What's so special about png format?

PNG is an image file storage format developed in the mid-1990s. Its purpose is to replace GIF and TIFF file formats and add some functions that GIF file formats do not have. The name of Portable Network Graphics Format (PNG) comes from the unofficial "PNG's Not GIF", which is a bitmap file storage format pronounced "ping". When storing grayscale images with PNG, the depth of grayscale images can be as high as 16 bits, when storing color images, the depth of color images can be as high as 48 bits, and α channel data can also be stored as high as 16 bits. PNG uses lossless data compression algorithm derived from LZ77.

1996 came out, lossless compression, the most common formats are 256 index color (PNG-8) and 24 bit true color (PNG-24) (of course, PNG supports more than these), supports full alpha channel (256-level adjustable translucent color), and does not support animation. Usually, the picture format of many small icons in the network is png, and png is a picture storage format, which can be directly used as material, but the picture in png format has a very good feature: the background is transparent. When making a picture, what format to choose for output mainly depends on the characteristics of the picture format to choose the best output. This performance can make some parts of the image not displayed, and can be used to create some distinctive images. Here the author gives a simple example to illustrate. Find a picture file in png format, and then right-click to view the properties. As shown in the figure:

Generally speaking, png is a picture storage format, that is, pictures in png format. Usually we can use photoshop to edit or import and export image files in png format. Relatively speaking, it has a wide range of uses.