Free webp to jpg
EN
Image MIME Reference
FLIF

Free Lossless Image Format

image/flif
VS

Macromedia FreeHand Document

image/x-freehand
FreeHand

A complete technical comparison of Free Lossless Image Format and Macromedia FreeHand Document — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature FLIF FreeHand
Transparency (Alpha) Yes Yes
Animation Support Yes Yes
Progressive Loading Yes ✕ No
HDR Support Yes ✕ No
EXIF Metadata Yes ✕ No
ICC Color Profile Yes Yes
Free Lossless Image Format
image/flif
Extension
.flif
Container FLIF Bitstream
Compression Lossless (MANIAC Entropy Coding)
Algorithm
MANIAC (Meta-Adaptive Near-zero Integer Arithmetic Coding)
Color Depth 1-bit to 16-bit (Per Channel), Grayscale, RGB, RGBA, CMYK
Developed by Jon Sneyers and Pieter Wuille (Cloudinary)
Released 2015
Magic Bytes
46 4C 49 46
Full FLIF reference →
Macromedia FreeHand Document
image/x-freehand
Extension
.fh.fh4.fh5.fh7.fh8.fh9.fh10.fh11.ft11
Container Proprietary Binary (Aldus Graphic Document)
Compression Uncompressed / Deflate (in later versions)
Algorithm
NoneDeflate (Optional in later versions)
Color Depth Vector Data (RGB/CMYK)
Developed by Altsys / Aldus / Macromedia
Released 1988
Magic Bytes
41 47 44 31 to 41 47 44 34
Full FreeHand reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser FLIF FreeHand
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
FLIF

FLIF Strengths

  • Achieves some of the highest lossless compression ratios ever developed for raster images
  • Incredible progressive decoding allows an image to be highly recognizable even after only 5% of the file has been downloaded
  • Supports animations and complex alpha channels losslessly
Limitations
  • Officially abandoned in favor of JPEG XL
  • Zero native support in web browsers or standard operating system previewers
  • Encoding speed can be significantly slower than standard PNG or WebP compression
FreeHand

FreeHand Strengths

  • Historically one of the most powerful and intuitive vector editors on the market, praised for multi-page support long before Adobe Illustrator implemented it
  • Files are generally compact and self-contained
Limitations
  • Completely abandoned proprietary format; Adobe actively blocked native import in modern versions of Illustrator
  • No support in modern web browsers; must be converted to SVG
  • Versioning fragmentation means parsers must account for wildly different binary structures depending on the specific .fhX extension used

When to choose which format

FLIF
Use FLIF when…
  • Archival of Uncompressed Image Assets
  • Bandwidth-Constrained Progressive Image Loading (Historical)
  • Medical and Scientific Imaging Storage
FreeHand
Use FreeHand when…
  • Legacy Graphic Design Portfolios
  • Historical Desktop Publishing Archival
  • Old Corporate Logo Vectors

More comparisons

FLIF vs ACES → FreeHand vs ACES → FLIF vs APNG → FreeHand vs APNG → FLIF vs AVCI → FreeHand vs AVCI → FLIF vs AVCS → FreeHand vs AVCS → FLIF vs AVIF → FreeHand vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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