.
May 25, 2010 at 10:03 am
admin
@Lyle: That’s right, you don’t need to update the GIMP plug-in itself, which has the only task to feed RIOT with the correct image (some image types not supported).
October 26, 2010 at 4:17 am
aspire
i have a question about the license. if i use it into the company, could it use it for free?
Thanks.
October 26, 2010 at 9:48 am
admin
@aspire:
That is an interesting question.
The license states:
This means, yes, you could use it for free in your company, but in this situation I expect a donation, since I’ve put a lot of work in this program and you use it to help your business. This is simply a moral issue. Nobody is forced to donate, but a symbolic donation from companies would be appreciated, to let me continue development and support my expenses.
October 29, 2010 at 3:34 pm
joboxers
Hi, goods software butttt. I have a huuuge picture collection splitted in differend folders. When i want to convert them with riot i have a problem because there is no option for the ourput file folder to save each file to original source location. I have to specify a folder where riot will convert them, after then i have to resort all them, not possible. Best way would it to save files to source location ( folder )
Please inform me by e-mail about the answer ( admin )
bye
October 30, 2010 at 5:06 pm
admin
@joboxers: This feature is planned. I can’t give a version number yet.
November 18, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Youri Andropov
Hello.
Great program !
Just a little issue: when pasting a graph from excel, image is right shifted by 2 or 3 pixels.
November 18, 2010 at 6:43 pm
admin
@Youri Andropov: Please report any issues in the Bug reports forum section. Add all required steps to reproduce it and – if necessary – sample images or screenshots.
January 12, 2011 at 12:33 am
Bojan
This is really great program, thanks! I was looking for long time for simple image optimizer and I love great function for bulk operations (resize all images in folder).
Is there a chance that I translate this program into our (slovenian) language?
January 28, 2011 at 5:08 am
Website Designer
This is just what I am looking for. Resizing all images in a folder will be great. I use the gimp but this looks like a useful tool to add to the gimp.
January 31, 2011 at 7:34 pm
danyle curik
Wow, this is a great program, thank you. It really helped for sending emails with image attachments through a server that has size limits. It also helped with a website i am developing. That and the GUI is dead simple, really great job.
February 4, 2011 at 1:17 am
CoolRaoul
Really Nice utility,
Integraded upload to image hosting services (like ImageSchack) would make it a absolute winner.
April 27, 2011 at 5:22 am
Nick
This is really great – use it with Irfanview and it is, well… amazingly useful.
May 28, 2011 at 4:41 pm
James M Singleton
I use RIOT to optimize images for my website and this is the best tool that I have found so far. Haven’t been able to use the plugin because I use Windows Live Photo Gallery. Maybe I should use an photo editor that is supported by RIOT. The GIMP UI looks intimidating though.
June 7, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Pete
Terrific work Lucian,
I’ve got the big guns of image processing in Adobe products… but I turn to your program for quick and effortless optimisation, it works brilliantly!
I’ve used it on and off for about a year now, so I think my donation is warranted
Pete
June 7, 2011 at 3:34 pm
admin
@Pete: Thank you very much !
June 9, 2011 at 11:01 pm
mike
Awesome plugin ! Thanks for hard work!
It’ll be cool to add option for social sharing.
June 16, 2011 at 8:42 am
Thein Hla Maw
Nice tool. amazingly reduce file size up to +90% smaller than original file
June 24, 2011 at 4:31 pm
arman29
Thank you very much, very useful program
August 24, 2011 at 2:55 pm
slik
Interesting program. I have one suggestion. I have a lot of pictures I would like to optimize. I have noticed that many of them after optimization are bigger then initial image. So in this case I suggest to TELL user that optimized picture is BIGGER. Even better instead of showing optimized picture display text something like “Optimized picture is bigger then initial image”.
It would also be nice if there is some percentage displayed how many percentage has new picture optimized. Maybe also the reduction size (benefited size) in bytes.
September 14, 2011 at 7:19 pm
marinus
Like the other guy who noted it won’t save in Irfanview, i can’t get it to do
anything. So far, useless.
September 15, 2011 at 9:20 am
admin
@marinus: This software is used by thousands of people which consider it useful.
If you can’t figure how to install and use the latest version this does not make it useless.
Please provide the exact problem and I will try to help you solve it. BTW: Which guy noted ?
September 15, 2011 at 9:23 am
admin
@slik: In the next version there will be a visual indicator of file size (red color for bigger, green for smaller) The percentage of reduction if showed when using the Batch mode with “Report file size changes” option checked
October 10, 2011 at 6:03 pm
kartik
Good utility . Thanks for such a good optimizer. Would love to have watermarking along with optimizer . Especially embedding a custom transparent logo . Its tedious with photoshop . Waiting for an update .
Thanks again ,
Kartik G Pai
December 12, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Anwar Ben Tanfous
Great tool really… I use it with Irfanview formerly but now I shifted to XnView and I found that it’s possible to use so I love this…
Thank you so much for all the hardwork you are doing and don’t care about those who complain overmost when it’s a great piece of FREEWARE!
January 8, 2012 at 7:06 pm
DBR
I was searching this kind of software during long. Thanks to provide.
January 25, 2012 at 5:46 am
kk
superb program!!
very useful as i shot lots of photos in high res.. RIOT really helps to reduce the file size (90% or more) and kept the image quality.
amazing program!!
well done!!
January 25, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Hunta
Thanks Lucian , Stumbled across this yesterday. Great and simple to use. Keep the good work up.
February 10, 2012 at 9:19 am
Farhad
Hi
Please new version for 2012 .
Thank you
March 21, 2012 at 10:18 pm
Alvaro
Can you give us a hint on when or if RIOT 0.5 will be out?
March 27, 2012 at 9:45 am
admin
The release of the beta version for 0.5 is delayed. Currently 0.5 is in alpha stage. I am really busy with my work and did not had much time for RIOT. But I plan to dedicate some time to RIOT soon. Please hang in there
April 4, 2012 at 11:01 am
Rui Ribeiro
Thanks a lot for this portable freeware. Been looking for long for a fast batch file resizer like this, since i need to limit the photos file size to my needs, keeping a reasonable quality. Great work!
April 23, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Matt
Really like this tool – looking forward to the new version. Batch optimizing into original subfolders will pretty much change my life.
Thanks
May 27, 2012 at 12:47 am
Marisa
Excellet tool!! Thank you very much!
June 4, 2012 at 9:20 am
armakuni
Hi,
RIOT is a great tool. Currently I use it via WINE under Linux.
Do you plan to make a native Linux version?
June 19, 2012 at 10:27 pm
JT
is there a RIOT library for use on a server?
July 13, 2012 at 1:04 am
Freedquaker
This is a great tool but unfortunately not exactly what I am looking for. Obviously the program shows that it could easily be done though, just didn’t occur to the program’s creator. Now this is what I have been doing using Irfanview for years now…
I have thousands of images that need to be resized and optimized everyday but they need not to exceed a certain file size, say 1 MB… So far so good… But I have a “quality threshold” and I don’t want to save the images with a quality lower than, say “70″ in jpg settings while I am free to resize the image.
In short, this program changes “quality” by choosing the file size and fixing everything else, while I need a program that changes the picture size (with the given aspect ratio), by choosing the file size and fixing everything else.
Please let me know if any suggestions….!
Freedquaker
August 3, 2012 at 2:22 pm
sa3er
Please add one really needed and a “must have” feature, cropping.
August 8, 2012 at 8:01 pm
DanMan
I’m sorry if this is mentioned somewhere, but are the JPEG optimizations lossless or do you re-compress them? I’m looking for a Windows software that can turn baseline JPEGs into progressively loading ones so i don’t have to write scripts for jpegtrans anymore.
August 16, 2012 at 12:56 am
Aj
Great tool!! Thanks and blesses to the people that make tools like this available to everybody.
August 17, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Flocked
@armakuni You should take a look at Trimage for Linux. Especially good for PNGs.
@everyone I prepared a long list of best image optimization tools including RIOT and its main problems that keep it from being much more practical. Also ways to achieve maximum compression. Link on my name.
@admin Thanks for RIOT. Please take a look as this can really become the one-stop tool with the addition of more external plugin support like PNGcrush and JPEGtran.
August 20, 2012 at 9:19 am
admin
@DanMan: jpeg optimization is not lossless
August 25, 2012 at 11:39 am
Gestion de crise
Excellent image optimizer. Thanks.
September 3, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Shawn
Hi,
Thank you very much for this tool. It is very helpful for me. I have a suggestion. Can you please add the option to ‘Copy’ the compressed image from Riot to clip board also, since when I am dealing with MS Word or similar word processors and wants to compress an image, things will be much easier. Right now, what I am doing is :
Copy from Word -> ‘Paste’ the content from clip board to Riot -> compress it -> save to the PC -> open the saved file using MS Paint -> Select All – Copy from Paint -> Paste to Word.
Hoping all best wishes.
Regards,
Shawn.
September 4, 2012 at 9:05 am
admin
@shawn: standard clipboard format is uncompressed (DIB). So saving in this format would not be of any help. There is support for PNG clipboard format in GIMP for example or other apps. I am not sure if Word registers a custom clipboard format for JPEG, PNG or GIF. But the list of standard ones is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff729168%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
The best thing is leave the things as is until compressed clipboard formats will become a standard.
October 15, 2012 at 12:06 pm
kumar
this is such a great tool . .really helped me. .
October 25, 2012 at 9:47 am
spooh
Great tool, thank you!
October 28, 2012 at 11:25 am
ursa
Please, add support for TIFF compression too. At least the lossless algorithms: LZW for general purpose compression, CCITT T.6 (Fax 4) for B/W images and scans. Thanks in advance!
January 11, 2013 at 3:13 pm
wordpressentials
is there any plugin updated for wordpress?i t will be very useful if a plugin is presented.
January 19, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Manux
Great Tool , incredible performance , thanks a lot!
January 21, 2013 at 1:49 am
Colleen
Love this, but I am not a graphic designer so I would love a little tutorial about image basics. Does your tool also optimize for printing or just the web? I would like to put in a print size or better yet have a choice of possible print sizes based on the original image ratio and pixels or DPI etc. It would be optimal if it could also let me know if this will still be a quality print at different sizes or what the optimal one would be.
February 8, 2013 at 3:04 am
Dave
I’m attempting to put together a seniors Community website on WordPress and would like to have your Image Optimizer embedded on the site. I am concerned that without having something incredibly easy and simple, I’ll end up having each page filled with about 100-200mb worth of photos as a result of none being optimized.
Is there any chance of a WordPress Plugin? Or if not, is your RIOT online anywhere so i can add a link on our site to it? I use your RIOT for myself and love it…if I ever get the community site going I will most surely donate…Great Great Program…….
February 19, 2013 at 12:14 am
lein
it works what i want right now, simple, fast and powerful software, God bless.
March 27, 2013 at 6:29 am
Dan
any ETA for next version?
April 5, 2013 at 7:34 pm
javivi
I ve been using it for a long time and is perfect. Very powerfull and all the options needed to create the right images
April 24, 2013 at 5:22 pm
mtness
Hi there, any arrival date for the “Batch optimizing into original subfolders ” feature yet?