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At Last, PNG An ISO Standard Under Publication

Posted by timothy on from the vectors-n-stuff dept.

Jeex writes "After its first draft back in '95, the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format is finally, as of 2003-04-25, an ISO standard under publication. Links: ISO technical programme: JTC 1/SC 24, PNG Homepage."

1 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Re:GIF and JPEG . . . by Webmonger · · Score: 3, Informative

    GIF and PNG use lossless compression techniques. They are lossless. If you have a black-and-white image and you save it into GIF or PNG, you will get an identical image back when you load it.

    You're confusing format with interface (because you refer to options used, and those are an interface thing). GIF is lossless, but it can only represent images with 256 colours or less. (Black-and-white images meet that test.) It's impossible to save an image with more than 256 colours as a GIF, so many programs will convert it for you. That doesn't mean GIF is lossy. Just means that it has limitations. Save any 256-colour image, load it up, and you'll get exactly what you had before.