FLIF

File Format
Name	FLIF
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics FLIF
Extension(s)	.flif
PRONOM	fmt/872
Released	2016

FLIF (Free Lossless Image Format) is a compressed image file format. Images can be compressed losslessly or lossy.

It uses a compression algorithm called MANIAC (Meta-Adaptive Near-zero Integer Arithmetic Coding), which is a form of arithmetic coding.

History

FLIF was first announced in 2015, and the first stable version (named FLIF16) was released in 2016. Note that FLIF files or software created before about 2016-08 are likely to be incompatible with the current FLIF format.

Identification

FLIF files begin with ASCII "FLIF".

The byte at offset 4 is one of the characters from the ASCII string "134ACDQSTacd".

The byte at offset 5 is one of the characters from the ASCII string "012".

Specifications

• FLIF16 Specification

Software

• FLIF reference software
• Tom's Editor

Sample files

• https://github.com/sveinbjornt/Phew/tree/master/sample-images → *.flif
• https://github.com/SaschaNaz/libflif.js/tree/master/sample → *.flif

Links

• FLIF website
• Wikipedia: Free Lossless Image Format
• Some technical info
• More discussion
• Interview with FLIF creator