What is a PNG file and why use them?

Post by **faceless** » Sun May 18, 2014 2:48 am

https://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.2/png-1.2.pdf

That's what a PNG file is. The reason you should use them is because they are lossless. If you upload pics to facebook, youtube, twitter (or any other platform like it), they will usually make a jpg from your pic before it shows to others, which always lowers the quality. So, starting with the highest quality in the first place guarantees a better result for the viewer.

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Sun May 18, 2014 10:50 pm

And they're massively smaller than raw or TIF.

Though Adobe had for the longest time a bug that wouldn't see the transparent layer properly. Anyone know if that got fixed in the latest version?

Post by **faceless** » Sun May 18, 2014 11:22 pm

I use Paintshop to make transparencies (it's quicker for me) and then import them into Paintshop and they're fine

luke · Post by **luke** » Mon May 19, 2014 2:44 am

photoshop cs5 can save transparent png's fine, although i've never tried opening one with it. i save everything as psd and export what i need to use

png's are great for pictures with text on. i remember uploading a logo to facebook and the jpg compression made it terrible, but the png version was fine

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 5:59 pm

luke wrote:photoshop cs5 can save transparent png's fine, although i've never tried opening one with it. i save everything as psd and export what i need to use

Doesn't save opacity info properly, so it's still borked. There's ways around it, but not by default, so a little bit of a chore if you're creating opacity maps.