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Image MIME Reference
AZV

AirZip Accelerator Image

image/vnd.airzip.accelerator.azv
VS

PaintShop Pro Image

image/x-paintshoppro
PaintShop-Pro-PSP

A complete technical comparison of AirZip Accelerator Image and PaintShop Pro Image — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature AZV PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Transparency (Alpha) ✕ No Yes
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading Yes ✕ No
HDR Support ✕ No Yes
EXIF Metadata ✕ No Yes
ICC Color Profile ✕ No Yes
AirZip Accelerator Image
image/vnd.airzip.accelerator.azv
Extension
.azv
Container Proprietary AirZip Container
Compression Lossy (Proprietary) / Lossless (Proprietary)
Algorithm
AirZip Proprietary Compression
Color Depth 8-bit (Indexed), 24-bit (RGB)
Developed by AirZip, Inc.
Released 1999
Magic Bytes
Unknown (Proprietary)
Full AZV reference →
PaintShop Pro Image
image/x-paintshoppro
Extension
.psp.pspimage.tub.pat
Container PSP Chunk-based Format
Compression Uncompressed / RLE (Run-Length Encoding) / LZ77
Algorithm
RLELZ77
Color Depth 8-bit (Indexed), 16-bit (Grayscale), 24-bit (RGB), 32-bit (RGBA), 48-bit (High Color)
Developed by Jasc Software / Corel Corporation (Alludo)
Released 1990
Magic Bytes
7E 42 4B 00
Full PaintShop-Pro-PSP reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser AZV PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
AZV

AZV Strengths

  • Historically allowed internet users to browse the web up to 5x faster over 56k dial-up modems by drastically reducing image payload sizes
  • Officially registered in the IANA vendor tree, preventing MIME type conflicts on early web proxy servers
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete in the modern broadband era
  • Closed-source and proprietary, meaning no modern image manipulation libraries (like ImageMagick or libvips) can decode it
  • Zero support in standard web browsers
PaintShop-Pro-PSP

PaintShop-Pro-PSP Strengths

  • Provides robust, non-destructive editing capabilities with full support for vector layers, adjustment layers, and layer blend modes
  • Historically offered a highly capable and affordable alternative to Adobe Photoshop's PSD format for Windows users
  • Features proprietary support for 'Picture Tubes' (.tub), a unique brush technology that paints sequential or random raster objects along a path
Limitations
  • Deeply proprietary format tied exclusively to the Corel/Alludo ecosystem
  • Third-party software support (like GIMP or ImageMagick) is often limited to parsing older .psp files, frequently failing to render complex layers in modern .pspimage files
  • No support in modern web browsers; must be exported to a flattened web format (JPEG/PNG) for online viewing

When to choose which format

AZV
Use AZV when…
  • Dial-up Web Acceleration
  • Bandwidth Optimization (Historical)
  • Legacy Proxy Servers
PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Use PaintShop-Pro-PSP when…
  • PaintShop Pro Multi-layer Project Archival
  • Digital Art and Photo Retouching
  • Picture Tubes (.tub) and Custom Patterns (.pat)

More comparisons

AZV vs ACES → PaintShop-Pro-PSP vs ACES → AZV vs APNG → PaintShop-Pro-PSP vs APNG → AZV vs AVCI → PaintShop-Pro-PSP vs AVCI → AZV vs AVCS → PaintShop-Pro-PSP vs AVCS → AZV vs AVIF → PaintShop-Pro-PSP vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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