User manual

Functional Descriptions 385

PCX (*.pcx)

Advantage:

The PCX image format is one of the oldest raster formats. It was originally designed by ZSoft to

be used by PC Paintbrush for MS-DOS. Microsoft later acquired the right to use the PCX format

for Microsoft Paintbrush for Windows indirectly increasing the format's popularity. PCX can be

used for graphic data operations.

Disadvantage:

PCX does not compress images very effectively, but it retains all image information. As such,

PCX files are usually very large and are unsuitable for very large details. Due to its inefficient

compression scheme and the advent of other image formats, PCX has lost some of its

popularity.

TGA (*.tga)

Advantage:

This format (Targa or TGA) supports any image dimensions and color depth of 1 to 32 bits. As

the image format's popularity increased, this format, TGA (Targa), has been migrated to many

other platforms and applications. The Targa format is used by several high-end paint and CAD

programs.

The TGA format is a format for defining raster or bitmap images. Targa supports color maps,

alpha channel, gamma value, postage stamp image, textual information and developer-definable

data. Unlike other image formats, there are relatively few variations. Various compression

models are supported. Targa images exist in both compressed and uncompressed formats.

The TGA format is probably the most universally supported 24-bit and 32-bit file format for PC

applications. The 32-bit Targa format contains 24 bits of color data and 8-bits of transparency

data. Color support ranges from black and white, indexed and RGB color.

Disadvantage:

Since Windows does not recognize 16-bit and 32-bit depths, some applications may treat them

as 24- bit images. A 16-bit image will be up-graded to a 24-bit image while a 32-bit image will be

downgraded to a 24-bit image.