Other graphics file formats

There are many graphics file formats around, but there are few of them that you could see here and there. Let's see them:

BMP

This is the Microsoft Windows native bitmap format for images up to 24 bits. Commpression is optional, but usually turned on.

PNG

The Portable Network Graphics format (pronounced "ping"), was developed to replace the GIF format (whose LZW compression is owned by Unisys and which can't be included in commercial software without paying license fees to the owners). In fact it is free. It handles 1 to 48 bits images, and is a lossless, well-compressed format like GIF. Unfortunately it isn't very popular yet.

TGA

TGA stands for Truevision Graphics Array. It supports 1 to 32 bits images and professional features like an alpha (mask) channel, gamma settings and a built-in thumbnail image.

TIF

TIFF stands for Tag Image File Format. TIFF was a large, unwieldy, 24 bits format until version 6 came out, which supported compression. Anyway the compression algorithm is LZW (owned and licensed out by Unisys).

WMF

This is Windows Metafile format, which is an intermediate vector format for Windows programs to use when interchanging data and, generally speaking, should never be seen anywhere else.