PCX (PC Paintbrush
Exchange)
Background
The PCX image format is one of 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. Since this format has been around for a long time, there are now many versions of PCX.
Strengths and Features
Today, the most popular version is version 5 which supports up to 24-bit color.
With 24-bit support, PCX can be used for graphic data operations.
Earlier PCX versions only support 256 colors.
Encoding is performed using one of the
Run-Length Encoding algorithm variants.
Weaknesses
PCX does not compress images very effectively but it
retains all image information. As such, PCX images file are
usually very large and are not suitable for very large details. Due to its inefficient compression scheme
and the advent of other image formats, PCX has lost some
its
former popularity.
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