about the book

The book discusses implementation and design of file formats in a readable style focusing on the basic issues important for the evaluation or development of file formats.

The second part of the book provides summaries of over 50 graphics file formats in commercial use, such as CGM, DDES, FITS, MPEG, PICT, PostScript, TIFF, QuickTime, RIB, SunRaster, and X bitmap. Following a uniform organization, these summaries are handy reference sources for those needing basic information on these formats.

what's inside

• Data types
• Design goals
• Color
• Data organization
• Data encoding
• Data compression
• Classification
• And conversion

about the reader

Written by two computer experts, this book is intended for graphics professionals, programmers and all those in commercial, engineering and scientific applications areas who need to make decisions related to file formats from graphical data.

about the author

C. Wayne Brown's interests include CAD/CAM, graphics algorithms, data formats, and scientific visualization. He has worked in Computer graphics over the last 14 years and received a Ph.D. in the subject from Ohio State University. He is currently a professor at the University of Central Arkansas.

Barry J. Shepherd spent 25 years with IBM and was active in the developments of graphic software standards and architectures, most recently as chairman of JTC1 SC24, the ISO graphics standards committee. Barry was the editor of the first ISO standard for device-independent specification of color in document data content.