Retro image file formats

The formats of the classic paint programs on the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Macintosh and PC. They store small palette or black and white images, often with simple run-length compression, and many old games and demos still hold their art in them.

Formats

.IFF

Interleaved Bitmap (IFF ILBM)

Amiga and Deluxe Paint pictures, stored as interleaved bitplanes.

.IMG

GEM Image

GEM desktop bitmaps for PC and Atari ST: a word header and run-length planes.

.KOA

Koala Painter picture

Commodore 64 multicolour bitmaps: bitmap, screen and colour memory in 10003 bytes.

.MAC

MacPaint image

The first Mac’s paint documents: 576 by 720 black and white, PackBits rows.

.NEO

NEOchrome picture

Atari ST low resolution screens from NEOchrome, with colour cycling settings.

.PCX

PC Paintbrush image

ZSoft’s MS-DOS paint format: a 128-byte header and run-length encoded lines.

.PI1

DEGAS picture

Atari ST pictures from DEGAS: a palette and a copy of screen memory.