".bmp" is an unwanted file type List of allowed file types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg, pdf.

Question

Please comment as to WHY .bmp is an UNWANTED file type.  I received image(s) from a family group record.  How do you change unwanted .bmp file to a wanted?  It's not a bad or sad image. Just a regular photograph.

Comments

It may be that WikiTree does not accept bitmap format images. I don't see anywhere what types of files are supported. My suggestion is that you open the photo in any standard photo editor then "save as" to another format such as .jpg which is accepted.

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This Help page mentions the supported formats for image uploads:

Help:Uploading_Documents

Perhaps our Tech Team could tell us why .bmp is not currently supported or if that format could be supported in the future.

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Possibly because bmp don't compress and filesizes are huge?

It's easy enough to convert to png or other accepted formats.

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Is compression of an image a necessity or a problem for a website when storing uploaded images (just wondering, not an expert)?

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Compression is mostly about problems with storage. If everyone tried to upload a half-dozen 15-25meg images, that could be 10Tb of storage. Jpeg compression can typically achieve a 10:1 ratio. That's a lot of storage savings.

Jpeg is a lossy compression algorithm -- meaning a lot of detail (that your eye usually can't see anyway), gets thrown away. Re-saving a compressed image will eventually make it blurry and lose most details. That's why you usually want to keep your originals unedited.

But image type/format is mostly a problem with compatibility -- some browsers might support viewing bmp images, but its generally not recommended for web content. Not all browsers and platforms will support it.

Answer 1

I believe that you should find the answer to what your looking for within the following WikiTree Question (& answers provided there).

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/77948/prefered-photo-size

I just believe that my answer would be redundant to what was already provided within the above question.

Good Luck!

~Brian Kerr

Comments

That thread doesn't mention .bmp, which is his question.

Answer 2

I am not by any means an expert at this but I have had success by opening an image or document in a photo editing program. Make a minor change and then "Save as" and select one of the other extensions. Or, print the image and scan it and save to jpeg or pdf if a document.

Comments

you lose a lot of detail by printing and scanning (or taking a picture of it with your phone). the image can become more blurry.

best to work with image editing software (some free ones available), to keep as much detail as possible

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Yes, Dennis, I realize that. I use photo editing software but not everyone has it so I was suggesting an alternative just in case! But, thank you for pointing that out for those who are not familiar with working with various file types.

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IrfanView is your friend if you need straight forward changes.

Answer 3

You can convert the .bmp files to .png without data loss unlike .jpg even if it is set to 100.

.png files will use a lot less memory than .bmp to save as backup, but to use on Wikitree .jpg set at 70 will work ok but I would store all in .png.

When we used to use floppy disk, sometimes only one .bmp file would fit in it, then they made .jpg but you lose some date in your photos so they came up with the .png format. The .gif format only saves 256 colors and does not compress file size as good as .png does plus .png saves full colors.

FREE program called GIMP or GNU/GIMP will convert the formats but click export as not save as.

Answer 4

If you take a look at any popular website, you will see that the images used are not .bmp and there is a good reason. The .bmp file format doesn't work as well for websites as the supported formats because of the file sizes. The larger files slow down the load speed of a webpage compared to the supported file types. It also uses more storage, but the slower rendering speeds and the increased network usage are more important considerations. This impacts the cost from a web server perspective and reduces performance from an end user perspective because loading the page can bottleneck on the browser side as well.

Several people have mentioned using photo editors. If you are using Windows, you can even use Microsoft Paint to save a .bmp as a .jpg or .png.