RGB with Alpha Channel

Finally, we have truecolor images with an alpha channel, also known as the RGBA image type. As with RGB and gray+alpha, PNG supports 8 and 16 bits per sample for RGBA or 32 and 64 bits per pixel, respectively. Pixels are always stored in RGBA order, and the alpha channel is not premultiplied.

The use of PLTE for a suggested quantization palette is allowed here as well, but note that since the tRNS chunk is prohibited in RGBA images, the suggested palette can only encode a recommended quantization for the RGB data or for the RGBA data composited against the image's background color (see the discussion of bKGD in Chapter 11, "PNG Options and Extensions"), not for the raw RGBA data. Disallowing tRNS is arguably an unnecessary restriction in the PNG specification; while a suggested RGBA palette would not necessarily be useful when compositing the image against a varied background (the different background pixel values would likely mix with the foreground pixels to form more than 256 colors), it would be helpful for cases where the background is a solid color. In fact, this restriction was recognized and addressed by an extension to the specification approved late in 1996: the suggested-palette chunk, sPLT, which is discussed in Chapter 11, "PNG Options and Extensions".

Although baseline TIFF does not require support for an alpha channel, libtiff supports RGBA images with 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 bits per sample; both associated and unassociated alpha channels are supported. JPEG has no direct support for alpha transparency, but MNG offers a way around that (see Chapter 12, "Multiple-Image Network Graphics").