Electronic Arts IFF (IFF)

General Description

The IFF format was defined by Electronic Arts back in 1985. The IFF format is quick and easy to read and uncompress. However, it lacks a good compression scheme, making it unsuitable for storage of deep color images. Note that the IFF format can be used to hold a wide variety of information. An IFF file does not necessarily contain an image; it can contain sound clips, animations, text or whatever else.

The default extension is IFF, though you are likely to encounter a lot of other extensions like MP, HAM, ILBM, LBM, etc.

Supporting Platforms and Applications

This format is commonly used on Commodore Amiga computers. However, it is supported by numerous applications on a wide range of platforms.

PMView Support

PMView only supports FORM type IFF files that holds an image.

The following two sub-types are supported:

· ILBM: 1..n planes

· PBM: 8 bits chunky format

The following special types of ILBM files are supported:

· HAM: 3..16 planes

· Dynamic HAM (DHAM)

· Sliced HAM (SHAM)

· Palette change (PCHG)

PMView uses information from the following chunks (if available) when reading an IFF file:

· BMHD

· CAMG

· CMAP

· SHAM

· CTBL

· PCHG

· BODY