The Problem. Gamma correction is a feature of .png files that is supposed to benefit the user in that when the image file is rendered, the application handling the render is to interpret data stored in the .png file and adjust its display accordingly. This is also inherently the issue. With the latest round of browsers, this gamma information is discarded, except in Internet Explorer. Because of this, what you end up with is the scenario in which CSS colors do not correctly match those colors in the image. This is due to the fact that the gamma is being corrected on the image but not on the CSS.

The Solution. After doing some searching, I found an application, called PNGGauntlet, that actually optimizes .png files and strips the gamma information out of the file, causing each browser to render the image the same.

Here’s my example in which I was working with a gradient background PNG that ends in a green color that is to be picked up and continued by the CSS background-color attribute. Note the darkness of the background image in the Internet Explorer example before using PNGGauntlet. Once I optimized the background graphic with my new tool, the colors matched up great in all my test browsers.

Further Exploration: Browser Gamma-Consistency Test, The Sad Story of PNG Gamma “Correction”

It’s great to be working with such a strong team of professionals, all masters in their primary trades and beyond.

Founding partner, Jeff Tunnell, has formally announced the start up over as his blog, Make It Big In Games.  Tim Aste has also written up a brief account of what went into getting the site launched.

The official Push Button Labs website, as well as this site, are built on top of the OnePress Community theme built for WordPress.  We are currently in the early stages of getting it out the door, so more to come on that later.

Anyways, lots of exciting things around the corner for our company, so you’ll have to stay tuned to hear more about our interests in Open Source, Flash, and WordPress.

Make great products with people that we want to work with, and have fun doing it!

To learn more about the Push Button Labs team, you can read the company’s biographies here.

I have always had solid design sense and can navigate my way around Photoshop in a very competent fashion; however, I have had my nose buried in nothing but code for the past couple of years with very little opportunity to do any graphic design.  So, I had to knock the dust off.

As I was working on a design for this site, I wanted to created something slightly edgy with lots of potential for change down the road.  Since my goal with SeanASullivan.com is to write and share a variety of things related to my life, I felt it best to take that into account.  I, myself, am a very dynamic person so I needed some colors and design sense to help convey that.

After going through a few ideas, a lot of which seemed like the standard Web 2.0 schemes (yes at one point I even had my name reflected at the top) I decided that the “grungy” look would suffice.  I grabbed a picture of myself from playing at Furrier Farms this past August and did some cool vector drawing effects on it.  I used some inspiration from Adobe’s Kuler site to help me ultimately decide on some colors.  The starting point for these colors was in part from my love for beer and Irish culture— thus searching the site with the keyword “guinness” for some ideas.  I had to add in my favorite guitar in the world, the Gibson ES-335 and what fuels me, coffee.

The luggage tag was a cool effect and gave me a little canvas to outline the three categories I plan on focusing on with SeanASullivan.com— development, music, and life.  Maybe I’ll make those useful and clickable in the future when I have a free moment.

So stick around.  I realize a lot of you will be reading my posts through your favorite RSS reader in the future, but make sure to stop back every now and again.