Format support
Which file formats are recognised?
Most cameras and phones save photos as JPGS, a few use TIFF, and more expensive cameras use Raw files which have been processed less in the camera and potentially contain more information.
In addition, if a photo has been edited, there’s a possibility it could have been stored in a different format, of which there are lots. Here we look at which file formats are supported for still photos and pass brief comment on whether video files are supported at all.
All the packages support JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP and GIF, while digikam and Xnview MP also support PGF – intended as a lossless successor to JPG but which has received little support.
Digikam, Shotwell and Xnview MP appear to have a good level of support for Raw files, while gthumb provides limited support. Our tests showed that picty has some support for Raw files, although it’s difficult to know how extensive this is because of its very incomplete user documentation.
In all probability, these formats are all you’ll need but, if your requirement is unusual in this respect, it’s interesting to note that
Xnview MP lists no fewer than 500 supported file formats. Included here are not only the bitmapped formats used for photos, but also vector formats including SVG, DXF and DWG.
While our emphasis here is still photography, all packages except picty and Xnview MP claim to support videos, and there is, apparently, a video plug-in for picty. Again, its lack of documentation makes it hard to determine just how ‘official’ this might be.