Why Use Bit-Mapped Format?

There are many (too many) formats for storing digitized images. They range from bit-mapped--brute- force, ready-to-load images--to JPEG and other compression schemes. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage to .BMP is size: it takes up more disk space than any other format. However, we adopted the bit-mapped format for several reasons: 1) virtually every type of computer can display it; 2) most software can input it; and most important 3) in our network environment, a .BMP image is sent across the network and displayed much more quickly than other formats. That is, it is faster to transfer a bit-mapped image across the network and display it than to transfer any one of the compressed formats, decompress it, and display it: decompression time is much longer than transfer time. This will change as local computers greatly exceed 50MHz processor speed or are endowed with high-speed image decompression chips--both will eventually happen.

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