The above quote is from The Hunt for Red October, one of my favorite movies. It kind of drives home how the PNG graphics file type is pronounced: ping.

PNG is a graphics file type like JPEG (jay-peg) and GIF (jiff). PNG was created as a public domain graphics standard to supersede and replace the GIF standard. Eventually, I predict, it will be the only graphics format you'll see on the Internet.

Both JPEG and GIF are popular Internet graphics file formats, both save on file size so they can be sent through the ethereal realm (online) in little time.

You may remember that the GIF graphics file format is actually owned by CompuServe. This explains why the GIF file-saving option is often found in a different menu in most graphics applications. While CompuServe has stated publicly that they intend to keep the GIF standard available for use, it is still an owned and patented technology.

The PNG format was developed not only to be a patent-free replacement for GIF, but to improve greatly upon the GIF format. Here are some of the features it offers:

• Plenty of color depth, as opposed to GIF's 256 colors.
• It's lossless, so unlike JPEG images there is no "fuzz" with a PNG image.
• Good compression, so the images don't consume disk space or take long to download
• PNG images are actually closer to TIFF images in quality, in fact PNG could eventually replace TIFF as the lingua franca of graphics file formats.
• Other technical stuff to boring to mention here, yes, even in the Boring History section

The only thing PNG cannot do are GIF animations. Even so, PNG promoters point out that there are other Internet applications (Flash) that can do animations better than GIF.

Today, most web browsers properly display the PNG graphics image. In fact, most of the images on this web site are PNG. Only when you have a very old web browser (say, Windows 98 or so), will displaying PNG images be a problem.

Did you see the PNG image above? If so, then you can use the comparison doohickey below:

GIF Image JPEG Image PNG Image

GIF Image JPEG Image PNG Image

The images above are controlled by the drop-down lists below them. The controls allow you to display either a GIF, JPEG or PNG image for a side-by-side comparison the three types of images.

You'll notice how GIF looks the "cheapest." Remember that it's using only 255 colors to display an image the JPEG and PNG formats use millions of colors for. On the other hand (and I don't have a comparison for this), PNG and GIF can go toe-to-toe for line art images, whereas JPEG images tend to "fuzz out."