About

The idea

As a kid you could press a wad of putty onto a comic strip and lift the ink right off, a perfect little copy you could carry in your pocket and hand to a friend. PuttyPNG is that trick for data. Press whatever you have (a note, a form, a game save, a whole file) into an ordinary picture, and hand the picture to anyone. Because so many places let you paste a lossless PNG without mangling it, the picture becomes a friendly, universal envelope: no server, no link that expires, no account to sign into. An image that carries exactly what you put in it.

The author

PuttyPNG is made by Aaron Michael Harris. It is a fun, open project. Use it, remix it, decorate your PuttyPNGs however you like, and build your own things on top of the protocol.

License

PuttyPNG is released under the MIT License.

MIT License Copyright (c) 2026 Aaron M. Harris Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.