The Metadata in PNG files¶

The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a raster graphics file format that supports a portable, legally unencumbered, well-compressed, well-specified standard for lossless bitmapped image files.

A PNG always starts with an 8-byte signature: 137 80 78 71 13 10 26 10 (decimal values). The remainder of the file consists a series of chunks beginning with an IHDR chunk and ending with an IEND chunk.

1. Chunks¶

Each chunk consists of four parts:

Length	4 bytes	An unsigned integer giving the number of bytes in the chunk's data field. The length counts only the data field, not itself, the chunk type code, or the CRC. Zero is a valid length. Although encoders and decoders should treat the length as unsigned, its value must not exceed 2^31-1 bytes.
Chunk type	4 bytes	Type codes are restricted to consist of uppercase and lowercase ASCII letters and they are case sensitive. + The case of the first letter indicates whether the chunk is critical or not. If the first letter is uppercase, the chunk is critical; if not, the chunk is ancillary (more details are mentioned below). + The case of the second letter indicates whether the chunk is "public" (either in the specification or the registry of special-purpose public chunks) or "private" (not standardised). Uppercase is public and lowercase is private. + The third letter must be uppercase to conform to the PNG specification. It is reserved for future expansion. + The case of the fourth letter indicates whether the chunk is safe to copy by editors that do not recognize it.
Chunk data	Length bytes	The data bytes appropriate to the chunk type, if any. This field can be of zero length.
CRC	4 bytes	A CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) calculated on the preceding bytes in the chunk, including the chunk type code and chunk data fields, but not including the length field. The CRC is always present, even for chunks containing no data.

Fig.1. The chunk layout.

Chunks declare themselves as critical or ancillary.

Chunks that are necessary for successful display of the file's contents are called critical chunks. If a decoder encounters a critical chunk it does not recognize, it must abort reading the file or supply the user with an appropriate warning.

Name	Multiple	Ordering constraints	Contain
IHDR	No	Must be the first	the image's width, height, and bit depth
PLTE	No	Before IDAT	the palette; list of colors.
IDAT	Yes	Multiple IDATs must be consecutive	the actual image data, which may be split among multiple IDAT chunks. Such splitting increases filesize slightly, but makes it possible to generate a PNG in a streaming manner.
IEND	No	Must be the last	it just marks the image end. The chunk's data field is empty.

Fig.2. Some standard critical chunks.

Chunks that are not strictly necessary in order to meaningfully display the contents of the file are known as ancillary chunks. It includes gamma values, background color, and textual metadata information, ect... If a decoder encourters an ancillary chunk that it does not understand can safely ignore it.

Name	Multiple	Ordering constraints	Contain
cHRM	No	Before PLTE and IDAT	the chromaticity coordinates of the display primaries and white point.
gAMA	No	Before PLTE and IDAT	gamma values.
iCCP	No	Before PLTE and IDAT	an ICC color profile.
sBIT	No	Before PLTE and IDAT	indicates the color-accuracy of the source data.
sRGB	No	Before PLTE and IDAT	indicates that the standard sRGB color space is used.
bKGD	No	After PLTE; before IDAT	gives the default background color. It is intended for use when there is no better choice available, such as in standalone image viewers.
hIST	No	After PLTE; before IDAT	the histogram, or total amount of each color in the image.
tRNS	No	After PLTE; before IDAT	transparency information.For indexed images, it stores alpha channel values for one or more palette entries. For truecolor and grayscale images, it stores a single pixel value that is to be regarded as fully transparent.
pHYs	No	Before IDAT	the intended pixel size and/or aspect ratio of the image.
sPLT	Yes	Before IDAT	a palette to use if the full range of colors is unavailable.
tIME	No	None	the time that the image was last changed.
iTXt	Yes	None	UTF-8 text, compressed or not, with an optional language tag.
tEXt	Yes	None	text that can be represented in ISO/IEC 8859-1.
zTXt	Yes	None	compressed text with the same limits as tEXt.

Fig.3. Some standard ancillary chunks.

2. Textual information chunks - the metadata in PNG¶

The iTXt, tEXt, and zTXt chunks (text chunks) are used for conveying textual information associated with the image. They are the places we can find all metadata of PNG file.

Each of the text chunks contains as its first field a keyword that indicates the type of information represented by the text string. The following keywords are predefined and should be used where appropriate:

Keywords	Explain
Title	Short (one line) title or caption for image
Author	Name of image's creator
Description	Description of image (possibly long)
Copyright	Copyright notice
Creation Time	Time of original image creation
Software	Software used to create the image
Disclaimer	Legal disclaimer
Warning	Warning of nature of content
Source	Device used to create the image
Comment	Miscellaneous comment; conversion from GIF comment

Other keywords may be invented for other purposes and they can be used to embed Exif, IPTC, and XMP data in PNG. The keyword must be at least one character and less than 80 characters long. The keyword must be at least one character and less than 80 characters long.

2.1 tEXt Textual data¶

In the format:

Keyword	Null separator	Text
1-79 bytes	1 byte	n bytes

The text is interpreted according to the ISO/IEC 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. The text string can contain any Latin-1 character. Newlines in the text string should be represented by a single linefeed character (decimal 10).

2.2 zTXt Compressed textual data¶

In the format:

Keyword	Null separator	Compression method	Compressed text
1-79 bytes	1 byte	1 byte	n bytes

The zTXt chunk contains textual data, just as tEXt does; however, zTXt takes advantage of compression. The zTXt and tEXt chunks are semantically equivalent, but zTXt is recommended for storing large blocks of text.

2.3 iTXt International textual data¶

In the format:

Keyword	Null separator	Compression flag	Compression method	Language tag	Null separator	Translated keyword	Null separator	Text
1-79 bytes	1 byte	1 byte	1 byte	0 or more bytes	1 byte	0 or more bytes	1 byte	0 or more bytes

This chunk is semantically equivalent to the tEXt and zTXt chunks, but the textual data is in the UTF-8 encoding of the Unicode character set instead of Latin-1