{"id":6044,"date":"2014-04-28T00:01:03","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T07:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6044"},"modified":"2014-04-26T14:29:38","modified_gmt":"2014-04-26T21:29:38","slug":"graphics-file-format-memory-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6044","title":{"rendered":"Graphics File Format Memory Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the early computers gained enough oomph to sport graphics, it became evident for some method to store those images. Thus was born the graphics file format.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nToday, three graphics file formats dominate the Internet:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>PNG<\/code>. The &#8220;ping&#8221; file format is perhaps the most common, offering good image quality in a small file size. <code>PNG<\/code> is the go-to graphics file format.<\/li>\n<li><code>JPG<\/code> \/ <code>JPEG<\/code>. The &#8220;jay-peg&#8221; file format offers compression, which makes it ideal for the Internet, although <code>PNG<\/code> has gained in popularity.<\/li>\n<li><code>GIF<\/code>. The &#8220;jiff&#8221; file format is low resolution, but it has the advantage of being able to store animations. <code>GIF<\/code> files today are used primarily to display animations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Additional file formats are available, although mostly for professionals:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>TIFF<\/code>. The TIFF file format is used for image editing. The files are huge, which is why they&#8217;re shunned on the Internet.<\/li>\n<li><code>BMP<\/code>. Windows bitmap files are used in Windows, although PNG is rapidly replacing them.<\/li>\n<li><code>CRW<\/code>. The digital Camera Raw file format represents the images absolute resolution without any compression. It&#8217;s used primarily in professional photography.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m probably missing a few file formats. That happens. But what I&#8217;m truly missing are the graphics file formats that were popular years ago &#8212; acronyms and names that I once knew readily, but which have now fallen by the wayside.<\/p>\n<p>For example, <code>PCX<\/code> was once <em>the<\/em> PC computer graphics file format. The <code>PCX<\/code> format was native to a program called PC Paintbrush, which was incredibly popular back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Almost all of the illustrations in my books were stored in the <code>PCX<\/code> format.<\/p>\n<p>In Figure 1, you see a <code>PCX<\/code> file that Photoshop was able to open. I converted the <code>PCX<\/code> into the <code>PNG<\/code> format for display on the web. I suppose this means the format isn&#8217;t truly dead, but aside from programs like Photoshop the format is not longer supported. Or, to put it another way, no software today generates <code>PCX<\/code> files.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6046\" style=\"width: 601px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6046\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/0428-figure1.png\" alt=\"Figure 1. This was originally Figure 11-1 from my book Advanced MS-DOS Batch File Programming, Fourth Edition, published by TAB\/Windcrest.\" width=\"591\" height=\"410\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6046\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/0428-figure1.png 591w, https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/0428-figure1-300x208.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 591px) 100vw, 591px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6046\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. This was originally Figure 11-1 from my book <em>Advanced MS-DOS Batch File Programming<\/em>, Fourth Edition, published by TAB\/Windcrest.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The original Macintosh graphics program was MacPaint, which saved its files in the MacPaint file format. (The Mac didn&#8217;t use filename extensions.) The program was discontinued in 1989.<\/p>\n<p>One of the Mac graphics file formats I remember using was <code>PICT<\/code>, which was short for picture. The <code>PICT<\/code> format was dropped when OS X was originally developed back in 2001.<\/p>\n<p>Are there other graphics file format tombstones? You bet! I just can&#8217;t recall them all, mostly because these formats came and went. In fact, unlike today, graphics programs of yesterday <em>all<\/em> used their own proprietary file formats. Common graphics file formats were rare. That explains the abundance of graphics file conversion utilities way back when.<\/p>\n<p>With the dominance of <code>JPG<\/code> starting in the 1990s, things have become more stable. Yet they&#8217;re only stable until the next, best graphics file format comes out. That could happen any day now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On your way through the digital desert you&#8217;ll find lining the information superhighway tombstones of graphics file formats long forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6044"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6052,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6044\/revisions\/6052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}