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Format

Portable Network Graphics

Download XML

Summary

Name
Portable Network Graphics
Version
1.2
Identifiers
  • PUID: fmt/13
  • MIME: image/png
  • Apple Uniform Type Identifier: public.png
Format type
Image (Raster)
Description
Portable Network Graphics (PNG) was designed for the lossless, portable, compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits. PNG is designed to work in online viewing applications, so it is fully streamable. It can store gamma and chromaticity. PNG also detects file corruption.
File extensions
png
Source
Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives

Relationships

Has priority over
Is subsequent version of

Internal signatures

PNG 1.2

Note
Signature + IHDR and iTXt chunks at BOF, IEND chunk at EOF

Byte sequences

Min Frag Length
Absolute from BOF
Offset
0
Max offset
None
Byte Sequence
89504E470D0A1A0A0000000D49484452*69545874
Endianness
None
Min Frag Length
Absolute from EOF
Offset
0
Max offset
None
Byte Sequence
0000000049454E44AE426082
Endianness
None

Changelog

  • Updated in V86

    Release date
    27 July 2016

    Portable Network Graphics 1.2: Added description.

  • Updated in V65

    Release date
    25 October 2012

    Portable Network Graphics 1.2: Gave explicit priority over fmt/11 Portable Network Graphics 1.0 to remove multiple identification conflict identified through Ross Spencer's Skeleton Corpus.