Windows Bitmap

BMP File Format as been widely used on Windows platform. Although it supports data compression and alpha channels, these features were not widely used as it was not supported by all image editors.

See the reference side-by-side comparison Common image file formats

	BMP
Developed by	Microsoft
Year	1984 (version 1) 1998 (version 5)
Pros	Fast to encode
Cons	Large file size
Features
Vector graphics	No
Raster image	Yes
Lossless	Yes
Animation support	No
Transparency support	Yes
Layers support	No
HDR	No
Maximum bit depth	8-bit
CMYK support (for print)	No
Maximum number of channels	4 (RGBA)
Commonly used for	Image editing
Browser support (without plugin)
Google Chrome	No
Microsoft Edge	No
Safari	No
Firefox	No
Opera	No
Internet Explorer	No
Additional
File extensions	.bmp .dib
Wikipedia	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format