What is BMP?

What is a BMP image file?

A BMP is a bitmap image file format to store monochrome and colour images. It was originally created by Microsoft for computers running Windows.

It was primarily designed for Window platforms although it also works on other platforms. It is not supported in Web browsers.

The file name extension for BMP files is: .bmp

Here are some other questions about BMP you might also want to ask. If you have any other questions, please add a comment and we will try to answer.

What is a BMP file used for?

BMP is used for storing bitmap images. It is commonly used on Windows systems but less so on Linux, Mac and other platforms. It does not compress the data (unlike PNG or JPG) so it creates much larger files and it is not supported by web browsers. So there are better options (on Windows and other platforms). So it is less popular than PNG, JPEG, TIFF or new standards such as Heic or WebP.

Why is BMP popular?

Microsoft used BMP as the default for several application in Windows. So, many people are using Heic without even realising it.

How can I learn about BMP?

You read up on the BMP file format here.

Is it possible to convert BMP to JPG?

Yes. You can convert BMP to JPG and JPG to BMP. You will lose any transparency if you convert from PNG and may need to remember that BMP offers less compression than JPG.

Is it possible to convert BMP to PDF?

Yes. You will need  to print the BMP (most printers offer a print as PDF), export as PDF in a graphics package such as Mac Preview or use a third party tool such as our JDeli library.

How to open BMP files in Java?

ImageIO (the built-in Java Image library) includes support for BMP images.

There are several commercial BMP solutions available. Our JDeli Java image library also has BMP support and allows you to read, write and display BMP files.

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(dicomImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(heicImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "heic", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpegImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpeg", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpeg2000ImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpx", outputStreamOrFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "pdf", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(pngImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "png", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(tiffImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "tiff", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(webpImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "webp", outputStreamOrFile);