Portable Network Graphics is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace GIF as an image-file format not requiring a patent license. The PNG acronym is optionally recursive, unofficially standing for PNG's Not GIF.
PNG supports palette-based images (with palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), grayscale images (with or without alpha channel), and RGB[A] images (with or without alpha channel). PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, not for print graphics, and therefore does not support non-RGB color spaces such as CMYK.
PNG supports transparent backgrounds, which makes it a popular and common choice amongst image designers.
It is possible to create animated PNG images using APNG.
PNG files nearly always use file extension "PNG" or "png" and are assigned MIME media type "image/png".
An example of a PNG image with a transparent background.
A PNG image with a checked background, which is used to show transparency in most graphics software.
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