PNG image format gets an update: version 3 brings HDR and animation support

The PNG (Portable Network Graphics) image format, which first appeared in 1995, has received a new version. ProgramMax reports this with reference to the World Wide Web Consortium.

This file format has been recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for use on the Internet since 1996. Its second version was released in 2003. Now, the format has received its third revision, the first major update in over two decades. PNG v3 is now officially approved as a W3C standard as of June 24, 2025.

The new standard introduces several important features, including support for HDR-quality images. Thanks to the use of the compact cICP profile, HDR versions of PNG can be only 16 bytes larger than regular SDR versions. PNG 3 also supports EXIF data, such as camera model information or GPS coordinates, which was typical of JPEG but previously unavailable in PNG.

Another innovation was the official inclusion of support for Animated PNG (APNG) in the standard. Although APNGs have existed before, they have only now been officially fixed, which gives reason to expect wider support in software.

The third version of PNG has been under development since 2021 in collaboration with Adobe, Apple, and Google, and is currently supported by Chromium-based browsers, Firefox, macOS, iOS, Adobe Photoshop, and DaVinci Resolve. In the future, the W3C plans to optimize lossless compression and improve compatibility between HDR on SDR displays and vice versa.