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Definition
BMP (Bitmap) is an uncompressed raster image format developed by Microsoft. It stores pixel data directly without compression, resulting in large file sizes but perfect quality. BMP is mostly a legacy format, rarely used on the web.
BMP was introduced with Windows 1.0 in 1985 and became a standard image format in the Windows ecosystem. The format stores every pixel's color value directly, typically with no compression, which means a 1920x1080 pixel image at 24-bit color requires about 6MB of storage — far more than the same image in JPEG (200KB) or PNG (2MB).
The format supports color depths from 1-bit (monochrome) to 32-bit (with alpha channel), and optionally supports RLE (Run-Length Encoding) compression for simple images. However, RLE compression is rarely used and provides minimal savings for photographic content.
BMP has no practical advantages over modern formats for web or general use. It exists primarily as a legacy format encountered in older Windows applications, embedded systems, and some industrial software. When you encounter BMP files, converting them to PNG (for lossless quality) or JPEG (for smaller size) is almost always the right choice.