We’ve all used PNG images vigorously for years—it’s one of the most widely used image standards out there, and it’s been around for decades. The PNG standard got an update to keep up with current times, and it supports a range of modern features now.

The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format has received its first significant specification update since 2003. PNG is one of those things that most people just assume doesn’t “need” updating since it’s already pretty good and supports most of the features we need. However, our image needs have changed since 2003, and the PNG standard is now getting updated to reflect those changing needs better and to stay relevant as an image format.

As for what’s changing in here, PNG now has proper HDR support. This allows PNG images to represent a much wider range of colors and luminance, akin to what the human eye can perceive. The implementation is pretty efficient, too, requiring only four bytes of data plus standard chunk overhead. With HDR media being commonplace, it’s nice to see that PNG will natively support HDR as well.

Another major development is the official recognition of the Animated PNG (APNG) format. Originally proposed by Mozilla, APNG has seen growing support across major web browsers and applications in recent years. By incorporating APNG into the official specification, the format now has a standardized foundation for animations, so if you weren’t a fan of GIFs, you’ll now have a neat, lossless format that you can use for animated images as well.

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The new update also standardizes the inclusion of Exif data. This allows for the storage of valuable metadata directly within the PNG file, such as copyright information, camera settings, and GPS location. This brings PNG up to par with other photographic formats and enhances its utility in professional and archival contexts. You already could add Exif data to PNG files, but it was through extensions or unofficial methods. This, however, is a native implementation of Exif that should bring it up to par with formats like JPG.

Support for the new PNG specification is already pretty widespread, so you should actually have no problem rendering these “new” PNG images anywhere. Major web browsers, including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, along with operating systems like iOS and macOS, and professional software such as Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and Avid Media Composer, have implemented support for these new features.

Looking ahead, the PNG Working Group has already begun work on even more updates. The forthcoming Fourth Edition is expected to focus on improving interoperability between HDR and Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) content. Following that, the Fifth Edition will bring enhanced compression algorithms (image size is still occasionally a problem with PNG) and support for parallel encoding and decoding. So after over two decades of almost absolutely nothing, we should now be getting semi-frequent updates to the PNG standard. Neat.

Source: W3C via ProgramMax, Thorsten Leemhuis (Bluesky)