PICtor is an

image file format An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be ...

developed by John Bridges, the principal author of

PCPaint PCPaint was the first IBM PC-based mouse-driven GUI paint program. It was developed by John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram. It was later developed into Pictor Paint. The hardware manufacturer Mouse Systems bundled PCPaint with millions of computer ...

, the first Paintbrush program for the PC. It was also the native file format for Pictor Paint and Graphics Animation System for Professionals (GRASP) (also by Bridges) and became the first widely accepted

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

imaging standard.

Typical file format

The PICtor format is a device-independent raster image format; the file header stores information about the display hardware (screen resolution,

color depth Color depth or colour depth (see spelling differences), also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring ...

and palette information, bit planes, and so on) separately from the actual image information, allowing the image to be properly transferred and displayed on computer systems with different hardware. PIC files commonly stored palette-indexed images ranging from 2 or 4 colors to 16 and 256 colors, although the format has been extended to record true-color (24-bit) images as well. Although it is device-independent, the PIC format also contains additional information about the device that it was created on, which sometimes leads PCPaint Pictor PIC files to be described as a "device-dependent" format. The encoding of a PIC file is also optimized for decoding quickly onto the native device that it was created on. PICtor image data is compressed using an advanced form of encoding, and a parent-child block-based algorithm which collapses a series of consecutive bytes with identical colors into an encoded child block within a parent block while also allowing non-consecutive bytes to be included as raw data within the same parent block. As the file is processed during decoding, the child blocks in each parent block are unpacked either into an off-screen buffer if not displaying in

native mode In computing, native software or data-formats are those that were designed to run on a particular operating system. In a more technical sense, native code is code written specifically for a certain processor. In contrast, cross-platform software ...

, or directly into the display adapter if in native mode (which results in quicker unpacking).

References

External links

Pictor PC Paint File Format SummaryGRASP File Format SummaryPCPAINT/Pictor Page Format Description
Format by John Bridges. Document by Microtex Industries, Inc. Revision Date: 2/9/88
GL — Another animation format
Dr. Martin Reddy (Technical Lead, R & D, Pixar Animation Studios). The Graphics File Formats Page {{Graphics file formats Graphics file formats