PCX
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
PCX was the native format of a DOS-based program PC Paintbrush, and was for a time (especially the late 1980s) a very popular image format among users of IBM PC compatibles and the PC/MS-DOS operating system. Much clip art was distributed in this format. However, it was tied closely to platform-specific attributes such as the particular graphic modes available in early PCs, and later lost ground to more platform-independent graphic formats like GIF, JPEG, and PNG.
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Format
PCX files have a 128-byte fixed header.
Identification
The first byte of a PCX file is 0x0a. The second byte (the version number) is 0, 2, 3, 4, or 5. The third byte (the compression type) should always be 1, though it's possible that 0 is also allowed in some variants of PCX.
Identifiers
See also
Specifications
Software
- ImageMagick
- Netpbm: ppmtopcx, pcxtoppm
Sample files
Resources
- Wikipedia article
- PCX Format, from the DOS Game Modding Wiki
- PCX File Format Summary, from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats
- PCX technical reference
- Picture format docs (of a number of formats including PCX)
