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A new PNG spec

(www.programmax.net)
626 points bluedel | 1 comments | 24 Jun 25 13:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source
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joshmarinacci ◴[25 Jun 25 15:55 UTC] No.44378719[source]▶
A fun trick I do with my web based drawing tools is to save a JSON representation of your document as a comment field inside of a PNG. This way the doc you save is immediately usable as an image but can also be loaded back into the editor. Also means your downloads folder isn’t littered with unintelligible JSON files.
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tomtom1337 ◴[25 Jun 25 16:40 UTC] No.44379250[source]▶
Could you expand on this? It sounds a bit preposterous to save a text, as json, inside an image - and then expect it to be immediately usable… as an image?
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1. woodrowbarlow ◴[25 Jun 25 16:59 UTC] No.44379491[source]▶
this is useful for code that renders images (e.g. data-visualization tools). the image is the primary artifact of interest, but maybe it was generated from data represented in JSON format. by embedding the source data (invisibly) in the image, you can extract it later to modify and re-generate.