Editing PCX (section)

==PCX image formats==
PCX was designed during the early development of PC display hardware and most of the formats it supported are no longer used.  The table below shows a list of the most commonly used PCX formats. Contemporary image editing programs may not read PCX files that match older hardware.
{| class="wikitable" 
|+ Common PCX Image Formats<ref>{{Cite web
 |title=ZSoft .PCX File Format Specification
 |url=https://www.fileformat.info/format/pcx/spec/a10e75307b3a4cc49c3bbe6db4c41fa2/text.htm
 |website=FileFormat.info
 |access-date=2025-04-29
 |publisher=FileFormat.info
 |quote=Technical reference for the PCX bitmap format, originally published by ZSoft Corporation.
}}</ref>
! Bit Depth || Planes || Number of Colors
|-
| 4 || 1 || 16 colors from a palette
|-
| 8 || 1 || 256 colors from a palette
|-
| 8 || 1 || 256 shades of gray
|-
| 4 || 4 || 4096 colors with 16 levels of transparency
|-
| 8 || 3 || 16.7 million, 24-bit "true color"
|-
| 8 || 4 || 16.7 million with 256 levels of transparency
|-
| 1 || 1 || 2 colors monochrome (1-Bit) (Win 3.1 Paintbrush)
|-
| 1 || 4 || 16 colors RGBi (4-Bit) in 4 planes (Win 3.1 Paintbrush)
|}


PCX is supported by common image processing software including [[ACDSee]], [[FastStone]], [[GIMP]], [[ImageMagick]], [[IrfanView]], [[LView]], [[Netpbm]], [[PaintShop Pro]], [[Photoshop Elements|Photoshop]], [[Microsoft Visio|Visio]], [[PMview]], [[XnView]] and [[GraphicConverter]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://extension.nirsoft.net/ras|title=.pcx Extension|author=Nir Sofer|access-date=2014-01-12}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=pcx|publisher=[[Microsoft]]|work=Windows File Association 
|title=File Type: Microsoft PaintBrush Bitmap Graphic|year=2013|access-date=2014-03-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140314192341/http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=pcx|archive-date=2014-03-14|url-status=dead}}</ref> In version 2.1.4 [[FFmpeg]] could encode and decode the PCX pixel formats ''rgb24, rgb8, bgr8, rgb4_byte, bgr4_byte, gray, pal8,'' and ''monob''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#Image-Formats|title=Image Formats|work=[[FFmpeg]] General Documentation|year=2014|access-date=2014-02-23}}</ref>

There is a multi-page version of PCX, used by some computer [[fax]] and document management programs, with file extension <code>.dcx</code>. A DCX file consists of a header introducing a set of following PCX files.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/dcx|title=.DCX File Extension|publisher=fileinfo.com|date=2010-02-19|access-date=2014-03-14}}</ref>