Overview of Supported Output Formats

BMP is a family of raster image file formats primarily used on Microsoft Windows and is also supported in other desktop operating systems like macOS and Linux. BMP's are usually uncompressed resulting to large file sizes albeit being lossless in quality; Due to their simple structure, BMP's are widely compatible with Windows-based programs.

Device-Independent bitmap (DIB) is a family of raster image file formats which has an identical structure to bitmap files (BMP). It can store both monochrome and color image data in different bit depths.

DOCX is the default file format of documents created with MS Word starting with the 2007 version. This format is made up of XML component files contained in a ZIP-like format.

EMF (Enhanced Windows MetaFile) is a vector format and an improved version of WMF which can store 32-bit RGB image data. Because of its capacity to store large data, EMF delivers crisp and rich details to images which is suitable for graphic design and printing industries.

EPS is short for Encapsulated PostScript. It was created by Adobe back in 1992. It’s a standard graphics file format intended for placing images within a PostScript Document.

The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is in normal use limited to an 8-bit palette, or 256 colors (while 24-bit color depth is technically possible). GIF is most suitable for storing graphics with few colors, such as simple diagrams, shapes, logos, and cartoon style images, as it uses LZW lossless compression, which is more effective when large areas have a single color, and less effective for photographic or dithered images. Due to its animation capabilities, it is still widely used to provide image animation effects, despite its low compression ratio compared to modern video formats.

The ICO file format is an image file format for computer icons in Microsoft Windows. ICO files contain one or more small images at multiple sizes and color depths, such that they may be scaled appropriately.

Maya IFF is a raster image file format associated with Autodesk Maya graphics software, originally developed by Alias Systems. It uses a variant of the IFF container format. It may also be known as TDI Explore (Thompson Digital Image) format.

IFF (Interchange File Format) is a universal format introduced by Electronic Arts to accommodate different types of data. IFF is widely used by graphics programs in MS-DOS, MS Windows, Mac and UNIX. An IFF file is built up from chunks which is closely related to TLV representation.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a lossy compression method; JPEG-compressed images are usually stored in the JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format) file format. The JPEG/JFIF filename extension is JPG or JPEG. Nearly every digital camera can save images in the JPEG/JFIF format, which supports eight-bit grayscale images and 24-bit color images (eight bits each for red, green, and blue). JPEG applies lossy compression to images, which can result in a significant reduction of the file size.

JPEGXR (JPEG extended range) is a still-image compression standard and file format for continuous tone photographic images, based on technology originally developed and patented by Microsoft under the name HD Photo (formerly Windows Media Photo). It supports both lossy and lossless compression.

JPEG 2000 is a compression standard enabling both lossless and lossy storage. The compression methods used are different from the ones in standard JFIF/JPEG; they improve quality and compression ratios, but also require more computational power to process. JPEG 2000 also adds features that are missing in JPEG. It is not nearly as common as JPEG, but it is used currently in professional movie editing and distribution (some digital cinemas, for example, use JPEG 2000 for individual movie frames).

PCX was the native image format of a DOS-based program PC Paintbrush from ZSoft Corporation, and was for a time (especially the late 1980s) a very popular image format among users of IBM PC compatibles and the PC/MS-DOS operating system. Much clip art was distributed in this format. However, it was tied closely to platform-specific attributes such as the particular graphic modes available in early PCs, and later lost ground to more platform-independent graphic formats like GIF, JPEG, and PNG.

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe in the 1990s to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it.

Portable Network Graphics is a raster-graphics file-format that supports lossless data compression. PNG supports palette-based images (with palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), grayscale images (with or without alpha channel for transparency), and full-color non-palette-based RGB/RGBA images (with or without alpha channel). The PNG working group designed the format for transferring images on the Internet, not for professional-quality print graphics.

Netpbm format is a family including the portable pixmap file format (PPM), the portable graymap file format (PGM) and the portable bitmap file format (PBM). These are either pure ASCII files or raw binary files with an ASCII header that provide very basic functionality and serve as a lowest common denominator for converting pixmap, graymap, or bitmap files between different platforms. Several applications refer to them collectively as PNM (Portable aNy Map).

A PSD file stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is in contrast to many other file formats (e.g., .JPG or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality. A PSD file has a maximum height and width of 30,000 pixels, and a length limit of two gigabytes.

Sun Raster, or Sun Rasterfile, is an image file format associated with Sun operating systems. It supports grayscale, paletted, and full color images. Images may be uncompressed, or use RLE compression.

TGA (Targa) is a raster image file format developed by Truevision, Inc. (then named EPICenter) in 1984. Designed for use with MS-DOS color applications, TGA is the native format of Truevision's TARGA (Truevision Advanced Raster Graphics Adapter) boards, which were some of the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support 24-bit RGB color encoding (sometimes termed truecolor). TGA images are normally either uncompressed, or compressed with run-length encoding.

The TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) format is a flexible format that normally saves eight bits or sixteen bits per color (red, green, blue) for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, respectively, usually using either the TIFF or TIF filename extension. TIFFs can be lossy or lossless, depending on the technique chosen for storing the pixel data. TIFF image format is not widely supported by web browsers. TIFF remains widely accepted as a photograph file standard in the printing business. TIFF can handle device-specific color spaces, such as the CMYK defined by a particular set of printing press inks. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software packages commonly generate some form of TIFF image (often monochromatic) for scanned text pages.

WBMP (Wireless Bitmap, or WAP Bitmap) is an image file format associated with WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). It stores uncompressed bi-level raster images.

WebP is an image file format developed by Google, primarily intended for use on web pages. It can use either lossy or lossless compression. Its lossy compression is based on portions of the VP8 video compression format. It uses the RIFF container format.

Windows Metafile (WMF) is a vector graphics format native to Microsoft Windows 3.x. It stores a list of commands which, when executed, generate an image. The term Windows Metafile usually refers specifically to WMF format, though it can also be an umbrella term that includes the successor format, Enhanced Metafile (EMF).