What Does PNG Stand For? Everything You Need to Know

by Lina Thorne • Updated 7/23/2025 · Posted in Photography

In today’s digital world, images are an essential part of communication, design, and marketing. One of the most widely used image formats is PNG, which is known for its high quality, versatility, and lossless compression. If you’ve ever downloaded a logo with a transparent background or saved a screenshot on your computer, you’ve likely come across a PNG file. But what does PNG stand for?

Even if you’re just a casual internet user, it’s important for you to know its origins, strengths and limitations as well as what types of files you should use it for. This can help you make better decisions when working with digital images. Fortunately, you’ll find all this information in our comprehensive guide. As a bonus, you’ll learn what Watermarkly’s online tools you can use for editing your PNGs.

What Does PNG Stand For?

PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics. Digital images can be stored as either vector or raster. PNG is a raster format, meaning it represents an image as a grid of pixels.

This image format uses lossless compression, meaning that if you need to edit an image multiple times or compress it, no data will be lost. As you might guess from the name, this format was created to be easily transferred over the internet, designed to be both portable and platform-independent.

The History of the PNG format

In the mid-1990s, the GIF format was commonly used but had two major problems:

Color limitations – GIF was limited to 256 colors, which wasn’t enough for detailed images.
Patent issues – The LZW compression used in GIF was patented, meaning software developers and companies had to pay licensing fees to support it. This resulted in a lot of legal disputes.

PNG aimed to solve those problems.

The Beginning

In 1994, a group of developers led by Thomas Boutell started to work on what would become PNG. Their goal was clear: create a free, open, and superior alternative to GIF.

The first full specification was released on October 1, 1996. By 1997, it had become an official Internet standard under RFC 2083. In 2004, PNG was accepted as an international standard (ISO/IEC 15948).

PNG offered better compression, greater color depth, and support for varying levels of transparency. It might sound silly, but unofficially, PNG stood for “PNG’s not GIF.”

The Rise of APNG

Although PNG was excellent for static images, it didn’t support animation (unlike GIF). To fill that gap, the APNG (Animated Portable Network Graphics) format was introduced in 2008. It provided animations similar to GIFs but with better quality and support for full alpha transparency.

Even though APNG has advantages over GIF, it still hasn’t become as popular due to the fact that most content creators still haven’t adopted it. The software and browser support are also pretty limited. In 2025, animated GIFs still dominate the internet scene.

2025: Major Update

After more than two decades, PNG received a major update in June 2025. The update introduced support for:

High Dynamic Range (HDR)
Embedded EXIF metadata
Official animation support

The updated PNG format is already widely supported, so you’re unlikely to run into compatibility issues. Popular browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, as well as major platforms such as iOS and macOS, have embraced the new features. Popular professional tools like Adobe Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and Avid Media Composer have also integrated support, ensuring smooth rendering across most environments.

Advantages of PNG

Let’s take a look at the key advantages of this versatile format.

Cross-Platform Compatibility. PNG files are supported on all modern devices, browsers, and editing software. No proprietary codecs or special plugins are required.

Lossless Compression. PNG uses a lossless compression algorithm called DEFLATE, which is also used in ZIP files. Unlike lossy formats (like JPEG), PNG doesn’t discard any information. You can open an image, edit it, save the changes, and close the image, then repeat this process as many times as you want – and still have every pixel exactly as it was.

Color Support/span>. PNG is extremely flexible when it comes to color. It supports:

Grayscale
Indexed-color (palette-based)
Truecolor (24-bit RGB)
Truecolor with alpha channel (32-bit RGBA)

Transparency. The alpha channel is exactly what enables PNG to support varying levels of transparency – it means that an area of an image can be not only completely transparent, but also semi-transparent. This is impossible in GIF, for instance, since GIFs support only single-level transparency.

Metadata and Integrity. PNG allows for metadata like creation dates, copyright and author info to be embedded directly into the image. And thanks to the new update, PNG now supports EXIF, as well.

This format also includes integrity-checking features, like CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check), which is very helpful to ensure that the file isn’t corrupted when transferred or stored.

Interlacing. PNG supports Adam7 interlacing, which allows an image to load in several passes. This means users can see a rough version of the image, while it continues to load. This can be very useful when the internet connection is slow.

Disadvantages of PNG

As you may know, no perfect file format exists. PNG has some disadvantages, as well.

Large File Sizes. Simple digital artwork and web graphics in the PNG format won’t take up a lot of memory space. But if you try to save a high-resolution photo as a PNG, you will be shocked by how large the file size will be. Also, you will never be able to compress a PNG image as much as a JPEG image because they use different types of compression. JPEG is a lossy format, meaning it always discards some redundant data.

Bad for Photography. Aside from large file sizes, PNG cannot handle subtle color transitions and lots of details that are often present in high-resolution photos. But JPEG can.

Not Print-Friendly. PNG doesn’t support CMYK and uses the RGB color model. This isn’t ideal for commercial printing, where CMYK is required. TIFF or PDF is much better for this purpose.

When Should You Use PNG?

Here are the most common and effective use cases:

Web Graphics. Graphics that include shapes, diagrams, text, and any kind of elements with sharp edges look much cleaner and better in PNG. That’s because PNG doesn’t introduce compression artifacts – those fuzzy or blocky distortions that appear with lossy formats like JPEG.
Screenshots. PNG captures pixel-perfect detail without losing anything during compression. For this reason, it’s ideal for screenshots and text-heavy images.
Infographics and Charts. When you’re working with data visualizations or infographics that contain text, numbers, and clean lines, you want everything to be crisp, sharp, and clear without even a hint of blurriness. PNG can provide exactly that.
Images with Transparency. PNG is one of the few formats that support alpha transparency, meaning you can have images with fully or partially transparent areas. This is essential for: • Logos and icons that need to blend seamlessly into different backgrounds • UI elements in apps and websites • Overlays for video or photo; for instance, watermarks.
Digital Art and Illustrations. PNG supports not only varying levels of transparency, but also millions of colors. It’s often the preferred format for saving flat artwork with clean color transitions.
Archiving Graphics. If you need to preserve an image exactly as-is – for future edits, or backups – definitely go for PNG. Unlike the lossy JPEG format, which discards data every time it’s saved, there will be no data loss with PNG. No matter how many times you save it.

Watermarkly’s Tools for PNG

Do you need to tweak your PNGs just a little bit, yet you don’t want to install any editing software? Go to Watermarkly’s website! Here you can:

Crop PNG. With this tool, you’ll be able to remove unnecessary visual clutter and focus attention on the key elements. It can be incredibly useful when: you’re working with screenshots and want to get rid of all the irrelevant and maybe even some personal information; you want to isolate a design element (e.g., a logo); you’re prepping UI elements for mobile apps or games. With the help of cropping, you can also change the aspect ratio to meet image requirements of different online platforms. For instance, you can crop your PNG with the 2:3 aspect ratio to a perfect square!
Resize PNG. Resizing means simply changing the pixel dimensions of a PNG image. The aspect ratio remains unchanged. By resizing a PNG, you can meet size and layout requirements on websites or social media platforms as well as optimize images for responsive design. Moreover, you can actually make your PNG image bigger. For instance, you can turn a 500x500px logo into a 1500x1500px logo. And there will be no pixelation or blurriness! The enlarged version might even look somewhat sharper than the original.
Compress PNG. The best way to drastically decrease the file size of your PNG is by compressing it. The small file size is vital when you need your images to load faster on your website. It’s also important if you want to send an image over email or a messaging app quickly and without seeing the “File Too Large” error. Finally, compressing a PNG can help you free up some memory space.
Watermark PNG. Watermarking is often used to protect your intellectual property, discourages unauthorized use and distribution, mark drafts or confidential images, raise brand awareness. Without a doubt, it will be beneficial for you to watermark your digital artwork saved as a PNG before sharing it online. But that’s not all! You can actually use a PNG file as a watermark. So, if your logo file is in this format, you can import it into Watermarkly and use it as a watermark.
Convert PNG to JPEG. As it has already been mentioned, PNG is not efficient for high-resolution images with lots of details and smooth gradients. JPEG would be a much better choice. Also, some online platforms, like Instagram, prefer JPEG. On top of all that, if you need to reduce the file size of your PNG quite drastically, it’s better to convert it to PNG. What you need to keep in mind, though, is that JPEG doesn’t support transparency. So, don’t convert your PNG to JPEG if it’s important for some parts of your image to be transparent.

Summing Up

Created as a GIF alternative, PNG has become one of the most widely used formats in the digital world. It’s often chosen by professionals across many industries due to its advantages like lossless compression as well as support for a broad range of colors and varying levels of transparency.

Of course, like anything in this world, PNG has its limitations. It’s still a bad choice for printing and high-resolution photos with lots of subtle color transitions. But as PNG continues to evolve – with new support for HDR and EXIF metadata – it’s clear that this format isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Now that you know what PNG stands for and when it’s best to use it, you’ll be able to create better visual content. Then Watermarkly can help you optimize it properly for the web.