Image-Conversion Applications with PNG Support

Many of the image-conversion applications listed here are also image viewers and are therefore listed on the PNG-supporting image-viewer page as well. Note also that image editors often have the ability to import and export many formats. Finally, not all of these applications convert both to and from the PNG format; the "read-only," "write-only" and "read/write" comments indicate the type of PNG support.

A special note regarding "png to text" conversion: if you're looking for something to convert embedded, raster text to plain text, you won't find it here--you want OCR (optical character recognition) software instead. The kinds of png-to-text converters sprinkled below (e.g., pngcheck and SNG) tend to fall more along the lines of PNG "dumpers," i.e., programs that describe the internal structure of a PNG file textually.

As on the other applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to downloadable versions are provided where known, but if a link is broken, check the location and see if an updated version is available (and please tell Greg!). Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics), where "many" is defined as at least three of Unix, OS/2, Win32, DOS, Mac OS, etc.

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

• 2PNG [fCoder Group] (Win32) - all versions; read/write? full alpha support (including palette and 64-bit modes as of version 4.2); gamma support as of version 4.2; MNG and JNG support (read-only) as of version 2.0; commercial. (This is a non-graphical batch converter from various formats to PNG. The company sells other batch converters with read-only PNG support. See also ImageConverter Plus below.)

• 36-Image Converter [Phoenxsoftware] (Win32) - version 4.2(?) and later; read/write; freeware.

• ACDSee32 [ACD Systems] (Win32) - version 1.0 beta 3 and later; read/write (read-only prior to version 3.0); full gamma support; progressive display of interlacing (sparse method); broken grayscale+alpha support; ignores background chunk; version 3.0 writes PNGs with no IEND chunk (fixed in 3.1); commercial. (This was formerly known as ACDSee 95.)

• AdvanceCOMP [Andrea Mazzoleni et al.] (DOS, Win32, Linux) - version 1.2 and later; read/write; MNG support; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is now a dedicated set of recompression utilities [optimizers], originally part of the AdvanceSCAN "command-line ROM manager" for various MAME game-engine implementations. It includes AdvancePNG and AdvanceMNG [or advpng and advmng], the latter of which is capable of splitting PNGs out of a MNG animation [as of version 1.6] and of converting a sequence of PNG images back into a single MNG [as of version 1.9]. advpng originally was called zpng and was part of the AdvanceMAME game emulator. Note that, as of version 1.9, it apparently still works only on non-interlaced palette, RGB, and RGBA PNGs [i.e., no grayscale, gray+alpha, or interlaced].)

• Advanced Batch Converter [Gold-Software Development] (Win32) - version 3.5(?) and later; read/write; MNG (read-only) and JNG (read/write) support; commercial.

• Advanced Slide Show [Gold-Software Development] (Win32) - all versions? read-only; MNG and JNG support; commercial.

• AdvancePNG - see AdvanceCOMP above

• AdvanceSCAN - see AdvanceCOMP above

• AhaView [Aha-soft] (Win32) - all versions; read/write as of version 2.0b; shareware. (Version 1.1 is freeware but has read-only support for PNG.)

• AI Picture Explorer / AIPICX [Applied Insights] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware. (This app not only views images but also creates web pages with image thumbnails.)

• AI Picture Utility / AIPICT [Applied Insights] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware.

• Alter Image 32 [Nun's Meadow Software] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; reportedly converts bi-level (1-bit) TIFFs into 24-bit PNGs.

• A Mort les GIFs [Damien Guillaume] (Java) - all versions; write-only; MNG support (write-only); no transparency support; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a Java application to convert GIFs into PNGs or MNGs. It uses delta-encoding to compress the MNG streams as much as possible [which also loses any transparency], and two third-party MNG viewers are included, one in Java by Shinya IKEDA and one for Mac OS by Tarkvara Design. Note that the application is in French, but it's straightforward to use. It requires JDK 1.3 or later.)

• any2png [Juhapekka Tolvanen] (Unix) - all versions; write-only; requires ImageMagick, gif2png, pngcrush and pngrewrite; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a Bourne-shell script to convert various image formats to PNG. It may work with Cygwin on Win32, also.)

• Any to Icon [Aha-soft] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; alpha support as of version 1.25; shareware. (Converts to Windows .ICO format; see also Icon to Any below.)

• Ashampoo Photo Commander [Nikolaus Brennig] (Windows 2k/XP/2003) - all versions; read/write; MNG (read/write) and JNG (read-only) support; commercial. (This is the commercial successor to SlowView. It was previously known as Mediafile Assistant.)

• AutoGraphicsHTML [fCoder Group] (Win32) - all versions? read-only; MNG and JNG support as of version 5.7; commercial. (This is a utility to create web-based photo albums. The output format is restricted to GIF or JPEG, however.)

• AutoImager [Mystik Media] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; transparency support; commercial. (This is a batch conversion utility with image-manipulation capabilities. It includes a small preview display showing the effects of a given operation, although it's not really a full image viewer.)

• Batch It! Pro [AbleSoft] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware. (PNG is also supported in version 2.0(?) and later of Batch It!.)

• bmp2png / png2bmp [MIYASAKA Masaru] (DOS, Win32, Unix, etc.) - all versions; read/write; interlacing support; simple transparency support as of version 1.60; alpha support as of version 1.62; requires libpng and zlib; freeware with C source. (This is a pair of command-line converters between Windows BMP format and PNG. For the sake of search commands, we'll mention bmptopng and pngtobmp, too.)

• Cameleo [Caldera Graphics] (Unix/X) - version 2.2(?) and later; read/write; commercial.

• ColourEdit [Julian Highfield] (Mac OS/OpenDoc) - all versions? read/write. (A Unix/Tcl/Tk port is reported to be 80% finished as of May 1998.)

• CompuPic / CPIC [Photodex] (Windows 3.x, Win32, Mac PPC/68k, Linux) - all versions; read/write; no gamma support; progressive display of interlaced images (replicating method)

• CompuShow / CShow [Bob Berry] (DOS) - version 9.01a and later; read/write; interlacing and low-bit-depth PNG-writing code broken in 9.01a; ignores gamma chunk but has generic option to adjust display gamma; progressive display of interlaced images (replicating method); 265k

• ConGo [Matthias Matting] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is an editor and converter for Commodore 64 image formats; it can convert to/from various "Internet" formats, including PNG.)

• Creator [John Kortink] (RISC OS) - version 3.20 and later; read/write; no alpha or gamma support; shareware.

• CryptaPix [Kent Briggs / Briggs Softworks] (Win32) - version 1.0 and later; read/write in version 1.1b and later; shareware. (Versions prior to 2.0 were also available for Windows 3.x.)

• CSView Plugins [CSU Software Solutions] (Win32) - all versions? read-only or read/write, depending; commercial. (CSView40, CSView130 and CSView150 all include stand-alone viewers and Netscape plug-ins. Some configurations include batch converters capable of writing PNG images, as well.)

• DeBabelizer Pro [Equilibrium] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; claims full gamma support as of version 4.5; commercial.

• dicom2 [Sébastien Barré] (Win32, Linux, SunOS/Solaris) - version 1.8 and later; write-only; uses libpng and zlib; freeware. (This tool converts medical images from either DICOM or ACR/NEMA format to PNG, BMP, TARGA, DICOM or raw formats. 12-bit grayscale images are upsampled to 16-bit PNGs.)

• Drag And View [Canyon Software] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read-only; shareware.

• DTA / Dave's TGA Animator [David K. Mason] (DOS, Windows 3.x) - version 2.2 and later; read/write; shareware. (This handy utility converts single images into FLI/FLC animations and back again. It appears that version 3.0 will be the final release.)

• DTPicView [Edmund Vermeulen] (BeOS) - all versions with the translation kit (or Jon Watte's Datatypes library) and Simon Clarke's PNGHandler (see the toolkits page); read/write; progressive display in version 2.0 and later

• dvipng [Jan-Åke Larsson] (Unix, Win32, etc.) - all versions; write-only; requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This creates PNG images from TeX DVI output. "It supports PK, VF, PostScript, and TrueType fonts, color, and PostScript inclusion.")

• dvips [Tomas Rokicki] (Unix, Win32, etc.) - version 5.86 and later with Dirk Krause's bmeps add-on (formerly known as dvipskpng or the dvipsk + PNG add-on); read-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (dvips (k) converts from TeX's DVI format to PostScript; Dirk's add-on enables embedded PNG images to be converted properly, too, without external converters. See also pdftex below.)

• Easy Graphics File Converter [Hermetic Systems] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; uses BMGLib, libpng and zlib; commercial.

• Easy Thumbnails [Fookes Software] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; freeware.

• ecg2png [Lawrence E. Widman] (Unix/Qt) - all versions; write-only; requires Qt, libpng, zlib, and optionally gd; freeware (GPL) with source. (This app converts high-resolution electrocardiogram scans to more Web-friendly, three-color PNGs. It appears to use Qt for most of its reading and writing capabilities.)

• eps2png [Johan Vromans] (Perl) - all versions; write-only; requires ghostscript (which requires libpng and zlib); freeware (Artistic/GPL) with source. (This app converts encapsulated PostScript to PNG or other bitmap formats.)

• EscapeE Professional [RedTitan Technology] (Win32) - version 4.40 and later; write-only; commercial. (This is a converter from Hewlett-Packard Laserjet PCL and HPGL formats to other things, including PNG. Note that the lower-cost Viewer and Transformer variants do not support PNG, although the latter supports conversion to TIFF. See also tiff2png below.)

• The Exorcist [Nigel Stewart] (Win32) - any version; write-only; freeware. (This is a GUI version of gif2png that supports drag and drop, etc.)

• EyeBatch [Atalasoft] (Win32) - all versions; full alpha support claimed; full gamma support; read/write; shareware. (This is a batch image processor and viewer; in addition to conversions, it can blur, sharpen, rotate, adjust contrast, and so forth.)

• fav2png [SectorPrime] (Perl) - all versions; write-only; uses Imager.pm, libpng, and zlib; freeware with Perl and JavaScript source. (This is a CGI script to grab and convert favicons to PNG images--e.g., for linking to the respective remote sites. The optional JavaScript component mitigates conversion-latency by serving up a cached version while the current version is being converted.)

• Favorez [WarpGear Software] (Win32) - all versions; write-only; binary transparency support as of version 1.1; shareware/adware. (This is a specialized program that lives in Internet Explorer's toolbar and creates a "favorites web page" from stored bookmarks; as part of that, it also converts "favicons" to PNG format.)

• FishEye [Willem van Schaik] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; uses libpng and zlib; shareware.

• fly [Martin Gleeson] (Unix, Win32, etc.) - version 2.0.0 and later; write-only; requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (BSDish) with C source. (This is a "text-to-image" converter; that is, it reads a text script with drawing commands and produces a corresponding raster image. It is primarily intended for use by CGI scripts. Older versions probably can be made to produce PNG output, too, simply by recompiling with a newer version of the gd library.)

• FOP [Apache Software Foundation] (Java) - version 0.20.3 and later; read-only? uses JIMI; freeware (Apache) with source. (This is a "print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects." Basically it's a command-line Java application to convert XML+XSL to PDF, SVG, PostScript, plain text, or any of several other formats. It can also be used to render directly to screen or printer. SVG and PNG images may be embedded in documents.)

• Formati [Jan Verhoeven] (Win32) - version 8 and later; read/write; full alpha support (both single, uniform value for entire image [e.g., 25% transparent] and via second image used as alpha mask); uses PNG Delphi / TPNGImage and zlib; freeware.

• Free Image Manipulator / fim [Kacper Bielecki] (Unix/Qt, Win32/Qt) - all versions; read/write; requires gd, libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with C++ source. (This is a batch viewer/converter with image-manipulation capabilities; it can resize, apply text overlays, and create collages with arbitrary transparency.)

• GConvert [G.D.G. Software] (Win32) - version 3.8.0 and later; write-only? shareware.

• gerbv - see the scientific and graphing apps page

• Ghostscript [Aladdin] (Unix/X, VMS/X, DOS, OS/2, Win32, Windows 3.x, Mac PPC/68k, Amiga, Atari, RISC OS, SMS/QDOS, Plan 9, etc.) - version 3.51 and later (may be broken in some versions prior to 4.0); write-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (AFPL/GPL) with source. (PNG support by Russell Lang.)

• gif2png [Alexander Lehmann, Greg Roelofs, Eric Raymond] (Unix, Win32, DOS, Mac OS, Amiga, etc.) - the official GIF-to-PNG converter; requires libpng and zlib. (In addition to the Linux executables at the main link, gzip'd SCO OpenServer (41k) binaries are available, and older executables for DOS (137k) are also available. See also The Exorcist above [a Win32 graphical port with drag-and-drop support].)

• GIF Construction Set [Alchemy Mindworks] (Windows 3.x) - version 1.0d and later; read-only

• GifWizard [Evgeny Shamin / fCoder Group] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; shareware. (This app converts various image formats to GIF.)

• GraphicConverter - see the image editors page

• Graphic Workshop Professional [Alchemy Mindworks] (Win32) - version 1.1q and later; read/write; writes unnecessarily large palettes; writes invalid tEXt chunks (control characters; CR instead of LF); shareware. (Version 2.0a patch 42 is claimed to have solid PNG support, but various older versions didn't support gamma correction and [in very old versions] had compression and filtering bugs. The original Graphic Workshop was also available for DOS and 16-bit Windows.)

• GRIP ICE [Ivan Lee Herring] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; uses PNG Delphi / TPNGImage (see the toolkits page); freeware (formerly shareware) with Pascal source. (The name stands for Geographic Raster Image Processor / Investigate Classify Extrapolate. See also Imagem on the editors page.)

• HiJaak PRO [Inset / Quarterdeck / IMSI] (Win32) - versions 95 and 4.0 and later; read-only. (This product was called HiJaak 95 for one[?] release, possibly equivalent to version 3.0. It was later renamed "Pro," presumably after Inset was acquired by Quarterdeck, and then recapitalized "PRO" with its sale to IMSI.)

• hp2xx [Heinz Werntges, Martin Kroeker] (Unix, VMS, DOS, OS/2, Amiga, Atari, etc.) - version 3.3.0 and later; write-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This program converts from HPGL to a variety of formats. The home page is fairly useless, but the sources can be downloaded directly from the GNU ftp site.)

• Icons Control 2001 [Chris Doan] (Win32) - version 5.25(?) and later; read-only; shareware. (This utility converts images to Windows .ICO format. It was formerly known as Icons Control 95 and Icons Control 32.)

• Icon to Any [Aha-soft] (Win32) - all versions; write-only; alpha support as of version 1.22; shareware. (Converts from Windows .ICO format; see also Any to Icon above.)

• Image Alchemy [Handmade Software] (DOS, OS/2, Macintosh, Unix/Motif) - version 1.9 and later; read/write; no interlacing; grayscale broken in 1.9 beta; alpha transparency broken in 1.9 beta but claimed to be fully supported in version 1.10; full gamma and color correction? commercial. (This is primarily an image-conversion app, but the OpenLook- and Motif-based commercial versions for Sun, SGI and HP workstations also have viewing capabilities, as do the DOS version and the now-terminated Macintosh port. The versions for OS/2, Linux, BSD/OS, SCO Unix, Solaris/x86, AIX and Digital Unix only do conversions.)

• Image Alchemy [Handmade Software] (DOS, OS/2, Macintosh, Unix/Motif) - version 1.9 and later; read/write; no interlacing; grayscale broken in 1.9 beta; alpha transparency broken in 1.9 beta but claimed to be fully supported in version 1.10; full gamma and color correction? (This is primarily an image-conversion app, but the OpenLook- and Motif-based commercial versions for Sun, SGI and HP workstations also have viewing capabilities, as do the DOS and now-terminated Mac versions. The versions for OS/2, Linux, BSD/OS, SCO Unix, Solaris/x86, AIX and Digital Unix only do conversions.)

• Image Arithmetic [Richard van Paasen] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; shareware. (This is primarily used for combining images in various ways, but it appears to support straight image-conversion as well.)

• Image Browser Arctic [Uticasoft / Jobin Rezai] (Win32) - version 4.2 and later; read/write; freeware. (This is an image viewer/converter with slideshow capability.)

• ImageConverter Plus [Evgeny Shamin / fCoder Group] (Win32) - version 3.3(?) and later; read/write; MNG and JNG support (read-only) as of version 6.0(?); commercial. (This is a GUI image-viewer and converter with some basic manipulation capabilities; it can also plug itself into the Windows Explorer/menu system. See also 2PNG above.)

• ImageJ [Wayne Rasband] (Java) - version 1.09k and later with a plugin; read/write; requires JIMI; freeware with source. (This is a Java image-processing program geared toward scientific and medical imagery.)

• ImageMagick convert [John Cristy] (Unix/X, VMS/X, Win32/X, Mac OS) - version 3.6.3 and later; read/write; full gamma support; full chromaticity support? broken support for sub-8-bit grayscale PNGs in versions prior to 5.1.0; minimal MNG support as of version 3.9.2 and full MNG-LC support (read/write) as of version 4.2.4 (broken in versions 5.2.7 through 5.3.6); JNG support as of version 5.5.2; requires libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a multi-format converter with the ability to convert to MNG all GIF animations that do not use [the relatively rare] disposal method "restore to previous.")

• imagENGine [ISS] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware. (This is a batch viewing/conversion application. It can do basic algorithmic manipulations, including blurring, sharpening, equalization, etc.)

• Image Optimizer [xat.com] (Win32) - all versions; read/write (read-only for truecolor PNGs); no gamma support; no alpha support; writes unnecessarily large tRNS chunks; shareware. (This is a utility to compress images better, primarily by allowing--or forcing--the user to reduce the number of colors in an image. That is, it uses lossy methods, unlike pngcrush below. Reportedly it can create only palette PNGs.)

• ImagePDF [Apex Internet Software] (Unix, Win32) - all versions; read-only; "retains most relevant image tags," possibly including text annotations; commercial. (This is a command-line program and shared library/DLL that converts images to Adobe's PDF format.)

• ImageWalker [Zac Walker] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; MNG and JNG support (read-only); uses libmng, libpng and zlib; shareware.

• img2pdf [Greg Roelofs] (Unix, Win32, OS/2, etc.) - all versions; read-only; uses Panda (see toolkits page), libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a very simple program to convert one or more PNG, TIFF, and/or JPEG images into a single PDF document.)

• img2png [Guido Vollbeding] (Atari) - version 26.Jun.1998 and later; write-only; no grayscale support; no alpha support; uses libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a "quick and dirty" program to convert Atari IMG format to PNG.)

• IrfanView32 [Skiljan Irfan] (Win32) - version 1.85 and later; read/write; MNG and JNG support as of version 3.70 (read-only?); mediocre compression in old versions (before 2001?); incorporates PNGOUT optimizer (plug-in) as of version 3.97; freeware (for non-commercial use).

• IvanView [Ivan A. Kotenev] (Win32) - version 1.1.22 and later; read/write; MNG (read-only) and JNG (read/write) support; commercial.

• iView MediaPro [iView Multimedia] (Mac OS, Mac OS X) - all versions? read/write; commercial.

• Konvertor [Logipole.com] (Win32) - version 2.10(?) and later; read/write; MNG support; commercial. (This is a batch converter; a single-function GIF-to-PNG subset is also available. For the French version of the web page, follow the Logipole.com link above.)

• LatinByrd [Stefan Schneider Software] (NeXT, NeXTStep/OpenStep 4.x for Mach) - version II and later; write-only; can quantize and dither RGBA TIFF images to RGBA-palette PNG images. (The full version of the app also converts RTF and ASCII to HTML. The image-converter part can use an image-filter application such as ToyViewer to view the intermediate results. Motorola, Intel, HP PA-RISC and SPARC versions are available.)

• mag2png [Zhidao] (many) - all versions; write-only; uses libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a utility to convert from the Japanese MAG format [MAKIchan Graphic format] to PNG.)

• Mediafile Assistant - see Ashampoo Photo Commander above

• MRIcro [Chris Rorden] (Win32, Linux/X) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is primarily a viewer for 2D and 3D medical formats--Analyze, DICOM, etc., which it can convert to 8-bit PNGs--but it can also view a number of generic 2D image formats, including PNG.)

• MST Batch Converter [MS Technology] (Win32, Java) - version 3.0 and later; read-only; annotation support; commercial.

• MST Viewer [MS Technology] (Win32, Java) - version 14.0(?) and later; read/write; full gamma support; annotation support; commercial.

• NetPBM / PBMPlus - see pnmtopng below

• Nview/Nconvert/XnView [Pierre-e Gougelet] (Atari, DOS, Unix/X, Windows 3.x, Win32, OS/2, BeOS) - version 2.70(?) and later (Nview/Nconvert) or all versions (XnView); read/write; MNG and JNG support (read-only) as of XnView version 1.61; freeware (for non-commercial use). (Nview and Nconvert are the older, command-line-only version; XnView is the newer windowed version. The primary release is in French, but dozens of translations are available. An English page is also available.)

• OptiPNG [Cosmin Truta] (Unix, Win32) - all versions; read/write; uses libpng and zlib; freeware (zlib/libpng) with source. (This is a command-line utility to compress PNG images better--i.e., it converts PNGs into smaller PNGs, completely losslessly, by optimizing the color type [e.g., RGB to gray, strip blank alpha, etc.] and the filtering and compression strategies. All tests are performed in memory, so it's fast. See also pngcrush, PNGGauntlet, PNGOUT, pngrewrite, and pngwolf below.)

• Panoweaver [Panorama Technologies] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; commercial. (This is special-purpose converter to weave 360-degree [or 4-pi] panoramas out of standard images created with a fisheye lens. PNG is supported for both input and output images, and a Java applet is used for viewing the results.)

• pam2png [Willem van Schaik] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; write-only; full alpha support; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (BSDish) with source. (This is a placeholder for pamtopng, an upcoming upgrade of pnmtopng [see below] from the NetPBM toolkit. It converts NetPBM PAM images into RGBA or gray+alpha PNG images.)

• pdf2html [Karel "Clock" Kulhavy] (Unix) - all versions; write-only; requires Ghostscript, libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (Unlike the similarly named pdftohtml, below, this utility converts each PDF page to a single PNG image--with oversampling--and wraps the result in minimal HTML.)

• pdftex / pdflatex [Han The Thanh] (Unix, Mac OS X, Win32) - all versions? write-only? freeware with source. (This program converts TeX and LaTeX documents into Adobe PDF format, including embedded PNG images. See also dvips above.)

• pdftohtml [Gueorgui Ovtcharov, Rainer Dorsch] (Unix) - version 0.2 and later; write-only? requires pnmtopng, libpng, zlib and libjpeg; freeware (GPL) with source. (This converts PDF documents into HTML format, including embedded bitmap images--which are saved in either PNG or JPEG format. It is based on Xpdf. See also pdf2html above.)

• pho [Akkana] (Unix/GTK+) - all versions? read/write; requires gdk-pixbuf, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is an image viewer "for viewing large numbers of images quickly, rotating or deleting some, and making notes about what to do with each image.")

• Piclab [Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Wegner, Bert Tyler, Charles Marslett, Vince Pilgrim, John Swenson, Gary Osborn] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write as of version 2.026 (previously read-only); uses libpng and zlib; freeware with C source.

• PixiePlus [Daniel "Mosfet" Duley] (Unix/KDE3) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (QPL) with source. (This is an image manager with viewing, conversion, thumbnail, and manipulation capabilities, including support for batch-mode operations.)

• PixJet [Techsoft] (Win32) - all versions? write-only; commercial. (This is a special-purpose converter that acts as a Windows printer but instead converts whatever is being "printed" to various image formats, including PNG, PDF, etc.)

• PK's Image Viewer (PkImgView) [Pranjal Kumar Hazarika] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; uses FreeImage, libpng, and zlib; freeware.

• Platypus Animator [C Point] (Win32) - version 5.1 and later; read/write? shareware. (This is primarily a creation tool for AVI animations, including conversion from collections of PNG stills, but it can also extract still images from AVIs [presumably including PNGs], and it can view individual frames or the entire animation.)

• PlotMaker [SailScience] (Mac OS, Mac OS X) - version 3 and later; read/write? commercial. (This is a specialized tool for reading CAD formats containing sail designs, arranging the panels for optimal use of sail fabric, and plotting the results. However, it can also export to various CAD formats and apparently can output PNG images as a special type of plot. It may be able to read PNG images associated with CAD models, as well, and it may be related to the identically named utility that ships with ArchiCAD, listed on the 3D apps page.)

• PMJPEG [PixVision Software] (OS/2) - version 1.90 and later; read/write; no alpha support? shareware.

• PMView [Peter Nielsen] (OS/2, Win32) - version 0.92 and later; read/write; shareware.

• png2html [Geoff Holden] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read-only; requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a rather twisted utility; it converts nice, compact PNG images, color or otherwise, into humongous HTML pages via lots and lots of <FONT> tags. It has much the same, sick appeal as Textmode Quake. :-) )

• png2ico [Matthias Benkmann] (Win32, Unix, etc.) - all versions; read-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with C++ source. (This is a command-line utility to convert one or more PNG images of appropriate resolution(s) into Windows .ICO format. See also pngtoico below.)

• png2linuxlogo [Greg Roelofs] (Linux, Unix, DOS, OS/2, Win32, etc.) - all versions; read-only; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a command-line utility to convert a properly dimensioned palette PNG into a text file suitable for replacing include/asm/linux_logo.h in standard Linux kernel distributions. The image will become the full-color boot logo once the kernel is recompiled and installed.)

• !Png2Spr [Tom Tanner] (RISC OS) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is a RISC OS PNG-to-sprite converter--and, as of version 1.20, a sprite-to-PNG converter, too. Newer versions have viewing capabilities. See also PNGConv and Spr2Png below.)

• png2tiff - see ptot below

• PNG-Box [Andreas Kleinert] (Amiga 68k/PPC) - any version; write-only; uses the SuperView Library for reading and writing image formats (see the miscellaneous apps page); shareware. (This is a graphical any-to-PNG converter.)

• PNGConv / Thingi [Clares Micro Supplies] (RISC OS) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support; uses libpng and zlib; freeware. (This is a RISC OS PNG-to-sprite converter; see also !Png2Spr above.)

• pngcp - see pngtools below

• pngcrush [Glenn Randers-Pehrson] (Unix, DOS, Win32, RISC OS, BeOS/x86, etc.) - all versions; read/write; freeware (BSD) with source, as of version 1.2.0. (This is a command-line utility to compress PNG images better--i.e., it converts PNGs into smaller PNGs, completely losslessly, by optimizing the filtering and compression strategies. It can also remove specified chunks and fix PNG images affected by the Photoshop 5.0 gamma bug or the Photoshop 5.5 iCCP bug. It's especially handy in conjunction with apps like PS that are a bit weak on compression. See also OptiPNG, PNGGauntlet, PNGOUT, pngrewrite, and pngwolf.)

• pngcsum [Willem van Schaik] (many) - all versions; read/write; freeware with C source. (This is a tiny command-line utility to recompute the chunk CRCs in PNG images and to write out the "corrected" version. Of course, this assumes the changes that invalidated the CRCs were intentional--for example, through binary-editing to create test images--rather than something that happened accidentally and truly corrupted the files. Generally speaking, merely fixing the CRCs will not save the image(s) in the latter case.)

• PNGGauntlet [Number A Productions] (Win32.NET) - all versions; read/write; uses PNGOUT; freeware. (This is a GUI tool to to recompress PNG images better using PNGOUT. [Older versions also used pngrewrite.] See also OptiPNG, pngcrush, pngrewrite, pngwolf, and this enthusiastic forum posting.)

• pngmeta [Dave Beckett] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is the official PNG meta-information extractor; it "converts" from PNG to text--that is, it extracts information from the tEXt and zTXt chunks, such as for indexing by WWW search engines.)

• PNG/MNG Construction Set Professional [Alchemy Mindworks] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; MNG support (read/write); full(?) alpha support; commercial. (This tool, the PNG/MNG equivalent of GIF Construction Set above, can be used to add alpha transparency to PNG images as well as to create, modify, and optimize MNG animations.)

• pngnq [Stuart Coyle, Anthony Dekker, Greg Roelofs] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read/write; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a variation on pngquant below, a command-line utility to quantize and dither PNG images, especially 32-bit RGBA ones, to 8-bit palette images. pngnq uses the NeuQuant algorithm, which is said to have superior characteristics to pngquant's [and PBMPLUS's] median-cut algorithm.

• PNGOUT [Ken Silverman] (Win32, Linux) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is a command-line utility to compress PNG images better--i.e., it converts PNGs into smaller PNGs, completely losslessly, by optimizing the compression. It is reported to be more efficient than pngcrush and is used by PNGGauntlet. See also OptiPNG, pngrewrite, and pngwolf.)

• pngquant [Greg Roelofs, Jef Poskanzer] (Unix, DOS, Win32, etc.) - all versions; read/write; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a command-line utility to quantize and dither PNG images, especially 32-bit RGBA ones, to 8-bit [or smaller] palette images. Since PNG's palette is essentially RGBA-based [via the combination of PLTE and tRNS chunks], it is often possible to get by with only 8 bits for an image with partial transparency, rather than the usual 32 bits--and at a significant savings in file size. Very few tools support this mode, however, so pngquant was created to fill the void. Note that such down-conversions are lossy, just like down-conversion of a 24-bit RGB image to an 8-bit GIF or PNG is. See also Jens Wedin's pngquant page for Per Fahlén's Win32 GUI wrapper, Manfred [binary only, updated 16 March 2006], and pngnq above.)

• pngrewrite [Jason Summers] (Unix, DOS, Win32, etc.) - all versions; read/write; freeware with source. (This is a command-line utility to compress PNG images better by reducing bit depths and unnecessarily large palettes. It makes a nice complement to OptiPNG, pngcrush, PNGOUT, and pngwolf.)

• pngslice [Jim J. Green] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read/write; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a command-line utility to slice an image into horizontal slices of a specified height and then to trim back either the left or right sides as far as possible without eating into the "main" part of the image. The result can then be embedded in a web page, and most CSS-supporting browsers will seem to "flow" text around the resulting irregular border.)

• pngsplit [Greg Roelofs] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a simple utility to split a PNG, MNG or JNG image into its constituent chunks [and file signature], each one numbered for easy reassembly. For example, foo.png might become foo.png.0000.sig, foo.png.0001.IHDR, foo.png.0002.IDAT, and foo.png.0003.IEND; concatenating all the pieces reproduces the original file. pngsplit currently is distributed only as part of the pngcheck package [miscellaneous apps page], version 2.1.0 or later.)

• png-tEXt.pl [Greg Newton] (Perl) - all versions; read/write; freeware with source. (This is a command-line utility to add tEXt and zTXt chunks to PNG images. Officially supported keywords include Author, Comment, Copyright, Creation Time, Description, Disclaimer, Software, Source, Title, and Warning, but the utility also supports unregistered keywords.)

• pngtoico [H. Peter Anvin] (Unix, DOS, Win32, etc.) - all versions; read-only; binary transparency support; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a command-line utility to convert PNG images to Windows icon format [.ico]. See also png2ico above.)

• pngtools [Michael Still] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read/write; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a set of command-line tools similar to the ones that accompany libtiff. As of version 0.2, the tools include pngchunks [like tiffdump], pngchunkdesc [`decode' PNG chunk names], pnginfo [like tiffinfo], and pngcp [like tiffcp]. See also pngcheck on the miscellaneous apps page.)

• pngwolf [Björn Höhrmann] (many) - all versions; read/write; uses zlib; freeware (GNU GPL) with C++ source. (This is a command-line utility to compress PNG images better--i.e., it converts PNGs into smaller PNGs, completely losslessly, using a genetic algorithm to optimize the filtering and compression methods. See also OptiPNG, pngcrush, PNGGauntlet, PNGOUT, and pngrewrite above.)

• pnmtopng [Alexander Lehmann, Willem van Schaik, Greg Roelofs] (Unix, Win32, OS/2?) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support; full gamma support; full text support; requires old NetPBM libraries, libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is the official PBMPLUS / NetPBM PNG-converter package [pnmtopng, pngtopnm]. The modern incarnation of NetPBM, maintained by Bryan Henderson, includes updated versions of both utilities. For the sake of search commands, we'll mention pngtoppm and ppmtopng here, too. See also wpng below. Note that pnmtopng is effectively an optimizer, as well; it selects the most efficient color type, orders the palette [if any] to minimize the number of transparent entries, etc.)

• PolyView [Polybytes] (Win32) - version 2.40(?) and later; read/write

• PPT [Janne Jalkanen] (Amiga) - all versions? read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; freeware. (This is an image-processing and effects tool; it isn't quite a full image editor, but it comes close. It can read any flavor of PNG, but it writes only grayscale and truecolor, optionally with an alpha channel.)

• pstoedit [Wolfgang Glunz] (Unix, OS/2, Win32) - version 3.21 and later; write-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This utility converts PostScript or PDF to other vector formats or to PNG. In addition to libpng, it requires Ghostscript.)

• pstopng [Nelson Beebe] (many) - all versions; write-only; requires ghostscript and pnmtopng (both of which require libpng and zlib); freeware with source. (This app converts PostScript and encapsulated PostScript files or streams to PNG format.)

• pstopngtops [Nelson Beebe] (many) - all versions; internal only; requires ghostscript and pnmtopng (both of which require libpng and zlib); freeware with source. (This app converts PostScript and encapsulated PostScript files or streams to PNG format and then to [bitmapped] Encapsulated PostScript again.)

• ptot [Lee Daniel Crocker] (Unix, DOS, OS/2, Win32) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support? text support (Author, Copyright, Software, Source, and Title keywords); standalone (does not require any other libraries); freeware with source. (This is the official PNG-to-TIFF converter. See also tiff2png below.)

• QuickTime PictureViewer [Apple] (Mac PPC/68k, Win32) - version 3.0 and later; read/write as of version 4.0; full gamma support; full alpha support; uses zlib; freeware. (This viewer supersedes Sam Bushell's Tiny Viewer, a mini-app he included with his QuickTime 2.5 PNG-Importer--see the miscellaneous apps page. Sam was responsible for the PNG support in QuickTime 3.0, too. QuickTime's PNG support actually enables any QuickTime-aware application to view PNG images, including even SimpleText. On the export side, it can convert a PICT with an alpha channel to an RGBA PNG--unless the alpha channel is is completely transparent over the entire image, in which case it will be discarded.)

• ReaConverter Pro [ReaSoft] (Win32) - version 2.6(?) and later; read/write; commercial. (This is a batch image converter.)

• RealSlideshow [RealNetworks] (Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; freeware (Basic) or commercial (Plus). (As the name suggests, this is a slideshow program that can incorporate voice annotations and music; it can also convert to PNG.)

• ReaViewer [ReaSoft] (Win32) - version 1.4(?) and later; read/write; commercial. (This is a viewer with batch-conversion capabilities.)

• Saffron Document Server [Dynalivery] (Java) - version of 5 May 2003 and later; write-only; commercial. (This is "virtual printer software" that can convert PostScript, XML formatting objects [XSL-FO], Java2D, etc., into HTML, PNG, SVG, PDF, and other formats.)

• scr2png [Nik Clayton] (FreeBSD) - all versions; write-only; requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (BSD) with source. (This converts "syscons screenshots generated by scrshot(1)" into PNG images and was originally called shot2png. The actual source code can be found here, and binaries are here.)

• SEA [Bart Wakkee, Ralph Gortzen, Harold de Laat] (DOS) - version 1.0 and later; read/write; shareware; claimed to be much faster than even QPV. (Now distributed by Photodex.)

• SectorPrime Image Converter [SectorPrime] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; uses Imager.pm, libpng, and zlib; freeware.

• shot2png - see scr2png above

• ShowImg [Richard Groult] (Unix/KDE2) - all versions; read/write? MNG support (read-only); requires Qt, libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source.

• SlowView [Nikolaus Brennig] (Win32) - version 0.6b1 (1.60 Dev) and later; read/write; alpha support; MNG support in 0.9.0 and later; writes bloated palettes when converting from PNG or BMP to PNG (GIF to PNG seems OK); writes invalid single-pixel PNGs; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; freeware. (This product has been discontinued. See Ashampoo Photo Commander above.)

• Smart Converter [Acoll Software] (Win32) - version 1.4 and later; read/write; MNG (read-only) and JNG (read/write) support; shareware.

• SmartSaver [Ulead Systems] (Win32) - version 3.0 and later; read/write; full alpha support, including tRNS (translucency?) in palette and truecolor images; cannot write bi-level (1-bit) PNGs. (This is a utility to optimize the compression [not losslessly] and tweak the palettes and transparency of images; it can work as a plug-in to Photoshop et al., too. Version 3.0 is included in PhotoImpact 4.0 as well as being sold stand-alone.)

• SNG [Eric S. Raymond] (Unix, Win32, etc.) - all versions; read/write; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (BSD) with source. (In light of the fact that no one else has done such a thing, this is the official PNG-to-text and text-to-PNG compiler/decompiler. It allows you to decompile a PNG to Scriptable Network Graphics format, edit (or delete or add) any chunks with a plain text editor, and recompile the result to PNG. For example, one could easily work around Netscape's bKGD bug by either deleting the bKGD chunk in a palette image or simply changing the black palette entry to (1,1,1). See also imc above.)

• SnowBatch [Snowbound Software] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; alpha support? commercial (OEM only). (This is a batch conversion program.)

• SnowView [Snowbound Software] (Win32, Java) - all versions? read/write? commercial (OEM only). (The Java version is also known as Snapplet.)

• Spr2Png [Darren Salt] (RISC OS) - all versions; read/write as of version 0.14 (formerly write-only); full transparency support, including extraction of alpha channels and auto-conversion of 32-bit RGBA to 8-bit RGBA-palette if there are 256 or fewer unique pixel values (as of version 0.08); gamma support; sBIT support as of version 0.17; freeware. (This is a RISC OS PNG-to-sprite, sprite-to-PNG, and [with RISC OS 3.50 or later] Draw-to-PNG converter; see also !Png2Spr and PNGConv above.)

• SViewII / SuperView [Andreas Kleinert] (Amiga) - version 5.0(?) and later; read/write; shareware. (This includes the SuperView Library for image import/export.)

• svg2png - see Nautilus on the miscellaneous apps page

• SwiftConvert [SwiftView] (Win32, Linux/x86, Solaris, HP/UX) - version 8.0(?) and later; write-only; commercial. (This is a PCL/HPGL/TIFF batch converter.)

• SwiftView Pro [SwiftView] (Win32, Linux/x86, Solaris/x86) - version 8.0(?) and later; write-only; commercial. (This is a PCL/HPGL/TIFF viewer with PNG export capability.)

• Thingi - see PNGConv above

• ThumbNailer [Smaller Animals Software] (Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; full alpha support? claims full gamma support; background and text support; shareware.

• ThumbsPlus [Cerious Software] (Win32) - version 3.0 beta 3 and later; read/write as of version 3.0g; full alpha support as of version 7(?), but no interlacing or transparency support for writing in version 3 (no info on intervening versions); text support; reportedly excellent compression, aside from saving unused palette entries (e.g., 256 for a 64-color image--fixed in version 4.10); broken conversion of GIF palettes in version 4.10 (example here); commercial (formerly shareware). (This program also has the ability to make web pages of thumbnails. Windows 3.x was supported in older versions, and a "final Macintosh beta" was available between 1998 and 2000, but as of 2005 there is no longer any trace of it.)

• tiff2png [Willem van Schaik, Greg Roelofs] (Unix, DOS, OS/2, Win32) - all versions; write-only; full alpha support; gamma support; requires libtiff, libpng, zlib, and possibly libjpeg (depending on the libtiff version); freeware with source. (This is the official TIFF-to-PNG converter. See also ptot above.)

• tnailer [William Rhodes] (Perl) - all versions; read/write; requires PerlMagick, ImageMagick, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a command-line utility to create web pages of thumbnails from image collections, such as from a digital camera. It can also convert sizes and compression levels of larger images.)

• Translator [John Kortink] (RISC OS) - version 8.0(?) and later; read/write; shareware. (See also John's conversion-only Creator app above.)

• Turbo Browser [FileStream] (Win32) - version 7.2 and later; read/write; shareware. (This is a file manager, similar to Windows Explorer, but with file-transfer, HTML-editing, image-viewing, and image-conversion capabilities in addition to standard file-management functions.)

• TweakPNG [Jason Summers] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a "low-level utility for examining and modifying PNG image files.")

• TweakPNG-CL [Jason Summers / Trent Tompkins] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; uses libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a fork of TweakPNG [above] that adds an installer and an auto-strip option that can be accessed via the right-click context menu on the Windows desktop.)

• Ulead Viewer [Ulead Systems] (Windows 3.x) - version 1.0 and later with UF2PNG.FIO plug-in; read/write; 1.1MB

• Ultraconv [Felix Schwarz] (Amiga PPC/68k) - version 1.6 and later (natively), or any earlier version via a PNG DataType (see the miscellaneous apps page for several); read/write; commercial as of version 3.0 (now Ultraconv NG).

• VidFun [Lawrence Gozum] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 1.5 and later; read/write; shareware

• Visere [Digital Multi-Media Design] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; freeware.

• wbmptopng [Simone Piunno] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; write-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (PBMPLUS) with source. (This is a Unix-style filter to convert WAP bitmaps to grayscale PNG images.)

• Web Designer's Toolkit [R-Comp] (RISC OS) - version 2(?) and later; write-only? no alpha support; commercial. (This is a multi-tool suite with a conversion component called ImageConv that converts RISC OS sprites to PNG format; the WebTable component "includes the same support for tables of images.")

• WebGraphics Optimizer [Plenio Software Solutions] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write; no gamma support; no control over compression level or filtering (output was 10% bigger than input on one test image); broken 2-bit support

• Web Image Guru [VIMAS Technologies] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; full alpha support (including quantization to 8-bit "RGBA palette"); commercial. (This optimizer supports both lossless and lossy modes [e.g., quantization and color reduction]; the lossless mode produces files comparable in size to pngcrush's output. It also includes manual controls for those who wish to tinker with PNG filters directly, and it "can be run as Adobe PhotoShop plug-in module or as standalone application." The free Image Navigator viewer is included; see the image viewers page for details. Web Imaging is the fuller-featured professional version, with a plug-in architecture and more image-processing capabilities, and Image Master may fit somewhere in between. All include batch-processing support.)

• wmftopng [Caolán McNamara] (Unix, Win32, etc.) - version 0.1.17 and later; write-only; requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (LGPL) with source. (This is just one part of the libwmf package, which is a toolkit for converting Windows MetaFiles [which are basically collections of Windows GDI calls] into various portable vector and raster image formats.)

• wpng [Greg Roelofs] (Unix, Win32, OS/2, DOS) - all versions; write-only; full alpha support; full gamma support; text support (Author, Title, Description, Copyright, E-mail, and URL keywords); requires libpng and zlib (but not NetPBM); freeware (BSD) with source. (This is the demo NetPBM-to-PNG converter described in Chapter 15 of PNG: The Definitive Guide. It is not nearly as complete as pnmtopng above, but it does support a few things pnmtopng does not: streaming conversion [low-memory-footprint] to non-interlaced PNG; automatic timestamping; interactive entry of text annotations; and support for a completely unofficial `P8' binary RGBA format. It is also explicitly designed to demonstrate good programming practices when using libpng.)

• Xenomorph [Ewald Krämer] (Unix/Qt3) - all versions; read/write; MNG support (read-only) via Qt; freeware (GPL) with C++ source. (This is a "floating-point image-processing [application] with an extensible set of filter kernels. It includes linear and polynomial (volterra) filters and morphologic filters." PNG is its only output format.)

• Xnview - see Nview/Nconvert above

• xPNG / fixPNG [Silicon Alley / Marijke van Gans] (DOS) - all versions; read/write; stand-alone (requires neither libraries nor graphics capability); freeware with x86 assembler source. (This pair of bundled utilities can list the contents of PNG chunks [fixPNG]; make the first color of a palette PNG fully transparent [xPNG], as is often the case in GIF images; and "fix" the CRC of any PNG chunk whose calculated value differs from the stored value [fixPNG]. The latter capability is convenient for those who binary-edit the chunks within PNG files...which Greg has been known to do. Note that some PNG CRC mismatches are truly due to corrupted data, however.)

• XV [John Bradley] (Unix/X, VMS/X) - version 3.10a and later with Greg Roelofs' jumbo patches (specifically, the enhancements one, whose PNG support is an extension of Alexander Lehmann and Andreas Dilger's old PNG patch version 1.2d); read/write; shareware/commercial with C source. (XV 4.00 with full PNG support was supposed to have arrived around Christmas 1995, but development apparently came to a complete halt before that ever happened. A Win32 port apparently was underway at one point, too.)

• zpng - see AdvanceCOMP above

Here are some related PNG pages at this site:

• PNG-supporting Applications
  • Browsers
  • Image Viewers
  • Image Editors
  • 3D Applications
  • Games / Entertainment
  • Office / Business Applications
  • Scientific / Graphing Applications
  • Miscellaneous Applications
• PNG support in VRML browsers
• PNG-supporting Hardware

• PNG Home Page
• Complete PNG Site Map

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