BMP
Windows Bitmap
BMP is a simple uncompressed (or lightly compressed) raster format jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM for the Windows and OS/2 operating systems. Its structure is straightforward: a header describing image dimensions and color depth, followed by raw pixel data in rows. Because BMP stores pixels with minimal encoding, files are large compared with JPEG or PNG, but the format is universally readable on Windows and useful where encoding simplicity matters more than file size.
| File extensions | .bmp |
| MIME type | image/bmp |
| Developer | Microsoft / IBM |
| First released | 1988 |
| Category | Images |
| Open standard | Yes |
What opens BMP files
- Microsoft Paint / Windows Photo Viewer
- Adobe Photoshop
- GIMP
- LibreOffice (as embedded image)
Common conversions
Browse File Formats
Reference details for 53 file formats — extensions, MIME types, what opens each one, and how they convert.
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