Free webp to jpg
EN
Image MIME Reference
Kodak-DCR

Kodak Digital Camera Raw

image/x-kodak-dcr
VS

Portable Graymap

image/x-portable-graymap
PGM

A complete technical comparison of Kodak Digital Camera Raw and Portable Graymap — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature Kodak-DCR PGM
Transparency (Alpha) ✕ No ✕ No
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support Yes Yes
EXIF Metadata Yes ✕ No
ICC Color Profile Yes ✕ No
Kodak Digital Camera Raw
image/x-kodak-dcr
Extension
.dcr
Container TIFF/EP
Compression Uncompressed / Lossless JPEG
Algorithm
NoneLossless JPEG (ITU-T81)
Color Depth 12-bit (Per Channel)
Developed by Eastman Kodak Company
Released 1998
Magic Bytes
49 49 2A 00 or 4D 4D 00 2A
Full Kodak-DCR reference →
Portable Graymap
image/x-portable-graymap
Extension
.pgm
Container Netpbm
Compression Uncompressed
Algorithm
None
Color Depth 8-bit (Grayscale), 16-bit (Grayscale)
Developed by Jef Poskanzer (Netpbm Project)
Released 1988
Magic Bytes
50 32 (ASCII) or 50 35 (Binary)
Full PGM reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser Kodak-DCR PGM
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
Kodak-DCR

Kodak-DCR Strengths

  • Preserves the full dynamic range and uncompressed raw sensor data captured by foundational professional digital cameras
  • Utilizes the standard TIFF container structure, ensuring that open-source decoders like LibRaw can easily parse and interpret the files long after official vendor support has ended
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete proprietary format tied to camera hardware that is no longer manufactured
  • Shares the TIFF magic header, leading to widespread misidentification by automated MIME detection libraries
  • Cannot be natively viewed in web browsers or standard operating system image viewers without specialized codecs
PGM

PGM Strengths

  • Extremely simple format allows custom parsers to be written from scratch in minimal time
  • Supports 16-bit precision, making it highly valuable for scientific, medical, and height-map data where 8-bit precision is insufficient
  • ASCII encoding ('P2') allows manual editing and visual inspection of pixel values directly within a text editor
Limitations
  • Strictly limited to grayscale; cannot display color
  • Lack of compression results in massive file sizes, making it entirely impractical for web delivery or consumer storage
  • Does not support alpha transparency or modern metadata structures

When to choose which format

Kodak-DCR
Use Kodak-DCR when…
  • Vintage Professional Digital Photography (Kodak DCS series)
  • Non-destructive Image Post-Processing
  • Raw Imaging Archival
PGM
Use PGM when…
  • Computer Vision and Machine Learning Pre-processing
  • Scientific and Medical Image Processing
  • Unix/Linux Command-Line Image Pipelines

More comparisons

Kodak-DCR vs ACES → PGM vs ACES → Kodak-DCR vs APNG → PGM vs APNG → Kodak-DCR vs AVCI → PGM vs AVCI → Kodak-DCR vs AVCS → PGM vs AVCS → Kodak-DCR vs AVIF → PGM vs AVIF → All comparisons →
Share this comparison