Sebastopol, CA–“Designed as an open-source format to replace
GIF (which uses a proprietary compression scheme for which software
makers must pay a licensing fee), PNG is better, smaller, more
extensible, and–best of all–free,” says Greg Roelofs. “PNG has
finally achieved the broad level of industry backing in which its
support is taken for granted; applications are criticized for NOT
supporting PNG.” Roelofs is one of the designers of PNG (Portable
Network Graphics) and the author of the just-released O’Reilly
book, “PNG: The Definitive Guide”.
PNG is an elegant and feature-rich image format that has
recently achieved broad industry support. PNG is supported by major
software like Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft
Office, Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. “It
takes about four years –sometimes more– for a new computer image
format to become widely accepted” says Roelofs, “This was true of
GIF, TIFF, JPEG/JFIF and now PNG, and it will presumably hold for
newcomers such as JPEG 2000 and the W3C’s vector format, SVG. Since
this effect was first observed by Tom Lane–principal authorof
libjpeg, member of the TIFF Advisory Committee, and another of
PNG’s designers–I refer to it as “Lane’s Law of Image
Formats.”
PNG is similar to the GIF and TIFF formats but with a number of
designer-friendly improvements. It is anticipated to quickly become
the preferred file format for color- critical web images and
high-quality graphics interchange. And because of features such as
lossless compression, alpha transparency (variable levels of
transparency), and a wide range of color depths, PNG is expected to
supplant GIF as the standard web format for even non-critical
images. Even animated GIFs may soon be supplanted by MNG, which is
the animated version of PNG and which was just recently frozen as a
specification (Roleofs covers the MNG in Chapter 12 of his new
book). PNG also provides direct support for gamma correction, the
cross-platform control of image “brightness,” and embedded text
annotations such as author and copyright info.
“PNG: The Definitive Guide” is the first book devoted
exclusively to teaching and documenting this important new format.
It is an indispensable compendium for Web content developers and is
full of examples, application information, and practical hands-on
advice. “PNG: The Definitive Guide” is also essential for
programmers who want to add full PNG support their own
applications. It focuses on implementing PNG with the libpng C
library and steps through three complete demo programs, discussing
key elements of each and noting alternative approaches wherever
appropriate. The book includes explanations of important
improvements with PNG, such as gamma correction and the standard
color spaces for precise reproduction of image colors on a wide
range of systems.
“The PNG format is one step in the evolution of portable, robust
image formats. With good, ubiquitous support just around the corner
in web browsers, and support in image-viewing and editing
applications not merely common but actually expected by customers,
PNG’s future is bright,” says Roelofs.
For more information about the book, including Table of
Contents, index, author bio, and sample chapter, see: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pngdefg/
PNG: The Definitive Guide By Greg Roelofs 1st Edition June 1999 (US) 1-56592-542-4, 344 pages, $32.95 (US) [email protected] 1-800-998-9938 http://www.oreilly.com