Question 1

Is BMP still used?

Accepted Answer

Rarely. BMP has been largely replaced by PNG (for lossless) and JPG (for photos). It's still found in legacy Windows applications, embedded systems, and some scientific imaging. We include it for testing backward compatibility.

Question 2

Why are BMP files so large?

Accepted Answer

BMP files are typically uncompressed — every pixel is stored individually. A 640×480 24-bit BMP is ~900KB, while the same image as JPG would be ~50KB. This makes BMP useful for testing uncompressed image handling.

Question 3

What is 4-bit BMP?

Accepted Answer

4-bit BMP supports only 16 colors from a palette. It's a legacy format from early Windows (3.x era). Our sample-4bit.bmp lets you test that your application correctly handles palette-based images.

Question 4

Can browsers display BMP files?

Accepted Answer

Yes. All modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) can display BMP images inline. However, BMP should not be used for web content due to large file sizes — use PNG or WebP instead.

Format	Windows Bitmap (BMP/DIB)
Compression	None (uncompressed) or RLE
Bit depths	1, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32 bits
Color support	16 colors (4-bit) to 16.7M (24-bit)
Platform	Windows native, supported everywhere

Sample BMP Files — Windows Bitmap for Testing

What is BMP used for?

Technical specifications

Frequently Asked Questions

Other image formats