| Number of colors |
16 million |
up to 256 |
up to 24bit |
| Transparency |
No |
Yes, but no opacity |
Yes, with opacity |
| Compression |
lossy |
lossless up to 256 colors |
lossless or lossy |
| Advantages |
good compression for photos |
- transparency works on IE6
- animation
|
- better lossless compression than GIF
- opacity (multi-level transparency)
|
| Disadvantage |
quality loss for graphics |
- limited number of colors
- PNG has better compression
- only 1-level transparency
|
- file size would be too big for photos
- transparent PNG is not supported by IE6
|
| Best for |
photos |
animation |
graphics, logos |
