This page contains information on the PCX file extension (Paintbrush Bitmap Image), a popular video file format

PCX PCX (Image)

File extension .pcx
Category Image File
Description The .pcx file extension was developed in the 1980s by the ZSoft Corporation. It has since been superseded by other image formats such as png, giff and jpeg. The file type is used rarely at present, however certain scanning devices still output to the .pcx format.
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Technical Details The PCX format was one of the first common bitmap image formats. A PCX file comprises of three elements: the header, image data and the 256 colour palette. PCX utiises a lossless compression technique. The compression technique used is not processor intensive which was an advantage at the time of development due to the relatively limited processing power of hardware in the 1980s.
Associated programs
  • Microsoft Paint
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Windows Picture and Fax Viewer
Developed by ZSoft Corporation
MIME type
  • application/pcx
  • application/x-pcx
  • image/pcx
  • image/x-pc-paintbrush
  • image/x-pcx
  • zz-application/zz-winassoc-pcx
Useful links

PCX Convert PCX file

Using Zamzar it is possible to convert PCX files to a variety of other formats

  • pcx to bmp (Windows bitmap)
  • pcx to gif (Compuserve graphics interchange)
  • pcx to ico (Windows Icon)
  • pcx to jpg (JPEG compliant image)
  • pcx to pdf (Portable Document Format)
  • pcx to png (Portable Network Graphic)
  • pcx to ps (PostScript)
  • pcx to tga (Truevision Targa Graphic)
  • pcx to thumbnail (Thumbnail image)
  • pcx to tiff (Tagged image file format)
  • pcx to wbmp (Wireless Bitmap File Format)
  • pcx to webp (Lossily compressed image file)
PCX Converter Image