Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats: The Complete Reference on CD-ROM with Links to Internet Resources

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book used to be the bible of image formats. Unfortunately, this bible is starting to show its age. Depending on what your interest is in graphics, you might find all the formats you need or be really disappointed. Most major image formats (like those used in web pages) are in there, but some very important ones that have appeared in the past 5 or so years are missing: Avid's OMFI, Softimage .pic, Maya's .iff, Pixar .tx, etc. The lack of an extensions index is an area where the book fails for me as an encyclopedia. While the final index does lists extension names, having a separate index for them would be nicer. So that if you had a file with extension .pic which you cannot read, you could easily figure out what formats it could correspond to. This is a problem with AVI, which is listed as Microsoft RIFF. Funny thing the book mentions that most people know AVIs by their extensions, but unless you look in the index, you will think it was missing. Still, some Microsoft image formats are missing (.ico files, for example). Other contradictions like those are listing the format for Pixar's .rib files, but not for their .tx files. Yes, the book also has descriptions of several popular non-image formats, such as 3D scene & object formats (Wavefront, Inventor, Radiance, etc), which can be either an annoyance or an added bonus depending on what you are looking. Animation formats (Quicktime, etc) are introduced but not covered in detail and given web links to search for more information. Formats not covered in the book are VRML, font formats (TrueType, etc), or Audio formats. If you are looking for source code or a library you can use to plug into your application, you will be very disappointed. The CD-ROM is just a web reprinting of all the info in the book, and the only software provided is Mosaic, a first & now slowest web browser, which in this day and age of Netscape and IE, is a big annoyance and a waste of disk space (you have to install it, since the installer looks for it & pages are named .ht_ instead of .htm or .html!). On a more positive note, the book offers beginners a good introduction to coding image loaders -- warning & providing solutions to problems such as byte ordering, alignment, etc. RLE encoding is given a very thorough description with several of its possible variations. The principles of other types of encoding (LZW, Huffman, CCITT, JPEG & Fractal) are described but not in so much detail. Wavelets are not even mentioned. In summary, most of the information is nothing you cannot get on the web if you spend enough time searching. The book & CD needs to be updated for the new millenium and since it is already pretty heavy, I would vote to split it in two: one for image formats and one for 3D formats.

My only negative comment: The section on GIFs doesn't discuss animated GIFs. There's just a little note that "the format supports multiple images in a file, but this is rarely used". If only they knew back then...

Some developers have migrated from the lossless, and excellent compression subtype, LZW, within TIFF (for litigious/royalty reasons) to the TIFF with subtype JPEG lossless compression for their imaging needs. This reference does the MOST excellent job of steering a developer and product management AWAY from that decision (Spec 6 prior to Note 2). Several other areas of the reference were invaluable also, but this particular one was a life-saver.

I've kept this book next to my computer desk for quite some time because I consider it an essential reference. There has never been a question about graphic file formats that I haven't been able to answer using this book. I feel the authors have done an outstanding job describing everything from the basics to complex file format features in a language that someone who isn't an artist can understand. As an application developer, I often need to know what's going on behind the scenes and this book makes everything clear.

This book is getting a tad dated, but still extremely valuable and a good buy. I'd love to see the authors update it. I know that I'd be the first in line to get the next edition.

This book is so out-of-date and lacks so many of the new and existing file formats that have been modified, that it is not worth buying. Spend your money on current books.

Technically accurate and very thourough, this is a must have for any programmer who even considers devloping a graphics application. The information found between it's covers shed light on many of the more cryptic issues one might encounter when dealing with graphics file formats. Simply put, an excellent reference.

I'm not a programmer, but I turned to this title to inform myself on compression algorithms and the underlying pieces that comprise graphic (or graphics) file formats. It's lucid, well-illustrated, and not too dense.

This book is a great book for the professional programmer as it has very detailed referneces concerning nearly all the graphical file formats out there.

This is what you expect, a comprehensive reference of graphic file formats. Some of the formats were great standards in their glory days, like FLI files of the DOS days, or other Atari, Amiga, OS/2 oriented standards. Missing are obviously the new formats like PNG and anything after early 90s are just absent. The book despereately calls for a new version, and I pray it be in a PDF format, as paper-based references clutter the household...

The included CD includes Spyglass Mosaic 2.x (pre-Netscape and pre-IE browser), source code, and references in postscript format.

We were really disappointed when we discovered this book. I was looking for JFIF file format explanations, and they only explain in detail common formats like BMP (et encore !!!) that you can find anywhere on the net. So really just a review of internet, useful for the one that has no printer. Really if i could get my money back i would do it.