Exif marks the spot as fresh version of PNG image standard arrives
- Reference: 1750955593
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/26/new_version_of_png/
- Source link:
The World Wide Web consortium has announced the [1]third edition of the specification for the Portable Network Graphics format – or PNG, pronounced "ping", for short. The chair of the W3C working group in charge of PNG, [2]Chris Blume , has a description of what's new in post entitled [3]PNG is back! .
Along with improved storage of EXIF data and official HDR support, the standard now officially supports APNGs – animated PNGs. This extension was [4]devised by Mozilla and it's become part of the standard.
How a tax form kludge gifted the world 25 joyous years of PDF [5]READ MORE
The PNG format has been around for quite a while, although it is fair to say that coverage on The Register has focused more on security holes in programs that can display it — as for example [6]in 2010 , and [7]in 2015 , and again [8]in 2019 .
In all that time, there have only been two previous major revisions. [9]Version 1.0 [PDF] when the standard was announced back in 1996, and a [10]second edition in 2003.
[11]
The format has a number of important advantages. Despite some [12]relevant Apple patents , PNG is freely usable, unlike the GIF format, which was patent-encumbered. And [13]Unisys demanded a $5,000 license fee if you used it back in 1999. That's why the [14]GNU website eschews GIFs , although in principle, the [15]relevant patents expired between 2003 and 2004. It didn't stop El Reg from offering [16]official logos in the format , anyway.
[17]Still no love for JPEG XL: Browser maker love-in snubs next-gen image format
[18]Your 'funny' cat pics are weighing down the web, so here's a better JPEG encoder from Mozilla
[19]NASA boffins peer at Pluto: Could it be ... is that ... OATMEAL?
[20]No more JPEGs – ISO to withdraw image standard
However, more significantly, there was controversy over [21]how to pronounce "GIF" , a subject so vexed that The Reg [22]returned the next year . Although the G in GIF stood for "Graphics", its creator, the [23]late Stephen E. Wilhite , maintained to the end that it should be pronounced jif .
Also, pretty much everyone supports PNGs now, which is more than can be said of some other formats, such as poor JPEG-XL, [24]shunned by Google and by [25]Interop 2024 even though [26]supported by Apple . ®
Get our [27]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/png-3/
[2] https://www.programmax.net/about/
[3] https://www.programmax.net/articles/png-is-back/
[4] https://wiki.mozilla.org/APNG_Specification
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/21/how_a_tax_form_kludge_gave_us_25_years_of_pdf/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2010/06/29/png_graphic_bug_plugged/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2015/11/15/png_pongs_critical_bug_patched_in_ubiquitous_libpng/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/07/android_january_patches/
[9] https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-png.pdf
[10] https://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-PNG-20031110/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aF3C-DQLLMObRkdo-40ZHwAAAwc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2001/11/16/apple_patents_perturb_png_programmers/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/1999/09/01/unisys_demands_5k_licence_fee/
[14] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
[15] https://www.kyzer.me.uk/essays/giflzw/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2002/10/15/el_reg_logos/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/03/jpeg_xl_interop_2024/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2014/03/05/mozilla_jpeg_encoder/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/17/new_horizons_surface_of_pluto/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2002/07/23/no_more_jpegs_iso/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2012/11/15/gif_is_pronounced_jif/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2013/05/22/jif_gif/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/in_memoriam_stephen_wilhite_john_roach/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/31/jpeg_xl_axed_chrome/
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/03/jpeg_xl_interop_2024/
[26] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/07/apple_safari_jpeg_xl/
[27] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Are you sure? I thought it was "ping"!
It's actually pronounced p'NuGuh in the Old Tongue, but that tends to accidentally summon eldritch horrors (it's a known bug in the standard.)
Actually, I think that is the p-Celtic pronunciation.
And it means Pee-Next-Generation. Or, also known as, watering the future. Picture that!
I pronounce it "that thar compewta cat picture thang" because I'm in the American South...
The P is silent.
What the web needs
is more animated images trying to grab your attention. Sheesh!
Re: What the web needs
PNG is that old that I remember getting the datatype for it from an Amiga magazine coverdisk when it came out so I could open PNG images on my Amiga in multiview. Simpler times but in many ways so much better than what we have now.
Ah, thanks for reminding me of Multiview (and associated Proustian recollections of Lemmings, Alien Breed, OctaMED, TBClock, and so on...)
In a related rant, it's always irked me that if I drag a file into a Windows file dialog, the OS copies that file to the location shown by the dialog.
Whereas on the Amiga, dragging a file into a file dialog would set the value of the dialog to the directory & name of that file.
Which to my mind - maybe I'm weird? - seems more logical.
Mac file dialogs work that way too (like Amiga).
Back to off-topic, Datatypes are great aren't they? Just drag the new PNG datatype into a system directory and all Datatype aware image software will recognise the new format.
But that's an old OS and now we have modern OSes which are much better... oh.
A bit of a stretch to say "22 years on from the last spec, you can now animate your PNGs".
Animated images were part of the original design, but animation just wasn't felt to be very important so MNG didn't get the love. (Presumably internet users were more focussed on actual content back then rather than shiny things.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-image_Network_Graphics
Lenna
I do like that the image that goes with this article on the [1]Latest News page subtly references the "Lenna" image that started it all.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/Week
Still relevant?
Is PNG still relevant or is it largely supplanted by WEBP and AVIF, these days? Are there any scenarios where it still has an advantage (apart from universal support, but really almost anything supports the newer formats these days)?
Re: Still relevant?
Yes, what the world needs is another Google standard. Then people complain about Office file formats...
Re: Still relevant?
PNG is still very much relevant. Tends not to be used on the web as much due to size, but a lot of people use it for printing as it supports transparencies.
Re: Still relevant?
Also very good for embedded graphical bitmap resources in software. I use it a lot in my software projects when I CBA to use a scaled vector format. PNG's Alpha-channel transparency works much better than a GIF.
Re: Still relevant?
And so do the new formats, whilst offering much better compression, with a choice of lossy or lossless. Why would anyone go back to PNG or JPG now?
Re: Still relevant?
> Is PNG still relevant or is it largely supplanted by WEBP...
For a start, if you'd like to be certain that your image has been losslessly compressed, PNG gives you that assurance, just by being a PNG. Good luck finding out if that WEBP image you are about to right-click-save will be written out lossless, lossy, a bit of both in the one file.
(Although too many users don't give a damn anyway, so, yeah, guess only a few of us are interested in knowing that. Heck, I lost the fight over whether an entire company's procedure flowcharts should be written out in PNG - yes, yes they should - because the chap in charge didn't seem to mind text and line drawings saved as JPEGs - all blurry from the ringing - and changing his default format or choosing to "save as..." was too much trouble. Needn't have been PNG, really, one-bit RLE would have done the job better. Maybe he should've been prescribed glasses, like all his colleagues who were trying to figure out why his presentations never appeared to be in focus; cue much specs cleaning.)
Re: Still relevant?
<......."Is PNG still relevant or is it largely supplanted by WEBP.......".......>
I would say almost everything is more relevant than WEBP, which frankly I consider to be a POS.
Oh, fuck
Now I'm going to have to find another image format to espouse.
Pronunciation ...
That's odd; we have always pronounced it "Pang!".
LOL
You do realize APNG was a thing for at least a decade?
It's pronounced pee-en-gee.