Painter RIFF

Painter is raster based painting software. Originally developed by the Fractal Design Corporation for the Macintosh. Later became part of the MetaCreations product line, then in the year 2000 was bought by Corel Corporation. Creator Code

File Information
The RIFF file format is the native format for the Painter software. Format is similar to the Photoshop PSD format and can contain all edits, layers and transparency. Format was used by original Painter software in 1991 and is still in use today with Corel Painter 2020.


 * The RIFF raster image format is not to be confused with the Resource Interchange File Format used by formats such as WAV for CorelDRAW.
 * The RIFF raster image format is also used for Painter Pattern and Nozzle image format.

File Identification
.RIF files begin with the hex values or, then 4 bytes which seem to indicate pixel dimensions, then either   or   indicating compression. Also to note, starting at byte 64 for 256 bytes, every hex value is used in order from  to

Sample files

 * https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/image/painterRIF/
 * https://archive.org/details/painter_201911

Links

 * Corel Painter
 * MetaCreations
 * Painter Classic 1998 software
 * Corel Painter website