Files with the .PNG extension contain an image bitmap with indexed colors, in a non-lossy compression, with no assigned copyright limitations. They allow for the saving of color in a spectrum wider than that used by GIF files, as well as assigning pixels with specific degrees of transparency or color saturation. They do, however, not support the CMYK spectrum.

PNG images were invented mostly for online use. Unlike GIF files, they do not support animation, although a daughter format of PNG files, the MNG format, does support it. PNG files are utilized by Linux and Mac OS X systems for saving screenshots.