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PNG has been updated for the first time in 22 years — new spec supports HDR and animation

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The demand for subtitles in HDR content led to this update.

PNG bricks
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) just released an update to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format this week. The W3C introduced the initial specifications for this file format in 1996, with the group formalizing the 2003 standard in 2004. This means that it’s been over two decades since it was updated — a virtual eternity in the technological realm. According to ProgramMax, the U.S. Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, and the National Archives of Australia recommend PNG for archiving digital images, likely because of its lossless compression. With this amount of trust placed on the file format, it must keep up with the times and ensure that it will continue to help preserve our visual history.

The third edition of the PNG specification introduces three new features: support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, animation through Animated PNGs (APNGs), and Exif data storage. This update pushes the file specification into the modern age, making it more competitive against other formats like GIF, WebP, and more. Aside from those, there are already a couple of planned updates — the first one is aiming to improve the way the format handles HDR and Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) interoperability, while the second one is aiming to improve its compression ability.

The push to update the file standard actually came from another group within the W3C working on timed text like captions, subtitles, and audio descriptions. They discovered the need for HDR support in PNG files, so they proposed an update to the format. The experts behind it decided that they could do so much more than just add HDR support, and before long, other parties like Adobe, Apple, Google, BBC, Comcast / NBCUniversal, and MovieLabs soon joined the party.

Because of this, the latest version of PNG is already widely supported. Popular photo and video editing apps like Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and Avid Media Composer already support it, alongside Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Apple’s iOS and macOS also work with the new file standard.

Even though there are competing formats like JPG, WebP, and even GIF, PNG still has some abilities that help deliver the internet as we know it today. The recent and planned updates on it will help push it into the future, allowing it to remain relevant in the 2020s and beyond.

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Notton
    Was APNG not an official format?
    I could have sworn it's existed for some 5+ years. It's used in animated discord stickers.
    Reply
  • Li Ken-un
    There was MNG which died an early death in 2003, but was actually implemented in some browsers for a short while.
    Reply
  • wakuwaku
    Notton said:
    Was APNG not an official format?
    I could have sworn it's existed for some 5+ years. It's used in animated discord stickers.
    nope it was rejected by the previous guys that managed the PNG format. And it existed for 2 decades actually.

    Long before discord existed, back in early to mid 201xs, maybe late 200x although i doubt my useless memory, when community forums were still a thing (yes I know we're in a forum, I mean there's a forum for every little thing.), I dabbled in APNGs to create better animated forum avatars, as everyone was using GIFs and they all looked like rubbish.

    The article is a bit misleading. It makes people think PNG suddenly can animate. More like, the PNG format now recognizes the 20 year old APNG extension as part of the PNG standard for animation. Maybe should've used Tom's AI to write this.
    Reply
  • d0x360
    Yeah nice but what about HDR GIF?
    Reply
  • RedBear87
    Notton said:
    Was APNG not an official format?
    I could have sworn it's existed for some 5+ years. It's used in animated discord stickers.
    APNG was an unofficial extension introduced by Mozilla (a company once known for a dying browser called Firefox that I and 5 other guys still use), it was "retro-compatible" insofar any program capable to read PNG files was able to read the first frame, but it was never standardised until now.
    Reply