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.
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 library allows you to read, write and display BMP files.
Download your JDeli guide:
Start reading and writing images with one line of code
Read: BufferedImage image = JDeli.read(streamOrFile);
Write: JDeli.write(myBufferedImage, OutputFormat.HEIC, outputStreamOrFile)
