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Image MIME Reference
DPX

Digital Picture Exchange

image/dpx
VS

PaintShop Pro Image

image/x-paintshoppro
PaintShop-Pro-PSP

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

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature DPX PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Transparency (Alpha) Yes Yes
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support Yes Yes
EXIF Metadata ✕ No Yes
ICC Color Profile ✕ No Yes
Digital Picture Exchange
image/dpx
Extension
.dpx
Container DPX (SMPTE ST 268)
Compression Uncompressed / RLE (Rarely used)
Algorithm
Uncompressed
Color Depth 8-bit, 10-bit, 12-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit (Float)
Developed by SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers)
Released 1994
Magic Bytes
53 44 50 58 (Big-endian) / 58 50 44 53 (Little-endian)
Full DPX 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 DPX PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
DPX

DPX Strengths

  • Industry standard for transferring uncompressed, high-fidelity film and VFX data
  • Rich industry-specific metadata including timecode, keykode, and film stock information
  • Supports logarithmic color spaces (LogC, Cineon) to preserve the massive dynamic range of film negatives
Limitations
  • Massive file sizes (e.g., a single 4K 10-bit frame is ~50MB, resulting in ~1.2GB per second at 24fps)
  • Zero native support in web browsers or consumer OS image viewers
  • Requires heavy-duty, fast storage infrastructure (RAID/NVMe) to playback in real-time
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

DPX
Use DPX when…
  • Film Scanning
  • Visual Effects (VFX)
  • Digital Intermediate (DI)
  • Color Grading
  • Archival
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

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