Home  /  File formats  /  png

PNG file format

Extension.png
Categoryimages
Programs
Apple Preview
Microsoft Windows Photos
Adobe Photoshop CC
Corel Paint Shop Pro
Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery Viewer
Main programMicrosoft Paint
Description.png (Portable Network Graphics) The .png format is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG files are widely used on the internet due to their efficient compression and support for transparent backgrounds.
Technical detailsHere are some technical details about the .png format: Lossless. Compression: PNG uses lossless compression, meaning that it preserves all the image data during compression. This is in contrast to formats like JPEG, which are lossy and discard some information for smaller file sizes.
Bit Depth: PNG images can range from 1-bit (black and white) to 48-bit color. It also supports 16-bit grayscale images.
Transparency Support: One of the key features of PNG is its support for alpha channel transparency. This allows for varying levels of transparency in the image, from fully opaque to fully transparent, which is particularly useful for web graphics.
Color Palettes: PNG supports truecolor (16 million colors) as well as indexed-color images, which use a palette of up to 256 colors.
MIME type
image/png