Unconventional file type as reason for deletion?

There's currently a .bmp in the moderation queue (post #156157), and since .bmps don't show unless you download them, I was going to delete and leave a note to reupload as jpg or png in the reason.

But I wanted to check first. Thoughts?

...yeah, I've marked plenty of pictures for deletion because they're BMPs. Just go ahead and delete it for reason "BMP".

A BMP is nothing more than a waste of space and bandwidth, especially since most are incorrectly saved from jpgs in the first place so you aren't gaining any extra quality for it. I've already deleted one from the moderation queue (the first image I've ever deleted from the moderation queue as it happens).

Tech-naive question: Is there no way at all to make BMP files display themselves on danbooru without downloading?

case649 said:
Tech-naive question: Is there no way at all to make BMP files display themselves on danbooru without downloading?

It's probably an issue inherent in the format itself which can't be corrected without a lot of hacky tricks, if at all.

There's no reason to use an uncompressed bitmap. If you want it to be lossless, encode it as PNG. It will be smaller, the same quality, and actually work in modern browsers. It always makes me wonder why some artists pack BMPs along with the JPGs in their CG sets, when PNG makes so much more sense. Perhaps it's to make their stuff look more important by making it a larger file size.

case649 said:
Tech-naive question: Is there no way at all to make BMP files display themselves on danbooru without downloading?

BMP isn't a web format so browsers are not designed to display it. Technically it probably would work, at least in Internet Explorer, but I don't think it a good idea since it would be a waste of bandwidth - at least now if you accidentally click on a BMP you don't have to download it but displayed inline it would start downloading automatically. Im not even sure whatever image libraries are used to create the thumbnails would work with bmp either.

Shinjidude said:
It always makes me wonder why some artists pack BMPs along with the JPGs in their CG sets, when PNG makes so much more sense. Perhaps it's to make their stuff look more important by making it a larger file size.

Unlike PNG which is relatively new, BMPs are a long-established accepted format and will open on pretty much any computer. If there is space on the disc there's no real need to compress the images, and they need to be decompressed for display on screen anyway.

Unlike PNG which is relatively new, BMPs are a long-established accepted format and will open on pretty much any computer. If there is space on the disc there's no real need to compress the images, and they need to be decompressed for display on screen anyway.

Raw video, Wav, and Tiff, are also long-established, but you don't seem them much anymore. I can understand older CG sets might use BMP, since PNG is as you say, "relatively" new (1996 as opposed to GIF and BMP's 1985) 11 years is a fairly long time for a format to become established.

Note: I do realize that mainstream browser support for PNG is much more recent than the format's inception, but it's just so much nicer than BMP.

As a composer and sound designer, I see wav every day.

Are these sets meant for the consumer?

BMP is also still the most accepted format when you print things, as far as I know.

surasshu said:
As a composer and sound designer, I see wav every day.

Are these sets meant for the consumer?

BMP is also still the most accepted format when you print things, as far as I know.

All three of the formats I mentioned (raw video, wav, and tiff) are used by artists and producers simply because they are uncompressed. As for image processing, I believe TIFF is both more accepted and older than BMP. BMP started with OS/2 and Windows.

surasshu said:
BMP is also still the most accepted format when you print things, as far as I know.

Very much no.

Shinjidude said:
Raw video, Wav, and Tiff, are also long-established, but you don't seem them much anymore. I can understand older CG sets might use BMP, since PNG is as you say, "relatively" new (1996 as opposed to GIF and BMP's 1985) 11 years is a fairly long time for a format to become established.

Note: I do realize that mainstream browser support for PNG is much more recent than the format's inception, but it's just so much nicer than BMP.

TIFF's are pretty much the standard in most print industries, like American comics, since TIFF is lossless and supports CMYK, which is what the printers need.

Definitely not good for web use, but the format is still going strong.

Shinjidude said:
There's no reason to use an uncompressed bitmap. If you want it to be lossless, encode it as PNG. It will be smaller, the same quality, and actually work in modern browsers. It always makes me wonder why some artists pack BMPs along with the JPGs in their CG sets, when PNG makes so much more sense. Perhaps it's to make their stuff look more important by making it a larger file size.

Afaik the combination of using BMP files inside 7z files somehow compresses like mad. As if 7z can tell most images are nearly identical. Just try converting the set to lossless PNG and compress again with 7z and the resulting file will be larger.

Of course BMPs inside pretty much any other kind of archive format does not make sense.

That's an effect of compressing all files in the archive as a single stream. There are many other formats that do that, from tar.{gz,bz2...} to RAR.

iska said:
As if 7z can tell most images are nearly identical.

Protip: that's what compressors are designed to do.