Talk:Comparison of graphics file formats

message: There is a more extensive list on Comparison of graphics file formats. There should also be distinctions made between native and open standard file formats. Notes about interactivity (e.g. Flash Action Script) should be included. Oicumayberight 08:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge This

message: On the comparison page it lists PNG as an HDR format. This is wrong as High Dynamic Range Imaging refers to image formats that can store colors in a brighter range than standard LDR (Low Dynamic Range) formats (BMP, TGA etc) and is not to do with precision. Whilst PNG can store images in 16 bits per channel integer mode, the color range is still limited to computer monitor black and white (0-1 range in floating point). HDR images are commonly stored in a floating point or logarithmic (as in cineon) format and can have brightness values above monitor white and sometimes below monitor black (and sometimes even negative). e.g. Cineon is used to store film images and can be 13.5 times brighter than a monitor. So i will correct it and add a note to 'see discussion'. --Dns13 (talk) 20:24, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  PNG is not a High Dynamic Range Image Format 

message: Couldn't help but notice: Vector file formats listed on Graphics file format summary are missing here.  I'll add some, others please chime in ...
--Vituperex 11:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This page should be split in vector and raster graphics formats. Also there should be a link at the top to the other comparison, so people that do not know the difference between raster and vector can see the other formats comparison.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.27.85.220 (talk) 17:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vector file formats? 

message: I'm fairly certain, though not absolutely, that TGA isn't a patented format. It can be either uncompressed or compressed using RLE.--Frankjr1284 18:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  TGA Patented? 

message: * DjVu. DjVu has DjVuPhoto.
* What about Encapsulated Postscript (EPS)? Pat Berry 15:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other Formats 

message: I vote against including MIME types in the comparison. They're also in Graphics file format summary and cause problems there because of not being standarized. -- Peter 19:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  MIME Types 

message: Can someone please verify the existence of 64- and 128-bit color?  I don't think they exist.  Most formats that support 48-bit color (16 bits per channel), only support 8 bits for alpha blending (for a total of 56 bits per pixel).  Similarly, if a format supported 32 bits per channel, the result would be 96-bit color; with an 8-bit alpha channel, the result would be 104 total bits per pixel.—Kbolino 19:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Answered my own question.  The PNG standard specifies that the alpha channel must be as wide as the color channels.—Kbolino 20:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you consider a CMYK image in 32 bits-per-channel with alpha that would be 160 bits-per-pixel. also i read somewhere weta digital (the effects company) may use 64 bits-per-channel images, so rgba would be 256 bit!. (is it wrong to add to a year old thread?) Dns13 12:19, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  64- and 128-bit color 

message: I do believe (and, as anyone can see above, my beliefs have a degree of inaccuracy) that SVG is a vector format.  It cannot be exclusively raster, and as far as I know, it cannot embed raster images (only link to them).  So, it is therefore an exclusively vector format.—Kbolino 21:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it can embed. --80.63.213.182 09:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SVG vector/raster 

message: Have we forgoten a format so often used? I don't know it's info though...--Mac Lover 02:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whatever Happened to .ico? 

message: I am not sure about the whole specifications but JPEG is now available in a new JPEG-HDR format that can be read either by a classical JPEG reader that will only get the LDR information or by a JPEG-HDR reader that will restitute the full HDR information...
:Yes, there is an unofficial JPEG-HDR format created by Greg Ward. --Dns13 (talk) 13:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  JPEG-HDR 

message: It would be nice to have a column which gives the maximum image dimensions (and perhaps file size) allowed by the format. --Klaws 07:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do any formats have maximum sizes? Althepal 03:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there are defined and implied (implementational) dimensional, resolution and data size limitations in all formats. nemo 19:58, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

text: This is currently being addressed by the BigTIFF rework, see . nemo 19:58, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maximum Dimensions and File Sizes 

message: The dispute has ended. Forgent patent was found invalid; even if it was valid, it would have expired by now. I tried to change it to Invalid, but it justs says No. Can someone fix that for me, or something. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bobby D. DS. (talk • contribs) 06:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  JPEG Patent 

message: This is just an idea, could we maybe categorise these formats by how commonly used they are? I know nothing about programming and such, but I got kind of miffed having to scroll through what is apparently several pages of formats that I've never heard of just to find a comparison between .png and .jpg. Maybe put the most common (.png, .tiff, .jpg, .gif, .psd, .pdf, .bmp, .ai, .svg, etc) at the top, than the rest alphabetically? Might make it more user-friendly.
FireFly5 23:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorising? 

message: Why patented = no is red and yes green?
What does the patent add to the file format?
As green has a good conotation and patented formats are more diffucult to use, shouldn't patednted yes be in red andno in green? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.89.44.229 (talk • contribs) 
:This topic has been discussed in depth (with strawpolls) on multiple pages.  The current consensus is that green indicates yes and red indicates no and that there is no "value judgment" intended by them (even if there was: patents aren't "good" or "bad" and neither is it necessarily good or bad that a format might have or not have a particular feature listed under "technical details). --Karnesky 20:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The obvious thing to do would be to switch the column to "unpatented", "patent free" or some variation, allowing Yes  (green) to mean "good" (for those who don't hold the patent) and No (red) to mean "bad", thus keeping everyone happy... -- Southen 07:26, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree. But making Yes red and No green is also common practice (Comparison of file sharing applications, Spyware/Adware column). _Vi 16:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  patented 

message: I'd like to suggest some improvements so that the tables can be read easier and quicker...
*Juggling the columns around on the technical details table so that related columns are grouped. so HDR is next to Color depth & Indexed mode. And then Meta data is next to Color management and Extendable.
*As the tech table is looking a bit cramped how about moving the Raster/Vector column to the general info table.
*I also think that the ' yes, no, yes, no ' in columns are a bit confusing as you have to scroll back and forth to the top to see which info it means. How about using some 3 or 4 letter shorthand instead so that the columns are self explanatory. e.g. IDX, HDR, TRN, Pages, ANIM, LAY, C-M, META, XTEN,... when it means Yes?.
I'm suggesting this now as I have info on over 40 formats that would be a nightmare to edit after adding to this page.
Dns13 13:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  improvement ideas 

message: # there appears to be lots of new additions to the general info table. but its probably better to add them to the technical details page at the same time otherwise the format seems only half covered (that's if they even have the info for some of these obscure formats).
# adding video formats may be a bit odd trying to fit into the graphics file format comparison. someone added MNG, but they may be better off having their own comparison page.
# also someone has suggessted (by the page history) that PNG is an hdr format. i looked at the libpng link and there is nothing to suggest that it's hdr. png does support 16 bit per channel (as well as the normal 8 bit per channel) but this doesn't refer to brighter than white or darker than black colours. it is possible to use an hdr icc color profile (such as the orphanage's log profile) but then this could also be done with jpeg2000, etc. hdr is more commonly used just with floating point or cineon images.
Dns13 12:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lots of new additions... 

message: Shouldn't HD Photo be renamed to the JPEG XR name? --RobIII 13:15, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The pages for JPEG XR and HD Photo seem to keep being renamed back and forth. I think it's not completely standardised yet, so it's probably better to leave it as HD Photo for the moment. --Dns13 (talk) 13:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  HD Photo 

message: The table is ugly, can this be rewritten in prose eventually?  Yes, it can.  I think it should.
Also, it would be great to include information: "Does X format support alpha channels?". User:Pedant 21:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a column for whether it supports Transparency although some formats support multiple Alpha channels. --Dns13 (talk) 13:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  What's the difference between Transparency/Translucency and Alpha Channels?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by !!!Chris!!! (talk • contribs) 14:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: GIF, for example, has support for transparency, but does not have an alpha channel.  See Alpha compositing#Other transparency methods -- ShinmaWa(talk) 16:20, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  alpha 

message: I was surprised to see that there was no mention of the .EPS format.  Anyone else?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Allaccesspasses (talk • contribs) 03:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to put too fine a point on it ... but which EPS format?!?! Long story short, there is no actual, specific EPS format definition. Every new situation (eg, a new OS) generated a new format. And specific hardware cheats were sometimes embedded just adding to the misery. A careful read through the Wikipedia article on Encapsulated PostScript will illustrate just a few of the problems in definition, handling and output of EPS files. Personal experience with them has led me to avoid them like the plague.But I digress. In all fairness, EPS files are listed. Check out Encapsulated PostScript (found just below Dr Halo on the list). BTW, to all you EPS lovers heading for the reply button: don't bother. I don't care. My life is complicated enough without having to worry if I've got the correct OS version running on the correct CPU chip, using the correct serial port driver version and serial port UART chip, and the correct cable arrangement, and the correct firmware in the correct printer to make that EPS file print. Been there, done that, never again. La la, la la la ... :-) JimScott (talk) 14:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  EPS Format 

message: I believe not. The article Scalable Vector Graphics instead seems to indicate that SVG can be animated through foreign functionalities, such as SMIL or EcmaScript. As regards EcmaScript: the animation requires a browser, or else cannot be run. As regards SMIL: since the XML format family is explicitly designed thusly, a hybrid SMIL/SVG document can express an animation, but that is not SVG, that is SMIL/SVG. I can be disproved, if there is a statement in any SVG specification that explicitly explains SMIL to be a part of SVG. Said: Rursus ☻ 12:06, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I forgot to stress: EcmaScript runs via DOM to animate. Any animator must be able to erect a DOM of the document in order to animate correctly, and DOMs differ from browser to browser, which makes EcmaScript incompatible (as a general principle - towards itself, towards it's brothers, sisters, mom and dad; all "incompatible" languages inherently sucx). Said: Rursus ☻ 12:11, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

text: I've changed "yes" to "no". If you dislike, just revert. Don't bother too much! Said: Rursus ☻ 14:05, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: SVG is animated?

message: Could someone add to the table a column showing file size of a given image (say an 8 or 10 Megapixel Photo) saved in the different formats.  The idea being that one could decide on file format based on information which already appears and file size which I don't see on the table.--MK96789 (talk) 10:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:NOR.  Furthermore, this would be biased against vector formats & may be biased against lossless formats if we were not careful.  It might be hard to have a good metric for the amount of compression to choose for the lossy formats and what type of compression to use in formats that support multiple types. --Karnesky (talk) 12:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Relative File Size

message: The "Type" column seems very very informal to me.  Most of the entries have a question mark associated with them, and those that do have "types" have labels like "classic" and "next-gen".  What/who defines these labels and what do they mean?  I thought that information in Wikipedia had to be referenced.  And I'm not even sure I agree with the definitions offered!  Who else would claim Gimp's brush format to be "classic"?  Does anything other than the Gimp even use it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.203.32.7 (talk) 16:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Couldn't agree with you more, for all the reasons you cited.   I've removed the column until someone can define the values in this column, explain their criteria, and source the results.  -- ShinmaWa(talk) 16:11, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Types?

message: Why is there a supported column for 3 products but not for the most relevant product in image formats namely Adobe Photoshop. It is not clear why those 3 products are chosen. hAl (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There 3 products includes free/opensource 'library' and those libraries are used by many programs including web service.--211.131.89.28 (talk) 05:51, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

text: It is not clear why these products are included on this page at all. In my opinion this information is not useful here. The websites of graphics software all state their supported filetypes. The list of products you could add to this page is nearly endless. This article is about file formats and not about applications. If there is a need for an article which lists the file formats supported by different applications, I suggest that a new article be created for that purpose. For these reasons I have removed the product support columns. --Gcalis (talk) 08:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supported colums in table 

message: According to the JPEG 2000 standard part 6, "JPM can be used to store multi-page documents with many objects per page." The Technical details table shows JPEG 2000 | Multi-page | No. There is probably limited vendor support for this feature. Should it show in this table as available?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Historyfiend2000 (talk • contribs) 15:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  JPEG 2000 Multi-Page 

message: It would be handy if different file types were illustrated in picture form for comparison to. I am showing jpg, png, gif, pdf and xcf here. 
  
  
--Snow storm in Eastern Asia (talk) 16:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible illustrations

message: Does TGA indeed support a color depth of 1bpp, as mentioned in the Technical Detail section? A value of 1bpp seems perfectly possible with type 3 only (in the header: no color map, no RLE, 1bpp), but the page about TGA itself mentiones a byte of greys (8bpp) instead of 1bpp when type 3 is used.
Developers I've contacted assume(d) 8-bits instead of 1 to save a true black&white file. The page about TGA isn't consistent with this color depth of 1 (or less than 8).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.53.88.202 (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical details TGA 

message: I came to this page with the intent to find graphic file formats from the 1980ies.
Therefore I was hoping to find a column date of first public release, possibly also one column date of latest revision, as in i.e. Comparison of file archivers, which I would have used for sorting, to achieve my research goal.
How realistic is it to implement this here?
--PutzfetzenORG (talk) 10:09, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date column(s) 

message: There should probably be a column for Lossy/Lossless instead of this fairly important distinction being mixed in with algorithm acronyms that may or may not have their own page.--24.145.145.82 (talk) 12:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table suggestion. 

message: Is there a reason that WebP is not on this list? I'm surprised no one has thought to add it yet so I'm wondering is there a reason? I'll add it after a few days if there's no objections.  Myutwo33 (talk) 11:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  WebP 

message: A column called Density could be added to the table under technical details. That column would list per format whether that format supports storage of density in DPI, PPI or none. Justification for adding this are the following. An overview of this is rare to find on the internet. Many novice users have no idea if a certain format supports this or not. Some users of Photoshop or Illustrator do experience storage of density in formats that officially not support this, hence there is much to learn from an objective overview in what is supported and what software actually uses it. Turns out that web browsers do not interpret density at all for displaying PNG or JPG. In short, adding this column would help many users by offering a combinations of information from different sources, which are not that easy to find. Would it be OK and supported by other editors here to start adding this column? Pander (talk) 18:59, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Added it to a more suitable page, please see Pixel_density#Image_file_format_support Pander (talk) 14:12, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Density 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Would it be worth adding to the table whether a format supports EXIF metadata? SharkD  Talk  03:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There is already a Metadata column; it could contain "Yes (Exif)" if the format supports Exif metadata. -LiberatorG (talk) 01:48, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  EXIF metadata 

message: HEIC and AVIF are new formats  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:6D40:3491:A701:18B4:BCEB:8EDC:FDC (talk) 13:28, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  HEIC and AVIF are new formats 

message: Transparency support - This format supports single colour transparency or stencil masks. Rarely used for full size pictures, but common for brushes (mini picture cut outs typically used for sprites in games) 81.25.56.156 (talk) 05:02, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  ILBM/IFF