Scientific, Plotting and Graphing Applications with PNG Support
Maintenance Note
The PNG-supporting applications and toolkits pages are no longer being
actively updated; for several years already, it's been safe to assume
that virtually any bitmap-capable image app supports PNG. Corrections are still
welcome, particularly for "repurposed domains" (park-spam), but
new applications are no longer being added.
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These are scientific and technical programs for analyzing, manipulating,
graphing and/or plotting data.
As with the other PNG-applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to
downloadable versions are provided where known, but if a link is broken,
check the location and see if an updated version is available (and
please tell Greg!).
Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics).
These are listed alphabetically, more or less:
- 3D-XplorMath [Richard
Palais and Hermann Karcher] (Mac OS, Mac OS X) - version 10.0 and later;
write-only? freeware for non-commercial and academic use. (This is a
mathematical visualization and exploration tool ["museum"] that can
save visualizations in PNG format. It was originally called
3D-Filmstrip.)
- ACE/gr - see Grace below
- ArchiCAD - see the 3D applications page
- CellProfiler
[Anne Carpenter,
Thouis "Ray" Jones,
and others]
(Win32, Mac OS X, MatLab) - all versions; read/write; freeware
with MatLab source. (This is image-analysis software for [biological]
cells; it allows one to "quantitatively measure phenotypes from thousands
of images automatically." PNG apparently is supported as one image type
that can be analyzed.)
- Ch Professional Edition
[SoftIntegration]
(Win32, Unix/X, Mac OS X?) - all versions? write-only? commercial
(freeware for academic use). (This is a numerical/plotting package
with "2D/3D plotting supporting PNG." Ch itself is a proprietary,
multiplatform C/C++ interpreter; see also the toolkits page for the Ch PNG add-on.)
- ChartDirector [Advanced Software Engineering] (Win32, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD,
Mac OS X) - all versions? write-only? shareware. (This is an
object-oriented charting and graphics library with interfaces to C++,
Python, Perl, PHP, and COM/ASP/VB/etc. The web site is completely
PNG-based, too--most excellent.)
- aiSee [AbsInt]
(Win32, Unix/X, Mac OS X) - version 2.1.60 and later; read/write
as of version 2.1.87 (write-only in previous versions); commercial.
(This is a tool to lay out and draw graphs, in the specialized
computer-science and mathematical sense [i.e., graph theory].
It was "developed to visualize the internal data structures typically
found in compilers," but it can also be applied to circuit diagrams,
family trees, org charts, etc. Read support consists of displaying
PNG [or NetPBM] icons in nodes.)
- BrainVoyager [Rainer Goebel /
Brain
Innovation] (Win32, Unix/X, Mac OS X) - version QX(?) and
later; read/write? MNG support;
commercial. (This is a medical imaging
utility to manipulate brain scans, create 3D models, capture still
images and animation/movie sequences, etc. PNG and MNG are supported
for the capture functions [and presumably for playback, as well].)
- Cn3D
[National Center for Biotechnology
Information] (Win32, Unix/X, Mac OS) - version 4.0(?) and
later; write-only; freeware with source. (This
is a 3D molecular-visualization application that "simultaneously
displays structure, sequence, and alignment, and now has powerful
annotation and alignment editing features." It can render directly to
PNG, either high-resolution or via screenshots.)
- CoPlot [CoHort Software]
(Win32, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, etc.) - version 5.921 and later;
read/write; commercial. (This is a "program for making
publication-quality scientific graphs, maps, and technical drawings" in
both 2D and 3D. The Linux/Unix and Mac OS X versions are marked
"unofficial" only because they have not yet been fully tested [as of
September 2001]. Since the program is Java-based, it should run on any
platform with a solid JVM implementation.)
- ComponentOne Chart [ComponentOne] (Win32) - version 6.0(?) and later; write-only; commercial. (This is a presentation-graphics toolkit with both
interactive and programmable interfaces. It can do both 2D and 3D
charts and supports MSVC, Visual Basic, Delphi, and Borland C++ Builder.
It was previously known as Olectra Chart.)
- DeltaGraph [Red Rock
Software] (Mac OS, Mac OS X, Win32) - version 5(?) and later;
write-only? commercial. (This is a graphing and charting application.)
- DISLIN [Helmut
Michels] (DOS, Unix, VMS, Win32) - version 7.2 and
later; write-only; freeware or commercial, depending on platform and
compiler. (This is a high-level plotting library for data visualization.
It can do both 2D and 3D plots and supports C, Fortran77, Fortran90,
Java, Perl and Python.)
- DNA-CGR
[Indraneel Majumdar]
(Linux/SVGA) - version 0.2 and later; write-only; requires
libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is
"a tool to visualise patterns in DNA and RNA by using Chaos Game
Representation.")
- DTM / Digital Terrain Mapping
[Ivan Lee Herring] (Win32) - all versions?
write-only? uses PNG Delphi / TPNGImage (see the toolkits page); freeware (formerly shareware) with
Pascal source. (This is a tool to display digital elevation models
(DEMs) as maps.)
- Flounder
[Edward Vigmond]
(Unix/X) - all versions; write-only; requires libpng and
zlib; freeware with source. (This is a 4D data-visualization
program that can render isosurfaces, slices, etc. Images or image
sequences can be saved in PNG format.)
- g3data
[Jonas Frantz]
(Unix/GTK+) - all versions? read-only? requires imlib,
libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source.
(This is a program to help automate the extraction of data values from
graphs.)
- gerbv / Gerber Viewer
[Stefan Petersen, Andreas Andersson, Anders Eriksson] (Unix/GTK+) -
version 0.0.9 and later; write-only; requires gdk-pixbuf,
libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is
a viewer for Gerber files, which is a format used by CAD programs for
the layout of printed circuit boards [PCBs]. It can export multilayer
circuit diagrams in PNG format.)
- GIF/PNG-Creator
[Frank Oellien
and Wolf-Dietrich
Ihlenfeldt] (WWW/CGI/Tcl) - versions since 3 September 1998?
write-only; text support (Comment, SMILES, CACTVS,
and MOLFILE); freeware. (This is an online renderer [in the
line-drawing sense] of chemical structures. It formerly used
gif2png to create PNG images, but since 26 February 2000 it uses
the gd library directly and also supports embedding of chemical
structures in text comments.)
- GINO [Bradly
Associates] (Win32, Unix/X) - version 5.0 and later;
read/write; commercial. (This is a Fortran90 scientific graphics suite
with OpenGL support.)
- Gmsh
[Jean-François Remacle and
Christophe Geuzaine] (Win32, Linux/FLTK, Mac OS X) -
version 1.44 and later; write-only? freeware (GPL) with source.
(This is a "three-dimensional finite element mesh generator with
built-in pre- and post-processing facilities.")
- gnuplot
[Thomas Williams, Colin
Kelley et al.] (Unix, VMS, OS/2, DOS, Windows 3.x, Amiga,
OS-9/68k, Atari, Macintosh, Human68k) - version 3.6 beta 261 and
later; write-only; freeware (non-GPL) with source.
(A FAQ list is also available.)
- Grace
[Paul J. Turner / Grace Development Team]
(Unix/Motif, OS/2, VMS, Win32) - version 5.0.3 and later;
write-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a 2D graphing tool with support for logarithmic axes,
etc.; it can save plotted images in PNG format. It is derived from
Paul Turner's ACE/gr, which was also known as Xmgr.)
- GrADS
[Brian Doty] (Unix/X) -
version 1.7(?) and later; write-only; requires ImageMagick,
libpng and zlib; freeware (restricted) with source.
(GrADS stands for "Grid Analysis and Display System" and is an
interactive tool "for the analysis and display of [4D] earth science
data." PNG output is supported only via ImageMagick, and only if
ImageMagick is compiled appropriately [which is not how the distributed
binaries are compiled]. The Win32, DOS and Mac OS versions apparently
do not support PNG at all.)
- GraphViz
[AT&T Research]
(Unix, Win32, Mac OS X) - all versions? write-only? requires
libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a
collection of mostly command-line tools for visualization of directed
and undirected graphs. At least some of the tools [like dot]
support PNG export.)
- GraPL [Causeway
Graphical Systems] (Win32) - version 1.3(?) and later;
write-only? commercial. (This is a charting and graphing application
that apparently can save its results in PNG format.)
- GRASS
[U.S. Army Construction Engineering
Research Laboratory / GRASS Development Team] (Unix/X, Win32/Cygwin) - version 5.0
(beta 7, 20 April 2000) and later; read/write; requires
libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source.
(This is a "Geographical Information System (GIS) with raster,
topological vector, image processing, and graphics production
functionality.")
- GRIP ICE
[Ivan Lee Herring] (Win32) - all versions?
read/write; uses PNG Delphi / TPNGImage (see the toolkits page); freeware (formerly shareware) with
Pascal source. (The name stands for Geographic Raster Image
Processor / Investigate Classify Extrapolate. See also
Imagem on the editors page.)
- IDL [ITT Visual Information
Solutions] (Unix/X, VMS, Win32, Macintosh) - version 5.2 and
later; read/write; commercial. (This is a 4GL application-development
package for data analysis and visualization. PNG support is via "an API
to read, query, and write PNG images." As of version 5.4, GIF support was
dropped in favor of an enhanced READ_PNG that can now be
"called as a procedure" [via IDL's interactive or scripting interface?]
as well as as a function, thereby serving as a drop-in replacement for
the older READ_GIF. It does not support PNG metadata, either
reading or writing. ITT VIS was known as Research Systems Inc. prior
to May 2006.)
- IGOR [WaveMetrics]
(Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) - version 3.1 and later; read/write as of
version 4 (write-only in earlier versions); commercial. (This is an
interactive data-analysis and graphing package for scientific and
engineering data. PNG is supported "either as an image for annotation
or as raw data for analysis.")
- KMatplot
[Kamil Dobkowski]
(Unix/KDE) - all versions? read/write (read-only prior to version
0.2.2); freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a WYSIWYG "gnuplot-like
tool for plotting data sets in [either] two or three dimensions.")
- kst
[Barth Netterfield, George Staikos, et
al.] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? write-only; freeware (GPL)
with C/C++ source. (This is a "plotting and data viewing program"
coming out of the astrophysics community. See also the KDE-Apps
page.)
- Mathematica
[Wolfram Research] (Unix/X,
NeXTStep, Win32, Macintosh) - version 5.0 and later, or any
version(?) with Jens-Peer Kuska's PNGBitmap package (freeware with source, uses libpng
and zlib); read/write;
alpha support and 16-bit support via PNGBitmap only;
commercial. (This is a "fully integrated
environment for technical computing." Jens' PNG add-on allows
Mathematica graphics elements to be saved as PNGs and PNGs to be used as
textures for surfaces. As of 22 March 2001, the add-on integrates
seamlessly into Mathematica 4.x's Import[]/Export[] functions.)
- mathmlrender
[Drew Bowering]
(Unix/GTK+) - all versions; write-only; transparency support;
requires gd, libpng and zlib); freeware (GPL) with
C and C++ source. (This is a PHP4 extension to render MathML markup to
either PNG or JPEG format to support older browsers.)
- MATLAB [MathWorks]
(Win32, Unix/X) - version 5.3 (a.k.a. Release 11) and
later; read/write; commercial. (This is an "integrated technical
computing environment that combines numeric computation, advanced
graphics and visualization, and a high-level programming language."
The Macintosh and VMS versions are frozen at version 5.2 and therefore
do not include PNG support. MathWorks also hosts a "technical computing
portal" called Mathtools.net,
with [JavaScript] links to many other sites of scientific and engineering
interest.)
- MRIcro - see the image viewers or
converters pages
- MRTG / Multi Router Traffic Grapher
[Tobias Oetiker, Dave Rand and others]
(Unix, Win32) - version 2.8.0 and later; write-only;
requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a tool that uses SNMP to retrieve statistics on network
traffic from specified routers; it then automatically generates web pages
with graphs in PNG format.)
- myPACS
[Botond K. Szabo]
(Unix/CGI) - version 0.11 and later; read-only? requires
ImageMagick, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a "web-based medical image management system."
[PACS = "Picture Archiving and Communication System"] PNG is one of
the supported image formats.)
- Olectra Chart - see ComponentOne Chart above
- Origin [OriginLab]
(Win32) - version 6.0 and later; read/write as of
version 6.1 (write-only in 6.0); commercial. (This is a "technical graphics and
data-analysis package with integrated scripting language for
automation." There is also a professional version called OriginPro.)
- PHPLOT
[Afan Ottenheimer]
(Unix/PHP) - all versions? write-only? requires
gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL/PHP) with
source. (This is a server-side plotting/graphing tool inspired by the
old FORTRAN PGPLOT
library.)
- Ping Plotter [Nessoft] (Win32) -
version 2.2 and later; write-only; shareware. (This is a
graphical ping/traceroute tool that can save its graphs in PNG format,
either manually or at intervals automatically. Version 1.x was freeware
but had no PNG support.)
- Ploticus
[Steve Grubb]
(Unix/X) - version 1.2 and later; read/write; requires
libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is
a script-driven plotting and charting program; it generates all sorts of
2D plots, charts and tables, and it can be used either interactively or
in batch mode.)
- plotutils
[Robert S. Maier, Nick Tufillaro, and others] (Unix, etc.) - version 2.4.1 and later; write-only;
binary transparency support (alpha support coming); requires
libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a
set of vector-based plotting and conversion tools [and ode, a
solver of systems of ordinary differential equations]. The tools are
based on the included libplot library, which is listed on the
toolkits and libraries page.)
- PLplot
[Maurice J. LeBrun / Geoff
Furnish / Alan
W. Irwin] (Unix) - version 5.0.3 and later; write-only;
requires libpng and zlib; freeware (LGPL) with
source. (This is a "library of C functions that are useful for making
scientific plots from programs written in C, C++, Fortran, Octave,
Python, and Tcl/Tk.")
- PNGwriter
[Paul
Blackburn] (any) - all versions; read/write; 16-bit-per-sample
support; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a C++ class for plotting XY data and drawing basic
shapes directly to a PNG file. It includes HSV conversion functions,
text-rendering support, documentation in both English and Spanish, etc.)
- PV-WAVE [Visual Numerics]
(Unix, Win32, VMS) - version 6.04 and later; read/write;
commercial. (This is a scientific analysis and visualization suite.)
- PyChart
[Yasushi Saito] (Python) -
all versions? write-only; requires Ghostscript; freeware (GPL)
with Python source. (This is a "Python library for creating high
quality Encapsulated Postscript, PDF, PNG, or SVG charts. It currently
supports line plots, bar plots, range-fill plots, and pie charts.")
- R
[Robert Gentleman,
Ross Ihaka, et al.] (Unix/X, Win32) - version
1.1.0 and later; write-only; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a
statistical computing and graphing language.)
- RRDtool
[Tobi Oetiker]
(Unix, Win32) - all versions? write-only; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a fast utility to "store and display time-series
data" using a bounded amount of memory. It can be thought of as "a
reimplementation of MRTG's [above] graphing and logging
features.")
- SkyServer [Sabine
Plunder] (WWW) - all versions? write-only;
MNG support; freeware. (This
is "an online service [in German] for creating star charts of the night
sky for astronomical use." One can select PNG format for stills or MNG
format for animations involving time-lapse, panning, and/or zooming.)
- Smallworld [GE Network
Solutions] (Windows NT/2k/XP) - all versions? read-only;
commercial. (This is a set of tools for analyzing and displaying
spatial information such as gas, electric and water distribution systems
or telecommunications networks. PNG is supported via a "Spatial Object
Manager" plug-in.)
- SmartDraw [SmartDraw.com] (Win32) - version 6.0 and later; read/write;
commercial. (This is an office-oriented charting and diagramming
application that can import and export in PNG format.)
- Sysquake [Calerga Sarl]
(Win32, Mac OS 9/X) - version 2.3 and later; read/write;
uses libpng and zlib; commercial. (This is a highly
interactive visualization tool for simulating dynamic systems, exploring
stability, controlling robots, etc.)
- Sysquake Remote [Calerga Sarl] (WWW) - all versions; write-only; uses
libpng and zlib; commercial. (This is a web-based
computational app [Apache module] with the ability to
dynamically generate PNG graphs. An online example is available.)
- Visual Sun Chart [3-D
Software] (Windows 2k/XP) - all versions? write-only; uses
Victor Image Processing Library and
zlib; commercial. (This is "solar geometry software," a modelling
tool to visualize shading from trees or buildings at various times of
day or of the year. It can export rendered images in PNG format.)
- Vitalnet [Expert Health Data
Programming] (WWW) - versions since November 2001; write-only;
commercial. (This is a "browser-based system for analyzing and
disseminating health data, such as births, deaths, pregnancies,
hospitalizations." The maps it generates are in PNG format.)
- Webalizer
[Bradford L. Barrett] (Unix,
Mac PPC, OS/2, Win32) - version 1.30-05 and later;
write-only; requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware
(GPL) with source. (This is a web-statistics analysis and graphing
tool; its output is web pages with PNG images.)
- WhatsUp Gold [Ipswitch] (Win32) - version 5.0 and later;
write-only; commercial. (This is a network-monitoring utility that can
display network maps in PNG format via its embedded web server. JPEG is
the default format, but it can be switched to PNG mode "after making a
change to the registry," according to the company.)
- xfig - see the image editors page
- Xmgr - see Grace above
- zimg
[Johannes Zellner]
(Unix, OS/2, etc.) - version 1.2.0 and later; write-only;
requires gd, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (This is a tool to create false-color 2D images from scalar
data [f(x,y)]; for example, wind-speed data measured on a rectangular
grid, or fluid pressure in a cross-section of a 3D simulation. The
Unix-style man page is also available.)
Here are some related PNG pages at this site:
Last modified 10 July 2018.
Copyright © 1995-2018 Greg Roelofs.