What is PNG format, PNG, JPG, GIF format differences

　　What format is PNG? This question is one of the most frequently asked questions of many computer novices. Well, given the number of novice computers, let's explain what the PNG format is. In fact, the answer is very simple, we just know that the picture format can be. Perhaps many novice friends see the picture format are JPG and GIF. To forget what the PNG format is, here are the next PNG, JPG, GIF format, and compare their respective advantages and disadvantages.

First of all, whether PNG, JPG, or GIF, they have one thing in common is that they are all picture formats, they can be directly generated through the common graphics software such as PS. Here we introduce the characteristics and differences between the next three respectively.

　　gif picture format:1987 born, often used for Web page animation, using lossless compression, support 256 colors (generally called 8 bit color), support a single transparent color;

JPEG picture (jpg): 1992 Born, photos are generally used in this format, lossy compression, bit true color (224=17 million colors), does not support animation, does not support transparent color;

　　PNG Picture format:1996, lossless compression, the most common use format is 256 indexed color (PNG-8) and bit True Color (PNG-24) (of course PNG supports a much more color format), support full Alpha channel (256-level adjustable semitransparent color), animation is not supported.

　　Simple comparison of three picture formats:

JPEG and PNG format Picture contrast: JPEG in photo compression has a huge advantage, this is irreplaceable, but JPEG is lossy compression, image quality will be lost. In addition, the general screen screenshot is in PNG format, which is not only higher in quality than JPEG but also smaller in file size.

GIF in PNG format Picture contrast: GIF only has the advantage in the Simple animation field (in fact, the GIF 256 color limit and lossless compression mechanism cause the release of high quality animation is generally used in the format of Flash, etc.), as long as there is no animation, PNG can completely replace GIF. In general, GIF is divided into static GIF and animated GIF Two, the extension of. gif, is a compressed bitmap format, supporting transparent background image, suitable for a variety of operating systems, "size" is very small, online many small animations are GIF format. In fact, GIF is to save a number of images as an image file, resulting in animation, so the final analysis GIF is still a picture file format. However, GIF can only display 256 colors. Like the JPG format, this is a very popular graphic file format on the Web. So generally we see in the Web page dynamic pictures are generally GIF format.

In the network general small icons in many picture formats are used png,png is a picture storage format, can be used as a material directly, because it has a very good feature: background transparent. In the production of picture selection is what format output, mainly according to the image format characteristics to choose the best output.