DPX vs ICO
A detailed comparison of Digital Moving-Picture and ICO Icon — file size, quality, compatibility, and which format to choose for your workflow.
Digital Moving-Picture
Raster & Vector ImagesDPX (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 filesICO Icon
Raster & Vector ImagesICO is the icon file format used for favicons and Windows application icons. A single ICO file can contain multiple image sizes and color depths for different display contexts.
About ICO filesStrengths Comparison
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.
ICO Strengths
- Multi-resolution: one file, many sizes, OS picks the right one.
- Universal favicon support in every browser since IE5.
- Supports transparency (1-bit since 1985, full alpha since XP).
- Tiny file size — an entire favicon pack typically fits in under 15 KB.
- No licensing or patent concerns — fully in the public domain spec-wise.
Limitations
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- Gradually superseded by OpenEXR in modern VFX.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.
ICO Limitations
- Cannot compress continuous-tone images efficiently — use PNG or WebP for photos.
- Format is essentially frozen in 1999 — no HDR, no wide gamut, no modern features.
- Maximum image dimension is 256×256 px (inside an ICO container).
- Editing requires specialized tools — most image editors treat it as a curiosity.
Technical Specifications
| Specification | DPX | ICO |
|---|---|---|
| MIME type | image/x-dpx | image/vnd.microsoft.icon |
| Extension | .dpx | — |
| Standard | SMPTE 268M | — |
| Bit depths | 8, 10, 12, 16 bits per channel | — |
| Color encoding | Logarithmic (Cineon-style) by convention | — |
| Max resolutions per file | — | 65 535 images |
| Max single image size | — | 256×256 px |
| Color depths | — | 1, 4, 8, 24, 32 bits per pixel |
| Compression | — | Uncompressed bitmap or embedded PNG (Vista+) |
Typical File Sizes
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
ICO
- Classic favicon (16×16 only) < 2 KB
- Multi-size favicon pack (16/32/48/256) 5-15 KB
- Full Windows app icon set 20-100 KB
Ready to convert?
Convert between DPX and ICO online, free, and without installing anything. Encrypted upload, automatic deletion after 2 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
ICO (Icon) is Microsoft's 1985 multi-resolution icon format, originally shipped with Windows 1.0. A single .ico file holds multiple sizes (16×16, 32×32, 48×48, 256×256) so the OS can pick the best one for the current display context. Since 1999, every website uses a favicon.ico to show its icon in browser tabs.
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.
On Windows, ICO files open natively in File Explorer and Photos. On macOS, Preview handles basic display. For editing, use GIMP (free), Photoshop with a plugin, or dedicated icon editors like IcoFX.
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.
It depends on the task. JPG is the smallest file size for photographs; PNG is lossless with transparency; DPX has its own niche that may favour colour depth, animation, or encoding efficiency over one or both of those. For the final web publish, test all three and measure file size plus visible quality on real content.