Hemera Photo-Object

Hemera Photo-Object is a raster image format used by Hemera Technologies in their clip art software titles.

Hemera's Photo-Objects image format is similar to other formats sometimes referred to as images with transparency or images that have an associated Mask or Alpha Channel. Unlike typical photographic quality image formats that support transparency, Hemera's Photo-Object image format (.HPI) uses little disk space which allows thousands of images to be contained on a single CD-ROM.

Hemera's Photo-Objects are totally background independent meaning that each image can be placed on top of any other background. You can drag and drop the image into your wordprocessor, presentations program, or graphics application or use the Export Wizard included with Photo-Objects.

Turns out the HPI Photo-Object format is simply a JFIF with an attached PNG mask. A perl script has been written to convert the format to its base JPEG & PNG formats.

Hemera Technologies bought rights to all Corel Photos, Clipart in the year 2000.

File Identification
The HPI file format header begins with hex values "". The embedded JPEG usually starts at byte 32.

Software

 * XnView
 * Hemera Big Box of Art
 * HPI Image Extractor
 * Trial Photo-Object software and Samples

Sample files

 * Hemera 100 000 Photo ClipArt 7 CDs Set
 * https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/image/hpi/