Graphic File Types

Rick JollyWEB 140 – 800

Animation Shop

(.psp)

Paint Shop Pro animation file (Paint Shop Pro Products)

CALS Raster

(.cal, .cals)

CALS files are used mainly for document imaging and only store black-and-white, 1-bit image data.

CompuServe Graphics Interchange

(.gif)

Developed by CompuServe, GIF uses a palette of up to 256 colors and is a popular choice for Web site graphics.

Deluxe Paint

(.lbm)

Used by Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint package. LBM files use an IFF Bitmap header and IFF color map. As Electronic Arts progressed towards being a game developer, Deluxe Paint was aban

Encapsulated Post Script

(.sps, .ai, .ps)

EPS is supported by most illustration and page layout programs.

GEM Paint

(.img)

The GEM image format is the saved bitmap file used by GEM Paint and Ventura Publisher

Interchange File Format

(.iff)

IFFs are 8 to 24 bit indexed color graphics or 8 bit interleave audio and are used on the Classic Amiga platform. Audio IFF files usually use a .snd extension.

JPEG

(.jpg, .jpe, .jpeg)

Joint Photographer's Exchange graphic (JPEG) is a compressed raster image format file. JPEGs are popular for Web-based distribution and display of photographic quality images.

JPEG 2000

(.jp2, .jc2, .j2k, .jpc, .jpx)

The JPEG-2000 image compression system has a rate-distortion advantage over the original JPEG. It allows extraction of different resolutions, pixel fidelities, regions of interest, components, and more, all from a single compressed bitstream. JPEG-2000 also has options for lossy and lossless compression.

Macintosh PICT

(.pct)

Apple Macintosh Metafile supported by most Mac programs.

MacPaint

(.mac)

MAC files are used in the Macintosh MacPaint application. The MAC format requires always an image width of 576 pixels and a height of 720 lines.

Microsoft Paint

(.msp)

Mono bitmap format used mainly for Black-and-white drawings and clip art.

PhotoShop

(.psd)

Photoshop file (Adobe Photoshop Products)

Portable Bitmap

(.pbm)

Files are created by Jef Poskanzer's PBMPlus Portable Bitmap Utilities. The portable bitmap format is a lowest common denominator monochrome file format.

Portable Greymap

(.pgm)

Files are created by Jef Poskanzer's PBMPlus Portable Bitmap Utilities. The portable graymap format is a lowest common denominator grayscale file format.

Portable Pixelmap

(.ppm)

by Jef Poskanzer's PBMPlus Portable Bitmap Utilities. The portable pixmap format is a lowest common denominator color image file format.

RAW Graphics File Format

(.raw)

A flexible basic file format for transferring files between applications and computer platforms. This format consists of a stream of bytes describing the color information in the file.

SG Image File

(.rgb, .bw, .rgba, .sgi)

SG is the file extension for the Image file associated with SnapGraphix.

Sun Raster

(.ras)

The Sun Raster format is the native bitmap format on the Sun UNIX platforms. It is a simple bitmap format with wide distribution as it is supported by Sun OS and many UNIX based applications.

Tagged Image File Format

(.tif, .tiff)

TIFF is mainly used for exchanging documents between different applications and different computer platforms. It supports the LZW method compression for image types.

Truevision Targa

(.tga)

Developed by Truevision Inc. TGA files is a file format that will support images suitable for display on Targa hardware but is supported by many applications on a wide range of platforms.

Windows Meta File

(.wmf)

Graphics file format used to exchange graphics information between Microsoft Windows applications.

Windows Run-Length Encoded

(RLE)

The RLE format is a variation of the Windows BMP format that offers asome image compression. In Windows it can be used to create compressed wallpaper files or to replace the opening Windows logo screen.

Windows or OS/2 Bitmap

(.bmp)

Windows Bitmap file with color options of Mono, 4-bit, 8-bit, 24-bit. Compression is RLE, Huffman 1D, or uncompressed. This format is supported by Intel machines running OS/2, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, Windows 95, and MS-DOS.

Wireless Bitmap

(.wbmp, .wbm)

WBMP is WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) graphic format optimized for mobile computing devices.

Z Soft Paintbrush

(.pcx)

Bitmap graphics file format, originally developed by Z-Soft for use with PC-Paintbrush. This file format is now used and generated by many applications and scanners.

Raster vs Vector

Raster (bitmap) graphics are stored as pixels. When

they are viewed together they form a picture.

Vector graphics are drawings stored as

objects, such as lines and curves.

Inkscape would be a vector graphics editor. Gimp and Photoshop would be used for

raster images.