I said in a previous article that this is great, but we should be adopting JPEG-XL as it is current and can now compress pixel-perfect / lossless images better than old PNG. IIRC this revision of the spec doesn’t improve compression yet but it’s coming.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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Not seeing how this would affect uptake. Lossless is great for production images, but standard JPEG will do (at low compression) for most Web use cases. Until OS developers coalesce around PNG as a standard (Windows has for screenshots), this is that old standards xkcd.
Alpha channels are nice and all, but how many end users A) have a need for that and B) understand the underlying concept, let alone implementation?
Alpha channels are critical. The ability to have images have transparency in them is much more useful than you believe it is. Many end users have a need for it, more than they know they do; so this argument really isn't doing much for your stance supporting PNG. Similarly PNG has supported alpha channels for quite a while.
For production, yes. What percentage of images produced are for production, though? I know damn well how important alpha channels are, but for posting something on social media, which is orders of magnitude more output than image creation within the context of a larger presentation, no one cares.
The vast majority of people aren't graphic artists. That you and I know what alpha channels are has no bearing on daily use by the masses.
You are talking about photos. PNG is not the right format for photos.