Image Converter Video Converter Audio Converter Document Converter
Pricing Guides Formats API
Log In
BMP vs DPX

BMP vs DPX

A detailed comparison of BMP Image and Digital Moving-Picture — file size, quality, compatibility, and which format to choose for your workflow.

Convert BMP → DPX Convert DPX → BMP
BMP

BMP Image

Raster & Vector Images

BMP is an uncompressed raster image format native to Windows. Files are large but preserve exact pixel data with no compression artifacts. Rarely used on the web due to file size.

About BMP files
DPX

Digital Moving-Picture

Raster & Vector Images

DPX (Digital Picture Exchange) is a SMPTE standard file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work. It stores per-frame image data with rich metadata for color management and is widely used in film post-production pipelines.

About DPX files

Strengths Comparison

BMP Strengths

  • Dead-simple format — trivially easy to read and write.
  • Lossless and uncompressed — perfect bit-exact pixel storage.
  • Universally supported in Windows applications since 1985.
  • Supports 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32-bit color depths.

DPX Strengths

  • Industry-standard archival format for film.
  • Logarithmic color encoding preserves film look.
  • Lossless — no generation degradation.
  • SMPTE standardized (SMPTE 268M).
  • Every VFX and color-grading app reads and writes DPX.

Limitations

BMP Limitations

  • Enormous file sizes — no meaningful compression in typical use.
  • Not a web format — browsers support it but nobody serves BMPs over HTTP.
  • No metadata support (no EXIF, no ICC profile in practice).
  • Multiple header versions mean "a BMP" is ambiguous — parsers must handle several variants.

DPX Limitations

  • No compression — file sizes are enormous.
  • Not a display format — requires color-managed pipelines.
  • Gradually superseded by OpenEXR in modern VFX.
  • Overkill for anything but professional film work.

Technical Specifications

Specification BMP DPX
MIME type image/bmp image/x-dpx
Extensions .bmp, .dib —
Compression None (typical); RLE 4/8 bit (rare) —
Color depths 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32 bits per pixel —
Byte order Little-endian —
Extension — .dpx
Standard — SMPTE 268M
Bit depths — 8, 10, 12, 16 bits per channel
Color encoding — Logarithmic (Cineon-style) by convention

Typical File Sizes

BMP

  • Small icon (32×32) 4 KB
  • Screenshot (1920×1080) ~6 MB
  • 4K image (3840×2160) ~25 MB
  • Scanned A4 at 300 dpi ~25 MB

DPX

  • 2K DPX frame (2048×1556, 10-bit) ~12 MB
  • 4K DPX frame (4096×3112, 10-bit) ~50 MB
  • 90-min feature at 4K DPX sequence ~6 TB

Ready to convert?

Convert between BMP and DPX online, free, and without installing anything. Encrypted upload, automatic deletion after 2 hours.

Convert BMP to DPX Convert DPX to BMP

Frequently Asked Questions

BMP (Bitmap) is a raster image format developed by Microsoft for Windows. It stores images with no compression by default, resulting in large file sizes but pixel-perfect quality. It has been part of Windows since version 1.0.

DPX (Digital Moving-Picture) is an image format used to store raster graphics — a two-dimensional grid of pixels describing a picture. It is part of the raster & vector images family and designed around a specific trade-off between file size, visual fidelity, and feature support (transparency, colour depth, compression type). Photographers, web designers, and content creators choose DPX when its particular strengths match the publishing target.

BMP files open in Windows Paint, Photos, macOS Preview, GIMP, Photoshop, and virtually any image viewer. All Windows applications support BMP natively.

Most desktop photo viewers (Windows Photos, macOS Preview, GIMP, Photoshop, Affinity Photo) open DPX natively. On mobile, iOS Photos and Google Photos display DPX in the gallery when supported by the OS. If the format is rare or new, convert to JPG or PNG first — both are universally readable — using our DPX to JPG or DPX to PNG converter.

PNG is better than BMP in almost every scenario since it provides lossless compression (smaller files), transparency support, and wider cross-platform use. BMP is mainly relevant for legacy Windows applications.

Upload the DPX to KaijuConverter and pick a target format (JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, SVG, PDF). The conversion runs in the browser via ImageMagick and returns a download in seconds. No account or installation required; both input and output delete automatically within two hours.