PNG is a graphics format designed specifically for the internet. It combines the benefits of JPGs (depth of colour and compression), with the benefit of GIFs (transparency).

The PNG files that can be used in DesktopX are 32-bit, which contain 4 channels of data. The first 3 channels contain the colour information (red, green and blue), and the fourth channel contains the transparency information.

Many of todays graphics packages can produce PNG graphics. The following tutorials explain how to use some of the most common packages to do this.