PCPaint PIC
PICtor format, or PC Paint format, is a raster image format created by John Bridges for his PCPaint graphics program. Filenames use the extension .PIC (sometimes .CLP).
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Format
The most significant versions of the PIC format are the ones written by PC Paint 2.0 and higher. They are identified by the byte at offset 11 having the value 0xff. They have a header of 19 or more bytes, of which the first 17 have a fixed layout. At offset 17 is a variable-length "extra data" field, which if present usually contains the palette, or information about the palette. If the last two bytes of the header (after the "extra data") are 0, the image is uncompressed; otherwise it is compressed with run-length encoding.
There seems to be conflicting information about the format of files written by versions of PC Paint prior to 2.0. Some of them used an extension of BSAVE format.
Images in PIC files can be stored in a variety of ways, and it is somewhat challenging to decode all of them.
Identification
Files begin with signature bytes 0x34 0x12.
