Is PNG the most economically sound file format to store pictures in?

Question

I am looking for an economically sound solution to store pictures long time. I read about the PNG file format that it has superior characteristics compared to JPEG, namely in these categories:

• no patents, no licenses, no royalities
• no quality loss
• yet compressed

I have a lot of big ESP's from PhotoShop that contain tons of metadata, like layers and color profiles that I don't need to store (those were handy for the designer, when he worked with it). I want to convert these images without that hidden data, to a new target file format.

Another side condition to my question is that the target file format has to be displayable in the browser. So I guess my options are limited anyway: GIF, JPEG, PNG.

Am I missing something or is PNG the best fit for my case?

Answer 1

PNG is best, but you don't need to worry about patents; (citing Wikipedia), it seems the JPEG patent was never valid to begin with (a clear case of patent trollery, not just dickery), and it's expired anyway even if it was. GIF was patented because it uses patented LZW compression technology, but these patents expired in 2003/2004.

So the decision need only take into account raw merits. PNG beats GIF on everything except that animations are not supported (MNG supports them, though).

However, because PNG is very bad at compressing photographs, you're better off publishing your images as JPEGs, although PNG is better for storage.

Answer 2

PNG is your best bet.

Make sure you don't use transparent PNGs if you want IE6 to work without a workaround.