PNG — Portable Network Graphics
PNG is lossless: what goes in comes back out pixel for pixel, no matter how many times you re-save it. Add a full alpha channel and you have the natural home for logos, screenshots, diagrams and anything with hard edges or text. The cost is weight — a photograph stored as PNG can be five times heavier than the same photo as JPG.
Strengths
- Lossless — no compression artefacts, at any number of re-saves
- Full alpha transparency, including soft anti-aliased edges
- Universal support, and the default for screenshots and interface assets
Limitations
- Far heavier than JPG or WebP for photographic content
- No quality dial — you take the file size you are given
- Slower to decode at very large dimensions