What Is BMP File Format? How to Open and Convert BMP Files?

Bitmap image files BMP, abbreviated as DIB, are also known as bitmap image files or bitmaps.

BMPs can store a variety of monochrome and color image data. It is generally uncompressed and therefore quite large, although you can perform lossless image compression to reduce the file size.

BMP is very commonly used, and in fact many image formats that we would not expect are renamed as BMP files. For example, XBM and the newer XPM format are both similar to DIB/BMP image formats.

In addition, DIB and BMP are not exactly the same.

How do I open a BMP or DIB?

Bitmap graphics files have no device usage restrictions and no patent issues, so many applications support their use.

This means that most viewers and painters, such as paint and Photo Viewer for Windows, IrfanView, XnView, GIMP, as well as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Corel PaintShop Pro, can open BMP and DIB.

If you are a Mac user, then you can use Apple Preview, Apple Photos, GIMP, and ColorStrokes.

The “.DIB” subfile name is not as common as “.BMP”, although it is not common, you may still come across DIB files. A good way to identify its file format is to use a text editor and open the DIB file as a TXT file to see if there is any text help in the file to find out what type of file it is and what program should be used to operate it.

Considering how common BMP/DIB is, you probably already have one or two or even several programs on your device that support it. Sometimes it’s important to choose the best software as the default editor.

How to convert BMP or DIB?

There are many image conversion tools to convert BMP files to other image formats such as PNG, PDF, JPG, TIF, ICO and so on.

Meanwhile, you can also use online image format converters FileZigZag and Zamzar, which can be used as long as you have a web browser and there is no limitation on the operating system .

Some BMP converters may not support DIB conversion, so you can try CoolUtils.com, Online-Utility.org or Picture Resize Genius.

Also, AConvert converters can create DIB files by converting other image files to DIB format.

Still can’t open BMP files?

If you encounter a BMP or DIB that cannot be opened and edited , it is possible that the file extensions are confused.

Formats such as BML (Bean Markup Language), BMF (FloorPlan), DIF (Data Interchange Format), DIZ, DB and DIC (Dictionary) are all similar in length to DIB and BMP, but many are unrelated and cannot be operated with the above software.