PNG is a lossless format used for screenshots, graphics, and increasingly AI-generated art. Unlike a JPEG it almost never carries GPS or a camera serial, but it has its own tell: image generators write the entire recipe that made the picture into a plain-text chunk that travels with the file. If you share an AI PNG, you are usually sharing the prompt.
Scan a PNG fileThe generation recipe is what makes a PNG distinctive. Locally-run generators (Automatic1111, Forge, ComfyUI, NovelAI) embed the full prompt, the negative prompt, the model checkpoint, the sampler, the seed, the CFG scale and every LoRA into tEXt, zTXt and iTXt text chunks, in cleartext. File X-Ray reads them, including the zlib-compressed ComfyUI workflow graph, and names the generator. A viewer shows none of it; the recipe to reproduce the image is simply sitting inside the file.
PNG's text chunks double as identity. tEXt is where Author, Copyright, Software and Creation Time live, the same identity fields a JPEG keeps in EXIF. Any editor that wrote them, plus a proprietary producer chunk some tools leave behind, name the software pipeline that made or last touched the picture.
Structure a viewer hides also surfaces. An Apple iDOT chunk marks the file as an iOS screenshot or a Photos/Preview export, fingerprinting an Apple device even when no EXIF survives. An animated PNG (APNG) holds more frames than the single image you see. An ImageMagick virtual-canvas (vpAg) chunk records the larger dimensions the picture was cropped from. A stereo (sTER) chunk marks a side-by-side 3D pair. Each one is reported in the scan.
What a PNG usually does not have is worth stating plainly. A plain PNG rarely carries GPS or a maker-note serial, because PNG was never a camera capture format, so if location is your worry a PNG is far less likely to leak it than a JPEG or HEIC. XMP and an ICC colour profile can still be present, and data appended after the final IEND chunk is flagged as a possible hidden payload.
This is a selection. The full field manual documents the fields read from each format.
If it was generated by a local tool like Automatic1111, ComfyUI or NovelAI, almost always yes. Those tools write the full prompt, model, sampler, seed and LoRAs into a PNG text chunk in plain text, and it stays there when you share the file. Drop the PNG here to see the whole recipe.
Usually not. PNG was designed for graphics and screenshots, not camera capture, so it rarely holds a GPS location or a camera serial. It can still carry XMP, an ICC profile, and text chunks with an author or software name.
Re-save it through a tool that rewrites the file without ancillary chunks, or use the clean copy this page generates: it drops the text chunks holding the prompt while leaving the picture itself identical.
It can. An Apple iDOT chunk marks the file as an iOS or macOS screenshot or export, and a Software text chunk or producer chunk names the app that saved it, so even a plain screenshot can fingerprint your platform.
An animated PNG stores several frames while looking like a normal PNG to most viewers, so frames beyond the first, which can include a pre-edit version, travel with the file unseen. The scan reports the frame count.
File X-Ray reads PNG files entirely in your browser - the file never leaves your device. For this format you can also download a clean copy with the metadata removed. Scan a file now.