Worst PNG compression scenario

Question

I am using libpng to convertraw image data (3 channel, 8 bit, no metadata) to PNG and store it in a buffer. I now have a problem to allocate the right amount of buffer space for writing the PNG data to it. It is clear to me, that the compressed data might be larger than the raw data (cf. the overhead for a 1x1 image) Is there any general rule for an upper margin of the compressed data size with respect to the image size and the different filtering/compression options? If that is too generic, let's say we use PNG_COLOR_TYPE_RGB, PNG_INTERLACE_NONE, PNG_COMPRESSION_TYPE_DEFAULT, PNG_FILTER_TYPE_DEFAULT.

Thank you

Answer 1

PNG overhead is 8 (signature) + 25 (IHDR) +12 (first IDAT) + 12 (IEND) plus 1 byte per row (filter byte), plus 12 bytes per additional IDAT when the size exceeds the zlib buffer size which is typically 8192. Zlib overhead is 6 (2-byte header and 4-byte checksum). Deflate overhead is 5 bytes plus 5 bytes per additional 32k in size.

So figure (1.02 * (3*W+1) * H) + 68.

You can decrease the 1.02 factor if you use a larger Zlib buffer size or increase it if you use a smaller buffer size. For example, a 256x256 RGB PNG compressed with a 1000000-byte buffer size (1000000 bytes per IDAT chunk) will have only one IDAT chunk and the total overhead will be around 330 bytes, or less than .2 percent, while if you compress it with a very small buffer size, for example 100 bytes, then there will be around 2000 IDAT chunks and the overhead will be about twelve percent.

See RFC-1950, RFC-1951, and RFC-2083.

Answer 2

You can use compressBound() in zlib to determine an upper bound on the size of the compressed data given an uncompressed data length, assuming the default zlib settings. For a specific set of different zlib settings, you can use deflateBound() after deflateInit2() has been used to establish the settings.