Author Description

O'Reilly's new edition of the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats is a wonderfully diverse kind of product--it's a book, a CD-ROM, and a World Wide Web product, all in one. You'll find printed information in convenient book form. You'll be able to access text files, images, and code locally on the CD-ROM provided with the book.What's in this product--and why does its book/CD-ROM/online format work so well as a means of presenting information?It's all about graphics file formats. As any graphics programmer or illustrator knows, there are many different file formats used for storing graphics data -- data such as vector graphics, ray tracing, black-and-white photographs, truecolor images, animation data, motion video, and multimedia data. The Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats is the definitive reference to all of these formats--from major, standardized formats, like GIF, TIFF, TGA, and BMP, to newer or specialized formats, like PNG, SPIFF, SGI YAODL, and Facesaver. The first edition of the book has already become a classic for programmers on all platforms--Windows, MS-DOS, OS/2, the Macintosh, UNIX, and others.What type of information is available in the book and through its online links?Whether you are a graphics programmer who needs to know the precise contents of every bit in a file, a graphics illustrator who needs to know how to convert a file from one format to another, or anyone else who needs to deal with the low-level technical details of graphics files, this product is for you. For each of more than 100 formats, the product provides quick summary information--How many colors are supported by the format? What type of compression does it use? What's the maximum image size? What's the platform, the numerical format, and the supporting applications? It also provides extensive text detailing how graphics files are constructed in a particular format.In addition to describing the details of the file formats, the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats contains a