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BMP

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.