Image Editors with PNG Support

For the purposes of this page, an "image editor" is defined as a paint or drawing program that supports pixel-level editing (or the equivalent). As a general rule of thumb, if it's got a pencil or paint-brush tool, it's in; if it supplies only "algorithms" (such as sharpening, blurring, edge-detection, cropping, etc.), it's not. See the Image Converters page for applications in the latter class.

As on the other PNG-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).

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

• Ability Photopaint [Ability Plus Software] (Win32, Linux/X) - all versions? read/write; commercial. (See also Corel's similarly named Photo-Paint below.)

• Adesign [Pierresoft] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial.

• Ameri-Imager [ThinkTank Software] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write? MNG support; commercial. (This is an image and video editor that includes both PNG and MNG support.)

• Applixware Graphics - see Applixware Office on the office / business apps page

• ArtEffect [Haage & Partner Computer] (Amiga) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support.

• ArtIcons [Aha-soft] (Win32) - version 2.3 and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support as of version 3.22; shareware. (This is an icon editor for 32-bit Windows; PNG is fully supported in both the regular and the Pro versions, as well as the apparently related IconXP variant. Alpha support is relevant only to icons intended for Windows XP [and later], however.)

• Artstream [Mediascape] (Irix/X, Linux/X) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; commercial. (This is primarily an OpenGL-based vector image editor, but it can include raster formats such as PNG in compositions, and it can save to various raster formats, including PNG. It can also import VRML models [which can have PNG textures]. The Linux port originally was expected to be in production release by early May 2000, but as of February 2002 it was still available only in beta [2.0] and alpha [2.1] forms.)

• Aura [NewTek / TVPaint Développement] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; commercial. (This is mainly an image editor, although it has extensions into the audio and video domains, too. As of 31 March 2003, this product is no longer available separately from NewTek. Apparently it is still available as part of NewTek's Video Toaster product, however, and standalone versions can be upgraded to TVPaint's Mirage, below.)

• Becasso [Sum Software] (BeOS PPC/x86) - version 1.1 and later; read/write (via the translation kit and Becasso's bundled PNG translator); full (32-bit) alpha support; no gamma support; commercial. (The PNG translator is also included in the free demo version.)

• BePaint [Kevin Hendrickson] (BeOS) - all versions; read/write (via Jon Watte's BeOS datatype library and Simon Clarke's PNG handler). (This app has not been updated since January 1997 and presumably no longer works with current BeOS releases.)

• Canvas [Deneba Software] (Win32, Mac PPC, Linux/X) - version 6.0 and later; read/write (read-only for Canvas 7 Linux beta); commercial.

• Chaos Fx [World of Newave] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; commercial.

• Color It! [MicroFrontier] (Mac 68k/PPC) - version 4.0 and later; read/write; commercial.

• ColorWorks:WEB [SPG] (Win32) - version 3.0(?) and later; read/write; commercial.

• CompactDraw [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware. (This is a paint/draw program that supports both vector and bitmapped objects but apparently only exports bitmaps, including PNG. See Real-DRAW, below, for the "professional" version, or Photo-Brush for a photo-retouching editor.)

• Composition [Rob Davison / Clares Micro Supplies] (RISC OS) - version 1.15 and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support (including editing and combining alpha channels); uses libpng, zlib and Spr2Png (converters page); commercial. (This is an image-composition app, specifically designed to compose raster and vector images [and 3D models, too]. It can also generate drop-shadows and other alpha-channel effects. Free updates to the latest commercial version are available here.)

• ConceptDraw [Computer Systems Odessa] (Mac OS X, Win32) - version 1.7 and later; read/write; commercial. (This is a drawing and diagramming application oriented toward business and technical users.)

• 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.)

• CorelDRAW [Corel] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 7.0 and later (full version only); read/write; read-only alpha support in DRAW component (only for importing bitmaps, not exporting vector images); read/write alpha support (32-bit only) in Photo-Paint component; commercial. (The "Select" version 7 formerly bundled with scanners reportedly does not include PNG support.)

• Corel Graphics Editor - see WordPerfect Office on the office / business apps page

• CorelXARA [Xara] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 1.5; read/write; commercial. (Windows 3.x support requires win32s 1.3.) This product has been discontinued. See Xara X below.

• Digital Image Pro [Microsoft] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; commercial. (See also Picture It! below.)

• D-Pixed [DOIchan] (Win32) - all versions? with MIYASAKA Masaru's PNG loader/saver add-in; read/write; palette support only? uses libpng and zlib; freeware with source (add-in only). (This is a Japanese image editor.)

• DrawPlus [Serif] (Win32) - version 4.0 and later; write-only? commercial.

• Embellish [Dadaware] (OS/2, Win32) - all versions? read/write? terminal freeware (was commercial). (This editor shares some heritage with the excellent JoeView shareware image viewer for OS/2. Development of this product was discontinued in December 1999, and Dadaware ceased operations. The final commercial version was still available for a few more years, but as of late 2005, the domain is gone.)

• Enhance [MicroFrontier] (Mac 68k/PPC) - version 4.0 and later; read/write; no gamma support; commercial. (Enhance is a "Photoshop-like image editor" for Macintosh. The PNG support is still fairly basic.)

• FilmFX - see Satori below

• Fireworks [Macromedia / Adobe] (Win32, Mac) - all versions; read/write (Fireworks' native file format, in fact); full alpha support, including good quantization to RGBA-palette mode in version 2.0; no gamma support in version 1.0; partial interlacing support; version 1.0 reportedly writes 1-bit images as 8-bit and includes spurious, incorrect sBIT chunk indicating 8-bit precision; commercial. (Since version 2.0, the quantization from 32-bit RGBA to 8-bit RGBA-palette appears to be perfect. Even without that, this was the best PNG-supporting image editor available as of mid-1999, and it still seems to be one of the best, along with GIMP and a handful of others. Be sure to use "Export" rather than "Save" to create final PNGs for the Web! The "Save" versions include Fireworks object and state information, and not only are they huge, they also crash Windows 98 Explorer and MSIE 4.0.)

• Flash [Macromedia / Adobe] (Win32, Mac) - version 4.0 and later; read/write; commercial. (This is an editor for the multimedia format of the same name, but Flash 4.0 and later include the capability to embed bitmapped images in PNG format into a Flash animation.)

• FreeHand [Macromedia / Adobe] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 7.0 and later; read/write; full alpha support; commercial. (According to Chris Lilley: "FreeHand has a rather nice interface when writing a PNG of a vector graphic - the amount of anti-aliasing (supersampling of pixels) and even the sampling method can be specified." Version 7.0 included xRes [below] and Extreme3D [3D apps page].)

• FrontPage - see Image Composer below

• fxPAINT [IOSPIRIT] (Amiga) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support as of version 2.0; commercial.

• Gill [Raph Levien, Larry Ewing, and others] (Unix/GTK+) - version of 1999-07-20 and later; read/write? full alpha support; requires gdk-pixbuf, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a GNOME illustration app, a vector image editor that uses SVG as its native vector format. Since SVG in turn requires PNG for minimal conformance, Gill supports PNG, too. As of July 2000, the web pages imply that the PNG support is still read-only. Development apparently ended sometime in 2000.)

• GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) [Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis, and many others] (Unix/GTK+, Win32, OS/2, Mac OS X) - versions 0.54, 0.60, and 0.99.7 and later; read/write; MNG support as of version 1.3.14 (write-only); full alpha support (but also happily writes images with completely opaque alpha channels, needlessly reducing compression efficiency); gamma support, but always writes 1.0 (incorrect for most systems) as of version 1.0.2 (this was fixed in version 1.1.7 of the PNG plug-in, which has its own release schedule); no support for palette-based transparency in stock 1.0.2 (but this is also fixed in version 1.1.7 of the PNG plug-in); good text support in PNG plug-in 1.1.7 (Title, Author, Description, Copyright, Creation Time, Disclaimer, Warning, Source, and Comment keywords); writes bKGD chunks even for opaque images (not a bug in itself, but triggers one in Netscape 4.x); uses libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (The GIMP is a "free Photoshop-like image editor for X11," with built-in PNG support.)

• GNOME-Iconedit [Iain Holmes and Havoc Pennington] (Unix/GTK+) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is an icon editor with support for "icons" of any size. It is specifically designed to create and modify RGBA images.)

• Grafree - see Imagem below

• GrafX [Sunset Design / Eclipse] (Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; palette-only support? freeware. (This appears to be a special-purpose image editor for "demos," standalone multimedia presentations. Judging by the screenshots, version 2 may be a port of an older DOS or Amiga version.)

• GraphicConverter [Lemke Software] (Mac 68k/PPC, Mac OS X) - version 2.1.4 and later; read/write; binary palette-transparency support; alpha-channel transparency support; gamma support as of version 4.0; text support as of version 4.0; no 16-bps support; shareware. (Comes in English, German, French, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, and Spanish versions. Older versions did not include complete image-editing capabilities and were listed on the viewers and converters pages.)

• HoTMetaL PRO [SoftQuad] (Win32) - version 3.0 (Windows 3.x) and later; read/write; commercial. This is more of a general-purpose web-page authoring tool, but as of version 3.0 it integrates image-editing features (in version 5.0, this is through the inclusion of Ulead's PhotoImpact 3.02 SE, below). See also MetalWorks below.

• IconPainter [Colin Mummery / EquitySoft] (Java) - version 1.3 and later; read/write; requires Java 2 and the Java Advanced Imaging API for PNG support; shareware. (Despite its name, this product does not restrict the size or number of colors in images to "typical icon" limits.)

• IconWorkshop [Axialis] (Win32) - version 6.0 and later; read/write; commercial. (This, as its name suggests, is an icon editor; it supports Windows [including Vista PNG-compressed icons], Mac OS X, and KDE and GNOME icon formats.)

• IconXP - see ArtIcons above

• idrW [Rean Botha] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware/commercial. (This is a vector graphics editor; PNG is supported both for import [mainly so that raster images can be traced and converted to vector format?] and for export of finished images [though vector formats such as WMF are preferred].)

• iGrafx Designer [Micrografx] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; full 16-bit support? commercial. (This appears to be the high-end and/or next-generation version of Picture Publisher and Webtricity, below.)

• Illustrator [Adobe] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 7.0 and later; read/write; hangs when reading a PNG image with a valid iCCP chunk (version 9.0); commercial. (Version 7.0 also supported Mac 68k.)

• Image Broadway [FileStream] (Win32) - version 3.0 and later; read/write; full alpha support; commercial.

• Image Composer [Microsoft] (Win32) - version 1.5 and later; read/write; full alpha support; reads images with invalid filter values as if filter type were `none'; commercial. (This is part of FrontPage 98. It was formerly known as Altamira Composer and may now be superseded by PhotoDraw 2000 or Photo Editor, below.)

• ImageForge PRO [Cursor Arts] (Win32) - version 2.9(?) and later; read/write; transparency support as of version 2.94; shareware. (There's also a freeware version of this tool, called ImageForge Basic or just ImageForge.)

• ImageFX [Nova Design] (Amiga) - version 2.1a and later (natively), or any version via a PNG DataType (see the miscellaneous apps page for a couple); read/write; commercial.

• Imagem / ILH Image [Ivan Lee Herring] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; uses PNG Delphi / TPNGImage (see the toolkits page); freeware with Pascal source. (This was formerly known as Grafree and is also part of the Image Locatable Holographics package. See also GRIP ICE on the converters or viewers pages.)

• imageN [Pixoid / Pawel Szczerbina] (Win32) - version 1.4b(?) and later; read/write; freeware. (This is a full-featured image editor with a minimalist user interface and documentation.)

• ImageReady [Adobe] (Win32, Mac PPC) - all versions; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; dithered binary transparency in palette PNGs; commercial.

• ImageStudio (Amiga) - version 2.1.1 and later with ImageStudioPNG add-on [88k]; read/write; shareware; 640k + 579k.

• ImageStyler [Adobe] (Win32, Mac PPC) - all versions; read/write; commercial.

• Inkscape [Inkscape developers] (Unix/GTK+, Win32/GTK+) - all versions? read/write; full alpha support? requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is an "SVG editor with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, Visio, etc. Supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, node editing, SVG-to-PNG export, grouping, and more." It is a fork of the Sodipodi project, which in turn was partly based on Gill.)

• ivtools [Stanford University and many others] (Unix/X, Win32) - version 0.9.5 and later; read-only? requires pngtopnm, libpng and zlib. (This is a "suite of free X Windows drawing editors for PostScript, TeX, and web graphics production, as well as an embeddable and extendable vector graphic shell.")

• J-Painter [Igor Zhukovsky] (Java, WWW) - all versions; read/write; no alpha support; requires Java (JDK) 1.1 or later; shareware. (This is a full paint-type applet that can be downloaded and embedded into web pages; the home page also includes an embedded copy that can be used to create a test PNG and e-mail the result to someone. [Very nice!])

• Kai's Photo Soap [MetaCreations] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This is a photo-retouching tool. The Mac/PPC version [1.0] has no native PNG support but will attempt to use a Photoshop PNG plug-in if it finds one; unfortunately, when it does so, it creates invalid PNG files [verified with Photoshop PNG plug-in 1.0d5]).

• Kai's Power Tools - see Kai's Photo Soap above and xRes below

• Karbon14 [Rob Buis, Lenny Kudling, Benoit Vautrin, Tomislav Lukman] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? read/write with Qt Image IO Extension Library installed (read support only for application's icons?); freeware (GPL) with source. (This application replaces Kontour, below.)

• KIllustrator - see Kontour below

• KImageShop - see Krita below

• Kontour [Kai-Uwe Sattler] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? read/write with Qt Image IO Extension Library installed; freeware (GPL) with source. (Kontour was originally known as KIllustrator. As of 2005, it "has been discontinued"; its replacement is a new application, Karbon14, above.)

• Krayon - see Krita below

• Krita [Krita Team] (Unix/KDE) - all versions; read/write; full (non-palette) alpha support; full 16-bps support as of version 1.5 (coming); requires ImageMagick, lcms, libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is nominally part of KOffice and was originally known as KImageShop, then Krayon, and now Krita. A first preview release [pre-alpha] was announced in September 2004, followed by the first full release [1.4] in June 2005.)

• LiveMotion [Adobe] (Win32, Mac PPC) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This is a Web-oriented multimedia editing app with support for images, Flash animations and sound.)

• MediaStudio Pro [Ulead Systems] (Win32) - version 2.0 (Windows 3.x) and later; read/write; commercial.

• Mirage [TVPaint Développement] (Win32, Mac OS X) - all versions; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; commercial. (This is the successor to Aura, above. Version 2.0 will support 16-bit-per-sample images and gamma correction.)

• MS Paint [Microsoft] (Win32) - versions in Windows XP(?) and later; read/write; commercial. (This is one of the "accessories" that has been bundled with Windows since its earliest days. PNG support is a relatively new feature, however.)

• mvComicsMaker [Michal Vagac] (Linux/Qt) - all versions? write-only? freeware with source. (This is a "free graphics editor for creating bitmap and vector animations under Linux." It can at least render to PNGs; it may also be able to read them.)

• NeoPaint [NeoSoft] (Win32) - version 4(?) and later; read/write; single-color transparency in 8-bit palette images (possibly broken in 1-bit and 4-bit); full 32-bit alpha transparency? no 16-bit support; shareware. (There is also an older DOS version, but it does not support PNG.)

• NetStudio [NetStudio] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial.

• OmniGraffle [Omni Development] (Mac OS X Server) - all versions; write-only; full 32-bit alpha support; commercial/limited freeware. (This is an object-oriented drawing and charting program. "When you buy an app from us it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling in your tummy, like if you ate some sweaters." See also OmniWeb on the browsers page.)

• Painter [Jan Verhoeven] (Windows 9x/ME) - version 22 and later; read/write; no transparency support? freeware.

• Paint.Net [Paint.Net developers] (Win32.NET) - all versions? read/write; full 32-bit alpha support as of version 2.1; freeware (MIT X11) with C# source.

• Paint Shop Pro [Jasc] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 3.01 and later; read/write; broken gamma and chromaticity support in 7.0 (writes zero values) and no gamma support in older versions; only simple (binary) transparency in version 3.x; 32-bit alpha support in version 4.0 and later (save with grayscale mask); "cheap" transparency (single-color RGB and grayscale) support in version 7.0 and later; no support for palette alpha (nor any plans to add support); writes unnecessarily large palettes and tRNS chunks (reportedly fixed in version 6.0); text support (Title, Author, Copyright, and Description keywords); broken tIME support in version 6.0 (writes binary tIME data to "Creation Time" text chunk); uses MNG as its native "Animation Shop" format (up to date with current draft spec as of PSP7/AS3); commercial.

• Personal Paint [Cloanto] (Amiga) - version 6.3 and later; read/write; freeware, as of final 7.1b release (formerly commercial). (This was the first commercial app to ship with PNG support, in April 1995. Cloanto also made available a free PNG DataType, listed on the miscellaneous apps page, and had a commercial PNG toolkit for the Amiga, for which information was once available via e-mail to info@cloanto.com . As of early 2000, Personal Paint is available from Cloanto only as part of the Amiga Forever package, but it may be downloaded separately from Aminet or any of its mirrors.)

• Photo-Brush [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; shareware. (This is an image editor with special emphasis on photo-retouching. See also CompactDraw, above, and Real-DRAW, below.)

• PhotoDesk [Spacetech / Photodesk] (RISC OS) - version 3.0(?) and later; read/write; commercial.

• PhotoDraw 2000 [Microsoft] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This was part of the Office 2000 suite and may have been the new name for Image Composer above. This product has been discontinued.)

• Photo Editor [Microsoft] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; commercial. (This is another Microsoft image editor [see PhotoDraw above] and is similarly part of the Microsoft Office 97/2000/XP suite.)

• Photogenics [Paul Nolan / Idruna Software] (Amiga, Linux, Win32, WinCE) - version 2.0 and later (or version 1.2 with the Photogenics PNG loader/saver, listed on the toolkits page); read/write; full alpha support? full 16-bps support in Photogenics HDR 96-bit variant? commercial. (The PNG loader was "badly broken" in version 4.0, but the author reports that it was fixed as of version 4.1 or thereabouts [thanks to Oliver Roberts]. Photogenics was originally distributed by Almathera, which went out of business in early 1997; Paul Nolan, the original programmer, released version 4.0 on his own in April 1999 and version 5.0 under the Idruna name in 2001. Versions prior to 5.0 are available only for the Amiga.)

• Photo>Graphics PRO [TrueSpectra] (OS/2, Win32) - version 2.0 and later (OS/2) and version 1.1 (Win32); read/write; freeware (formerly commercial). (This product has been discontinued as of 1 January 1999. Until 31 December 1999, both versions were available from TrueSpectra's support page, but as of 1 January 2000, only the free registration keys are still visible. The key for the OS/2 version (6.3 MB) is TSPG20-000K-65WG8, and that for the Win32 version (10 MB) is TSPW10-000C0-2NY44 .)

• PhotoImpact [Ulead Systems] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; no gamma support; reads images with invalid filter values as if filter type were `none'; version 3.02 writes duplicate tEXt chunks and incorrectly writes "Author"-keyword chunks; commercial.

• PhotoLine [CiEBV / Computerinsel] (Win32) - version 2.2(?) and later; read/write; may still have problems with saving alpha channels; shareware.

• Photonyx [Chrome Imaging] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial.

• Photo-Paint [Corel] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 7.0 and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha support in version 8.0 and later; ignores transparency in palette images; no 16-bit support (i.e., down-converts to 8-bit samples); commercial. (This product is no longer available separately but but only as part of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite above. See also the similarly named Ability Photopaint above.)

• PhotoPlus [Serif] (Win32) - version 6.0(?) and later; read/write? 32-bit alpha support; commercial.

• PhotoSEAM [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware. (This is a limited version of Photo-Brush, above.)

• Photoshop [Adobe] (Windows 3.x, Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) - version 4.0 and later; read/write; full alpha support, but no palette transparency in versions prior to 5.5; broken gamma and chromaticity support in versions prior to 5.5 (gamma-writing appears to work in 4.0 only if the ambient-light setting is at `medium'; it is completely broken in 5.0--i.e., Photoshop records a value that is off by a factor of two, making images look far too dark; and gamma-reading is reportedly non-existent); broken iCCP support in 5.5 (writes faulty zlib wrapper on iCCP chunk, which can crash apps that use libpng 1.0.6's png_get_iCCP() function [fixed in 6.0]; can't read valid iCCP chunks); no support for PNG sRGB chunk (5.5 and later: uses iCCP chunk to store 2 KB sRGB profile instead of sRGB chunk to store single-byte "rendering intent"); partial 16-bps support as of 7.0 (read-only; broken in 5.5 and 6.x [high- and low-order bytes swapped] and non-existent in older versions; see Brendan Bolles' SuperPNG plug-in for full 16-bps read/write support); relatively poor compression in versions prior to 7.0 (slightly better but still not great in "Save for Web" mode); very slow compression in version 7.0; doesn't save text annotations; incapable of saving bi-level PNGs; commercial. See Chapter 4 of PNG: The Definitive Guide for information on making alpha-channel PNGs with Photoshop 4.0 and 5.0; technique should be applicable to later versions, as well. (Photoshop 3.0 for Windows is still supported via the PNGForm.8BI plug-in, but Infinop's plug-in, which provided equivalent support for PS 3.0 for Mac, is no longer available. See also Macromedia's xRes below.)

• PhotoStyler [Adobe/Aldus] (Windows 3.x) - version 2.0 and later with Ulead UF2PNG.FIO plug-in; read/write; commercial. (Also see Ulead Viewer on the image viewers page. PhotoStyler died after Adobe's acquisition of Aldus.)

• PhotoTiger [Michael Moegn] (OS/2) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write; shareware. (As of 26 December 2002, this product is no longer available, and the company has ceased operations.)

• PhotoXL - see Satori below

• Picnic [Peder Blekken] (BeOS PPC) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is a Photoshop/"GIMP-like paint/image-processing program." PNG is the only supported output format in version 0.4. Source code will eventually be made available.)

• Picture Effecter [Hiroaki Watanabe] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; uses libpng and zlib; freeware. (This is a Japanese special-effects tool, apparently, with support for colorspace conversions, convolutions, etc. It seems to be compatible with Susie image-format plug-ins [see the image viewers page], of which one is separately available at the link above, and it includes its own PNG export module. A tutorial/overview is also available.)

• Picture It! [Microsoft] (Win32) - version 2002(?) and later; read/write; commercial. (This is a basic image editor and print-shop application. See also Digital Image Pro above.)

• Picture Publisher [Micrografx] (Win32) - version 7.0 and later; read/write; commercial. (Picture Publisher is also incorporated into Graphics Suite 2, Webtricity, and "a few other suites published by Micrografx." See also iGrafx Designer, above.)

• Picture Window [Digital Light & Color] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write; read-only palette support; claims full 16-bit support (Pro version 2.5 and later); commercial.

• Pixelformer [Qualibyte Software] (Win32) - version 0.8 and later; read/write; full alpha support, including RGBA-palette and "cheap" (single-shade/color) transparency in grayscale and RGB images; multipass optimization; currently freeware (0.8 beta). (This is an icon and bitmap editor with a number of features more common in high-end image editors.)

• Pixia / Phierha [Isao Maruoka] (Win32, Linux/X, FreeBSD/X) - version 1.9(?) and later; read/write; uses libpng and zlib; freeware. (This is the official English web site of a Japanese paint program. The Linux and FreeBSD versions are available only from the Japanese site and have not been updated since 2000.)

• PixEdit [Techsoft] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; commercial.

• Pmacs [ChangTa] (Win32) - all versions? read-only? alpha support? uses libpng 0.95 and zlib 1.0.4; shareware.

• PPT - see the viewers or converters page

• Real-DRAW [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; 32-bit alpha transparency (claimed); shareware. (This is a higher-end paint/draw program than CompactDraw, above. It supports both vector and bitmapped objects and apparently can import and export both, too. See also Photo-Brush, above.)

• RealWorld Icon Editor [RealWorld Graphics] (Win32, Win64) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support (claimed); uses libpng and zlib; commercial.

• Satori [Spaceward Graphics] (Win32) - version 2.5 and later; read/write; full alpha support; full 16-bit support? commercial. (This is a high-end family of image-editing, compositing and special effects programs. PhotoXL is the scaled-down consumer version; FilmFX and FilmFX64 are the high-end professional versions targeted at the film and video industry.)

• Shake [Nothing Real] (Irix/X, Linux/X, Windows NT/2k) - all versions; read/write; full 16-bit support; full alpha support; partial gamma support; color correction? commercial. (This is a high-end family of compositing and image-manipulation programs, used primarily for special effects in film. Version 1.0 consisted only of command-line tools, but 2.0 added a GUI interface. Shake Render is the medium-cost, command-line-only image-processing engine [for batch processing]. Shake Lite is the stripped-down, command-line-only version, but it is still capable of displaying and converting between a large number of image formats.)

• Sketch [Bernhard Herzog] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a drawing program implemented in Python and therefore capable of importing any bitmapped image format supported by the Python Imaging Library--see the toolkits page for details.)

• SmartDraw Photo [SmartDraw.com] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; simple (binary) transparency support (both indexed and truecolor images); commercial. (See also its object-based sibling SmartDraw on the scientific / graphing apps page.)

• Sodipodi [Lauris Kaplinski and others] (Unix/GTK+, Win32/GTK+) - all versions? write-only? full alpha support? requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with C source. (This is a "vector-based drawing program" that uses SVG as its native format and that supports "antialiased display, alpha transparencies, vector fonts," etc. It was based in part on Gill; see also Inkscape.)

• Take-1 [FileStream] (Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; shareware. (This is a suite of "web-publishing tools," including an image editor, a [lossy] image optimizer/compressor, and an HTML editor.)

• TuxPaint [New Breed Software / Bill Kendrick] (Linux/SDL, Win32/SDL, etc.) - version 2002.08.23 and later; write-only? uses SDL, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a paint program for children. It provides simple tools, a collection of clip art, and no access to the underlying file system. It should be easily portable to any OS with an SDL port--e.g., Mac OS, Mac OS X, etc.)

• VideoStudio [Ulead Systems] (Win32) - version 2.0 (Windows 3.x) and later; read/write; commercial.

• Viscosity [Jedor] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; full alpha support? commercial. (This is a full image editor, but it is primarily targeted at the creation of animations. PNG is supported as a still format.)

• Visio [Visio] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 4.1 and later (a patch [1.1M] with the new PNG and JPEG filters is available for users of version 4.0); read/write; commercial. (This is a suite of applications that includes Visio Standard, Visio Technical, Visio Professional and Visio Enterprise.)

• WebPainter [Totally Hip Software] (Mac PPC, Win32) - version 3.0(?) and later; read/write; commercial.

• Webstyle [Xara] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This is an image editor specifically designed to produce web graphics; it appears to be what was formerly known as Xara Webster prior to version 3.)

• Webtricity [Micrografx] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write; commercial. (PNG support is via two included programs: Picture Publisher [above] and Windows Draw. See also iGrafx Designer, above.)

• WinImages [Black Belt Systems] (Win32) - version R5 and later; read/write; MNG support as of version R6 (write-only; read support expected in a subsequent maintenance update); commercial. (This is more of a special-effects and animation studio than a "normal" image editor.)

• Wright Design [Wright Technologies] (Win32) - all versions? read/write; commercial. (This image editor is targetted at "image compositing, photo retouching, vector drawing and typesetting/page layout.")

• Xara Webster - see Webstyle above

• Xara X [Xara] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This was formerly known as CorelXARA.)

• xart [Rick Hohensee, David Koblas, Torsten Martinsen, Greg Roelofs] (Unix/X) - all versions; read/write; no alpha support; uses libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is Rick Hohensee's "mutant spawn" of XPaint (below), with emphasis on freehand drawing. This release appears to be a later version than that available from Rick's web page and may be the final version; 341K.)

• xfig [Supoj Sutanthavibul, Paul King, Brian V. Smith, and others] (Unix/X) - version 3.2.0 and later; read/write as of version 3.2.3d (older versions write-only); no transparency support; requires pnmtopng and Ghostscript; freeware (BSDish) with source. (This is a vector-based image editor, often used with TeX, that can nevertheless import a variety of bitmap formats. It uses the TransFig package for export, which in turn uses pnmtopng and/or Ghostscript for PNG support.)

• XPaint [David Koblas, Torsten Martinsen, Jean-Pierre Demailly, Greg Roelofs] (Unix/X, OpenVMS/X) - version 2.3.1-png and later (PNG support fully integrated as of version 2.4.2); read/write; no alpha support; uses libpng and zlib; freeware (BSDish) with source. (Torsten's old web pages are still available, but the old OpenVMS port [2.4.4] is not.)

• XPhoto GIF Animator [OmegaSoft] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; MNG support (read-only); commercial. (This is an image and animation editor, although it cannot write MNG images.)

• xRes [Fauve / Macromedia] (Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; full alpha support; no gamma support; commercial. (Version 2.0 was bundled with Kai's Power Tools 3.0 SE, and version 3.0 was part of FreeHand 7 above. This product was discontinued after version 3.0. Reportedly some portion of it became part of Fireworks above.)

• Zoner Draw [Zoner] (Win32) - version 3.0(?) and later; read/write; commercial (version 4) or freeware (version 3).

Here are some related PNG pages at this site:

• PNG-supporting Applications
  • Browsers
  • Image Viewers
  • Image Converters
  • 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

Copyright © 1995-2015 Greg Roelofs.