Talk:Image file format

This article needs a serious update
The title says it all. KSM-2501ZX, IP address:= 200.143.28.19 02:37, 17 June 2007 (UTC) Suggestions - Split into sections 1) header, 2) introduction, 3) modern formats, 4) historical formats, 5) other formats - Standardize the information for each format to include 1) format name, 2) common file extension, 3) date introduced, 4) last updated, 5) International standards, 6) demographics (raster/vecotor, color supported/color depth bits/alpha supported, ... and a link to Wikipedia page for it - Put those into tables with sortible columns

June 2008

If anyone is updating, please include some information about "565" image formats. Thus far, the only info I've found is in forums, from which I've gleaned that it is apparently a format suited to mobile devices. More I can't say. It seems the information would fit in well with this article if anyone knows anything.

Also, links to conversion programs would be welcome.

Comment on PSD
[moved here from top of page -- Elphion (talk) 07:10, 26 September 2012 (UTC)]

Add .PSD? ZenMasterThis (talk) 00:30, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Transparent backgrounds

 * Which formats support transaparent backgrounds, suitable for holding moving sprites for games? And how? --Dagofloreswi (talk) 06:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * For sprites, I would reccomment PNG, BMP, or GIF. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.67.253 (talk) 23:58, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Link to open source image manipulation sytems
Imagemagick, libtiff utility programs, netpbm, pngtools, jpegtran, etc...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.253.16.1 (talk) 22:43, 8 May 2007 (UTC).

Intro is bad
The introduction makes no mention of vector formats or voxels. Rewrite it? (Making sure nobody screams)

If there are kinds of formats i'm ignorant of, please enlighten me. &mdash; Pandion auk 01:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Fractal Image Format, for instance? (mime-type = image/fif, IIRC)
 * signed: KSM-2501ZX, IP address:= 200.143.1.33 11:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Lossy versus lossless
The picture comparison is a good idea, but it's not very effective right now: the two images compared have been shrunk by about 50% in each direction, so the artifacts introduced in the second one aren't apparent unless the image is clicked on and displayed full size.

Also, it doesn't make sense that the "lossy" example is saved in the lossless PNG format instead of JPEG. It might be better to use a very extreme example of lossy compression since the difference isn't that noticeable.Kahlil88 (talk) 15:43, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Similar article
I also note Graphics file format summary. Devil's advocate: do these two pages serve two different purposes? — Jon Dowland 14:59, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I just talked about it on Talk:Graphics file format summary. I think the two can live harmoniously, with a little cleanup and organization — Fitch 19:42, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Other File Types
I was wondering if putting in other files types as in like photoshop types and lesser known types is a good idea. As a side note should the camera information be there as cameras will change over time and alot of the words used to describe that info sound a bit like weasel words. -- × × × jijin+machina  |  Chat Me!  × × × — 01:50, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XR & http://www.openexr.com/ 207.148.174.154 (talk) 05:40, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

would .dgn count? it is used by Bentley Microstation and there is a 2d and a 3d version TheFIST (talk) 13:41, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

raster vs. vector, etc.
Is there any kind-of criteria for which filetypes should be listed here? Currently they're all raster. I'd add vector but I don't know what the principal author's intention is. If this is to be a comparison of bitmap image formats, I'd suggest renaming the article to indicate this.

On the subject of the article's title, it seems that comparison of graphics file formats might be more appropriate, in line with the category Graphics file formats. — Jon Dowland 14:55, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

The heading heirarchy puts individual bitmap formats at the same level as all vector formats. It also says nothing about deep-bitmaps (three dimensional, like DICOM &mdash; w/ voxels). I suggest:


 * Bitmap formats
 * PNG
 * JPEG
 * Vector formats
 * SVG
 * Deep-bitmap formats (or whatever they are called)
 * DICOM
 * DICOM

&mdash; Pandion auk 01:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and reorganize the article now. Feel free to revert it if you think you have a good reason and are willing to debate it, but explain why you do so on the talk page, please. -- Pandion auk 02:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

A few notes
— 212.222.128.110 17:55, October 24, 2005 (PST)
 * TIFF also supports lossy compression. TIFF files can be JPEG compressed.
 * Exif is also used in TIFF files not just JPEG

Vandal
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EPS?
Shouldn't EPS be listed among the formats here? I find professionally it's the more dominant format used. Hoshq 19:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC) Also shouldn't there be a DDS?Araknos (talk) 21:08, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I was pinging in to say the same thing. it's listed under "other 2D vector formats."  My vote is that there should be an "EPS/PDF" subheading first in the vector section, because it is most definitely the most dominant vector format.  Even having worked in reprographics, many people would be surprised that PDF is more popular than DWG for blueprints even! Someone make the change; I don't have time right now.  :)  --Mrcolj (talk) 19:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

History.
Which formats are the oldest? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.122.193 (talk) 07:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions for image file formats
(referencing this discussion on several related pages)

Currently our practice is to name articles on image file formats after the full official name of the file format, which is frequently an expansion of the acronym, such as Graphics Interchange Format. However, I would argue that for many of these articles, the full name is much more rarely used than the file extension to describe the format. For people who haven't heard the name, the name misleadingly sounds as though it describes a class of formats, rather than a particular one. We're also currently quite inconsistent, with articles with various titles such as Graphics Interchange Format, BMP file format, and JPEG.

Naming conventions (common names) advises as a general rule to "[u]se the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." While the shortest possible title (e.g. GIF) would conflict with the names of other topics, I'm instead proposing a move to a title that would be both specific and easily recognizable by a greater proportion of the readership, such as one of the following:


 * GIF image file format
 * GIF (image file format)
 * GIF file format
 * GIF (file format)
 * GIF image format
 * GIF (image format)

A similar move might be proposed for other articles like:
 * Tagged Image File Format
 * Portable Network Graphics
 * Computer Graphics Metafile
 * Portable Document Format

I don't have a strong opinion in either direction, but what is important is that we make a conscious decision about how articles about file formats are named, and apply it consistently. What do you think? Dcoetzee 00:45, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Why do you feel that naming consistency is important? It's not clear that your goal is achievable.  For example, JPEG is about a compression method, and also several file formats; how would you rename it?  Change its scope, too?  Dicklyon (talk) 06:45, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, that's true, JPEG is a bit of a special case. To clarify, I'm not suggesting that the names of all these articles should be structured identically, but rather that any differences are adequately justified. Dcoetzee 07:13, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, I don't see why differences need to be defended, unless there's a specific proposal to rename some. Your note above doesn't specifically say what the differences are, or what articles you'd like to move.  The blue-linked ones seem to be mutually consistent already, and look OK to me. Dicklyon (talk) 15:02, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Personally, I like spelling out the name because it's entirely unambiguous and doesn't require a clumsy "(file format)" after it. The acronyms link directly to the relevant page (in the case of GIF) or to a disambiguation page (in the case of PNG) so anyone searching for those terms would find what they're looking for quite easily. GDallimore (Talk) 18:50, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's true that there's not a discoverability issue (there never is, really, with redirects and disambiguation pages). And the first paragraph immediately clarifies what the article is about - so this isn't a huge deal either way. I just prefer article titles that are immediately recognizable, even at the expensive of being a bit more cumbersome. This is common in other fields, like Madonna (entertainer) instead of Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie. Dcoetzee 01:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Component Missing (Transparency)
I came on Wikipedia for this exact reason: I wanted to check which file formats support transparency. This page does not contain that information, so please add it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.91.150.118 (talk) 19:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Similar Page
Does this page look familiar to anyone? http://www.acasystems.com/en/web-thumb-activex/faq-image-format.htm Sandcat01 (talk) 22:40, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Added 3D Formats
As followers of nVidia and ATI know, hardware and software have been developed to take advantage of 3D still images in the JPS and PNS formats. H3D also exists (though I could not find any foundational documents for it). MPO is a standard proposed by Fuji. MPO is also used on Sony cameras. If anyone else has more information, please add it to the new section. I have no doubt that more hardware will emerge to take advantage of 3D image formats, so I think it deserves its own section.

LaVieEntiere (talk) 06:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge with "Vector graphics markup language"?
There is also an article "Vector graphics markup language". It is essentially a fairly comprehensive list of 2D and 3D vector formats. Therefore, it is overlapping with this article. I suggest to merge the content "Vector graphics markup language" in this article, and redirect it to here. Any objections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karloman2 (talk • contribs) 01:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Seeing as Vector graphics markup language is hardly more than a list, it might as well be merged here. -- Elphion (talk) 07:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Good job, although some copyedit has to be done. mabdul 16:41, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Introduce new type of format?
The article now has two types of image file formats: raster and vector. There are a number of formats that contain both raster and vector classified under vector, e.g. PDF, PPT. (Typically page description languages.) These are not vector formats. The table at the bottom solves this with the type "compound".

I suggest to introduce the type "compound" and clean out the vector formats. This would make the article and the table more consistent.

Comments?--Karloman2 (talk) 17:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I think if you look carefully at the list *many* of the "vector" formats (WMF for example) support some sort of embedded raster. Should they all be moved under compound? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.32.183.252 (talk) 15:03, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I’m trying to send my documents to payments@rewardscasino.com Betsykotak (talk) 16:27, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Last sentence of TIFF segment...
This seems grammatically incorrect: "This is why easier alternatives become popular currently, e.g. IFF-RGFX". Also, this last sentence sounds like a personal opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.140.188.38 (talk) 04:23, 26 September 2012 (UTC)


 * You're correct on both counts. The entire paragraph is unnecessary, since HDR formats are discussed in a separate section, so I've removed it. -- Elphion (talk) 07:05, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

ICO?
There should be a section about .ico files

I think they're just BMPs with extra data in the header. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.67.253 (talk) 23:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

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AVIF?
Any reason AVIF isn't here? I think At least the HEIF section should mention HEIC and AVIF. -- Vonfraginoff (talk) 12:20, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

.qoi format?
The format itself is relatively new, about a year old. It's file sizes are similar to PNG, but compresses and decompresses much faster.

Here's the Wikipedia page about it. 63.249.39.68 (talk) 07:42, 16 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Hello Tiffany and Adam 174.240.251.9 (talk) 03:20, 10 April 2023 (UTC)