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Monday, August 11, 2008

PCX

PCX is an image file format developed by the ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia, USA. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush (PCX = "PC Paintbrush Exchange") and became one of the first widely accepted DOS imaging standards, although its use has since been succeeded by more sophisticated image formats such as GIF, JPEG, and PNG.

The PCX is a device-independent raster image format; the file header stores information about the display hardware (screen resolution, color depth 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. PCX files commonly store 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.

A PCX file has three main sections. A 128 byte header which is followed by image data and an optional 256 color palette. PCX files were designed for use on PC and so always use little endian byte ordering.

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