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Image format

BMP converter

A .bmp file is the Windows bitmap format: raw pixel rows written to disk with a small header and, in the common case, no compression at all. Its brute simplicity makes .bmp trivial to read and write from any programming language, which is why it persists in tooling, embedded systems, and quick debugging dumps.

Private for supported formats — processed in your browser

Convert supported files

Runs on your device

Drop BMP files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where BMP comes from

Microsoft introduced the bitmap format with early Windows — the device-independent bitmap (DIB) form arriving with Windows 3.0 in 1990 — so applications could exchange raster data regardless of display hardware. The format has barely changed since, gaining optional header revisions for alpha and color-space fields rather than any modern compression.

How BMP works

  • Pixels are typically stored uncompressed; optional RLE encoding exists only for 4-bit and 8-bit palette images
  • Supports 1-, 4-, 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit pixels, with palettes below 16-bit
  • Rows are stored bottom-up by default, padded to 4-byte boundaries, with channels in BGR order
  • 32-bit variants can carry an alpha byte, but many readers ignore it
  • File size is predictable: width x height x bytes-per-pixel, plus a few dozen header bytes

When to use BMP

  • Quick lossless dumps from code, since a writer takes minutes to implement
  • Assets for embedded devices and bootloaders that cannot afford a decoder
  • Legacy Windows applications and clipboard interchange
  • Deterministic test fixtures where compression variability is unwanted

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Dead-simple structure with no decoding step at all
  • Exactly lossless — what you write is what you read
  • Opens on any Windows system ever made, and everywhere else besides

Limitations

  • No effective compression, so files dwarf PNG equivalents of the same image
  • Alpha support is inconsistent and often silently dropped
  • No metadata: EXIF, color profiles, and copyright info have nowhere to live

Compatibility

Windows treats BMP as a native citizen, and macOS, Linux, and all major browsers open it without complaint. The format's problem is never support but waste: emailing or hosting uncompressed bitmaps burns bandwidth for zero benefit, so converting to PNG is almost always an upgrade.

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