BMP is a format for raster graphics developed by Microsoft.

This means that images are represented by grid-like pixels, each of which is assigned a color.

A BMP object consists of one or two headers, the color table and the bitmap data.

The headers describe the file, e.g. its type and size.

Compression is possible, but is usually not used, which leads to relatively large files.

Although BMP was developed by Microsoft, it is supported by other systems too. Since it has a very simple structure, graphics editors can usually also handle this filetype.

Nowadays BMP is considered outdated and is hardly used any more. One area where Bmp is still used is internal system graphics, such as icons. 

Starting with versions 4 and 5, BMP may also be used as a container for the PNG format.

advantages

- The color palette allows you to change the color display

- can be read by almost any graphics editor

disadvantages

- Scaling of the image leads to a loss of quality

- relatively large filesize