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| Name | PCX | BMP |
| Full name | Paintbrush Bitmap Image | BMP - Microsoft Windows bitmap |
| File extension | .pcx | .bmp, .dib |
| MIME type | application/pcx, application/x-pcx, image/pcx, image/x-pc-paintbrush, image/x-pcx, zz-application/zz-winassoc-pcx | image/bmp, image/x-bmp |
| Developed by | ZSoft Corporation | Microsoft |
| Type of format | Image File | Raster graphics |
| Description | The .pcx file extension was developed in the 1980s by the ZSoft Corporation. It has since been superseded by other image formats such as png, giff and jpeg. The file type is used rarely at present, however certain scanning devices still output to the .pcx format. | The BMP file format, also known as bitmap image file or device independent bitmap (DIB) file format or simply a bitmap, is a raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images, independently of the display device, especially on Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems. |
| Technical details | The PCX format was one of the first common bitmap image formats. A PCX file comprises of three elements: the header, image data and the 256 colour palette. PCX utiises a lossless compression technique. The compression technique used is not processor intensive which was an advantage at the time of development due to the relatively limited processing power of hardware in the 1980s. | The bitmap image file consists of fixed-size structures as well as variable-size structures appearing in a predetermined sequence. Many different versions of some of these structures can appear in the file, due to the long evolution of this file format. |
| Associated programs | Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer | Microsoft Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, the GIMP, GraphicConverter, Helicon Filter, ImageMagick, Inkscape, IrfanView, Pixel image editor, Paint.NET. |
| Wiki | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCX | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format |