Portable Network Graphics

PNG was created to improve GIF image-file format. Removing patent license issues at that time; and removing 256 colors limitation.

See the reference side-by-side comparison Common image file formats

	PNG
Developed by	W3C (donated by PNG Development Group)
Year	1996
Pros	Widely accepted format Lossless Transparency support
Cons	Lossless only. Poor compression for photographic images.
Features
Vector graphics	No
Raster image	Yes
Lossless	Yes
Animation support	- Animated PNG is an extension to the PNG format which is compatible with the Gecko and WebKit layout engines and many image editing suites. Users of software incompatible with APNG see the first frame as a still.
Transparency support	Yes
Layers support	No
HDR	No
Maximum bit depth	16-bit
CMYK support (for print)	No
Maximum number of channels	4 (RGBA)
Commonly used for	Icons Simple web graphics like logos Illustrations, or raster text rendering
Browser support (without plugin)
Google Chrome	Yes
Microsoft Edge	Yes
Safari	Yes
Firefox	Yes
Opera	Yes
Internet Explorer	Yes
Additional
File extensions	Still: .png; Animated: .png, .apng
Wikipedia	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics