PNG stands for "Portable Network Graphics." It is like a digital container that holds pictures in various colors and resolutions. When you see a file ending in .png, it means it's an image saved in this special format.

PNG is an open extensible file format for lossless compressed images. It is an open source file extension for raster graphics files. It was created as an alternative to GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), which was commonly used to support lossless image compression.

PNG belongs to the "Image File" category. PNG is a type of raster image.

• Browsers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, etc.
• Image editors: Corel Graphics Editor, CorelDRAW, Flash, PPT, FreeHand, etc.
• Image converters: Web Designer's Toolkit, WebGraphics Optimizer, Xenomorph, etc.
• 3D Applications, Games, Entertainment, Office and Business Applications, etc.
• Scientific, Graphing Applications and many more Miscellaneous Applications

PNG was created by an informal Internet working group led by Thomas Boutell. Now it's managed by the PNG Development Group of W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

PNG was created in 1995 to be a successor to GIF file format (another type of image format). PNG offered better color depth and transparency. Also, PNG is published as a free software which makes it a better alternative to GIF.

The MIME type of PNG format is "image/png." Think of this as the file's ID card that tells computers "Hey, I'm a PNG image!"

Every PNG file starts with these special numbers: 89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A. It is a unique signature at the beginning of the file that proves it's really a PNG file.

A PNG file is built like a sandwich with 3 different layers:

• Header (tells it's a PNG)
• Chunks of data (holds the actual picture info)
• End marker (tells the computer "that's all!")

Inside a PNG file, the image data is compressed to save space. It’s like packing a suitcase efficiently. The compression method used in PNG is called Deflate. It is a lossless compression technique. This means that no image quality is lost during compression and decompression.

PNG comes with a lot of advantages when compared to other image types. That is why it has become some sort of standard on the world wide web. A few advantages of PNG file format are as follows:

• You can compress PNG file with no loss in image quality.
• PNG supports transparent backgrounds.
• PNG handles a wide range of colors (great for high quality graphics).
• It supports interlacing in which a low-resolution version of the image is loaded first. Then the higher-resolution version follows. This is brilliant for web pages.
• PNG works on all devices and browsers.

• PNG Files can be pretty big if the photo has many colors and gradients. This makes it less suitable for photographs than JPEG file format.
• PNG does not support non-RGB color formats such as CMYK since it was designed for mainly transferring images on the Internet, not for professional-quality graphics images.

You can use PNG files in many different ways:

• Logos
• Screenshots
• Images with text
• Graphics for websites
• Pictures that need transparent backgrounds

1. Color-Based Types

PNG-8

• Uses up to 256 colors
• Perfect for simple graphics and icons
• Smaller file sizes
• One transparent color possible

PNG-24

• Uses up to 16.7 million colors
• Great for complex images
• Larger files
• No transparency levels

PNG-32

• 16.7 million colors plus transparency
• 256 levels of transparency
• Largest file size
• Best for transparent images

2. Animation Types

• Static PNG: Regular non-moving images.
• APNG (Animated PNG): Animated version for simple animations.

3. Loading Types

• Non-interlaced: Loads top to bottom.
• Interlaced: Shows the blurry version first, then loads the higher-resolution version.

Double-click the PNG file to open it in any operating system. Almost all recognized OS has a default program to open PNG file:

• Photos app or Paint (Windows)
• Preview app (Mac)
• Gallery app (Phones)
• Almost all web browsers support PNG