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About Portable Network Graphics
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a bitmapped image format which employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve and replace the GIF format, as an image-file format not requiring a patent license.
PNG supports palette-based (palettes of 24-bit RGB colors) or greyscale or RGB images. PNG was designed for transfering images on the internet, not professional graphics, and so does not support other color spaces (such as CMYK). Every PNG file starts with an 8-byte signature. After it goes a series of critical or ancillary chunks conveying certain information about the image. Ancillary chunks are ignored if the program doesn't understand them. Such a structure allows the PNG format to be extended while maintaining compatibility with older versions. The critical chunks are IHDR (header), PLTE (palette), IDAT (image) and IEND (end). The PNG format has a variety of transparency options. PNG uses deflation as a lossless data compression method. |
Supported by converters
Convertability