PNG-supporting Scientific and Graphing Applications

Scientific, Plotting and Graphing Applications with PNG Support

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 DNA and RNA sequences 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 [Research Systems] (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.)
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 26 August 2009.