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Image MIME Reference
DDS

DirectDraw Surface

image/vnd.ms-dds
VS

Fuji Xerox EDMICS-RLC

image/vnd.fujixerox.edmics-rlc
EDMICS-RLC

A complete technical comparison of DirectDraw Surface and Fuji Xerox EDMICS-RLC — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature DDS EDMICS-RLC
Transparency (Alpha) Yes ✕ No
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support Yes ✕ No
EXIF Metadata ✕ No ✕ No
ICC Color Profile ✕ No ✕ No
DirectDraw Surface
image/vnd.ms-dds
Extension
.dds
Container DirectDraw Surface
Compression Block Compression (BC1-BC7) / DXTC / S3TC / Uncompressed (RGBA, Floating-Point)
Algorithm
DXT1-DXT5BC1-BC7ASTC / ETC2 (Extended)
Color Depth 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit (RGBA), 16-bit/32-bit Floating Point (HDR)
Developed by Microsoft Corporation
Released 1999
Magic Bytes
44 44 53 20
Full DDS reference →
Fuji Xerox EDMICS-RLC
image/vnd.fujixerox.edmics-rlc
Extension
.rlc.edm
Container Fuji Xerox EDMICS Wrapper
Compression Run-Length Coding (RLC / RLE)
Algorithm
Run-Length Coding (RLC)
Color Depth 1-bit (Monochrome), 8-bit (Grayscale)
Developed by Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
Released 1990s
Magic Bytes
Unknown (Proprietary Container)
Full EDMICS-RLC reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser DDS EDMICS-RLC
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
DDS

DDS Strengths

  • Massively reduces VRAM footprint and memory bandwidth usage because the GPU decodes the block compression in hardware
  • Encapsulates complex texture arrays, volume textures, cubemaps, and entire mipmap chains within a single, highly structured file
  • Supports high-dynamic-range (HDR) floating-point data for modern physically based rendering (PBR)
Limitations
  • Block compression algorithms (like DXT) are lossy and can introduce ugly blocky artifacts, especially in smooth gradients or normal maps if not tuned properly
  • Files are generally larger on the physical hard drive than highly compressed formats like PNG or WebP
  • Zero support in web browsers or standard consumer image viewers
EDMICS-RLC

EDMICS-RLC Strengths

  • Simple, computationally inexpensive Run-Length Coding enabled rapid compression and decompression on low-power legacy hardware
  • Deeply integrated into Fuji Xerox enterprise hardware for seamless, automated scan-to-archive workflows
Limitations
  • Completely proprietary and closed-source, making modern archival extraction and migration extremely difficult
  • No support in modern image processing libraries like ImageMagick, libvips, or standard viewers without bespoke decoding tools
  • RLC compression is far less efficient than modern algorithms like PNG (Deflate) for complex documents

When to choose which format

DDS
Use DDS when…
  • Real-Time 3D Game Textures
  • DirectX and Vulkan Rendering Pipelines
  • Skyboxes and Environment Cubemaps
  • Volume Textures (3D Textures)
EDMICS-RLC
Use EDMICS-RLC when…
  • Fuji Xerox EDMICS Enterprise Systems
  • Archival of Scanned Engineering Documents
  • Legacy Corporate Scanning Pipelines

More comparisons

DDS vs ACES → EDMICS-RLC vs ACES → DDS vs APNG → EDMICS-RLC vs APNG → DDS vs AVCI → EDMICS-RLC vs AVCI → DDS vs AVCS → EDMICS-RLC vs AVCS → DDS vs AVIF → EDMICS-RLC vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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