MagicViewer reads and writes images and information about the image in these file formats: JPEG, EXIF, GIF, TIFF, PNG, BMP/DIB, PCX, PICT and TARGA.

JPEG (.jpg)

JPEG is the most popular format for photographic images used on the Web and by digital cameras. It supports full color and grayscale images and produces good quality images with small file size. However, this format uses a lossy compression algorithm, which means that it can degrade the image quality and make it look blocky or blurry every time the image is saved. You should avoid repeated saving operations with this format.

EXIF (.jpg)

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It is a standard used by most digital cameras to store information such as the camera's settings at the time the picture was taken. EXIF information is wrapped in the JPEG format.

GIF, Animated GIF (.gif)

GIF is the most popular format for graphics, logos, and icons used on the Web. It uses a color palette with a maximum of 256 distinct colors and supports transparency. Multiple images or frames can be stored in one GIF file to make an animation.

TIFF (.tif)

TIFF is used by FAX machine or scanners to store images ranging from black and white to full color with alpha channel. It is also used by digital cameras to save the highest quality pictures for its lossless compression mechanism and wide application support. A TIFF file can contain multiple images.

PNG (.png)

PNG format supports black and white, grayscale, palette based, and full color images. It also supports transparency with palette based images and alpha channel with full color images.

BMP/DIB (.bmp, .dib)

BMP is the image format used by the Microsoft Windows Operating System. It compresses 4-bit and 8-bit images using Run Length Encoding (RLE) algorithm, and stores black and white and full color images uncompressed. It supports alpha channel with full color images.

PCX (.pcx)

PCX supports 1, 4, 8 bit palette based images and full color images.

PICT (.pct)

PICT is the image format used by the Apple Macintosh computers. It supports all color modes and alpha channel with full color images. MagicViewer does not support vector-based graphics stored in this format and will give an error when opening such files.

TARGA (.tga)

TrueVision Targa format is designed to store images captured from video hardware. It supports 8-bit and full color images with alpha channel.

File format feature comparison table

Format	Extension	Supported color modes	Mask1	Alpha2	File comments
JPEG, EXIF	.jpg	full color, grayscale	No	No	Yes
GIF	.gif	1, 4, 8 bit indexed color	GIF89a	No	GIF89a
TIFF	.tif	1, 4, 8 bit indexed, full color	No	Yes	Yes
PNG	.png	1, 4, 8 bit indexed, full color	Yes	Yes	Yes
BMP	.bmp, .dib	1, 4, 8 bit indexed, full color	No	Yes	No
PCX	.pcx	1, 4, 8 bit indexed, full color	No	No	No
PICT	.pct	1, 4, 8 bit indexed, full color	No	Read	No
TARGA	.tga	8 bit indexed, full color	Yes	Yes	No

¹ Mask is an 1-bit transparency map that represents transparent pixels in a palette based image.
² Alpha is an 8-bit transparency map for 24-bit full color images.