Atari graphics formats

Revision as of 19:55, 12 August 2020

This is a list of graphics formats used on Atari 8-bit, ST, Falcon, and Portfolio computers. More information may be available from the web pages and documentation associated with the RECOIL software listed below.

Raster graphics formats

(This is the default section. It has not been confirmed that all the formats listed here are actually raster formats.)

Animation formats

Vector graphics formats

Character graphics formats

Font formats

Other

• Atari ST color palette

Atari ST transparent file compression

This is an excerpt from the AtariSTPlusPicView.txt "readme" file, from the Atari ST Plus Picture Viewer v1.15 software by Ben Jos Walbeehm:

Compression was used very often on the Atari ST and in a more elegant way than giving the files extensions like .zip, .rar, .7z, .cab, .gz, .z, and so on. When an image was packed/compressed, it often kept its own extension. So if a file called "image.tny" were compressed with some packer, the resulting file would still be called "image.tny". If the system had the correct tools installed, this would all still work. Those tools would unpack the file transparently to the user. On a PC, this would be like zipping a file called "example.txt", calling the resulting file "example.txt", and having it unzip automatically and displayed in Notepad (or whatever other text editor) when opened.

So there are quite a few Atari ST pictures that you can download from the internet that have been compressed by some external packer.

It lists some examples: Atomik Cruncher, LZ77 (ray/.tSCc.), Pack-Ice, PowerPacker, SpeedPacker, StoneCracker, and Turbo Packer.

Software

• Konvertor
• RECOIL
• Atari Interlace Studio (Windows binary)
• Atari ST Plus Picture Viewer (Windows binary) (2014 archive)
• Tom's Editor

Sample files

• Atari Graphics Archive
• http://recoil.sourceforge.net/examples.zip
• Atari Interlace Studio includes some sample files
• http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/8bit/Graphics/Collections/
• http://whatis.rest7.com/Atari Sample Atari images (choose specific format to see samples) and a gallery (on the bottom)

Links

• ST Picture Formats, edited by David Baggett
  • 1990-04-09
  • 1991-01-29
  • 1991-06-26
  • 1992-09-29
  • 1994-10-30
  • Modern AtariForumWiki version, with additions by Hans Wessels and others (forked from the 1991-06-26 version)
• Atari ST Graphics Formats File Format Summary, from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats
  • Atari ST Graphics Formats (from archive.org) - Slightly updated version of the above?