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Image MIME Reference
AVCI

AVC Image (HEIF Container)

image/avci
VS

MacPaint Image

image/x-macpaint
MacPaint

A complete technical comparison of AVC Image (HEIF Container) and MacPaint Image — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature AVCI MacPaint
Transparency (Alpha) Yes ✕ No
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support Yes ✕ No
EXIF Metadata Yes ✕ No
ICC Color Profile Yes ✕ No
AVC Image (HEIF Container)
image/avci
Extension
.avci.hif
Container HEIF / ISOBMFF (ISO/IEC 14496-12)
Compression Lossy / Lossless
Algorithm
AVC (Advanced Video Coding / H.264)
Color Depth 8-bit, 10-bit, 12-bit
Developed by Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) / ISO/IEC JTC 1
Released 2015
Magic Bytes
XX XX XX XX 66 74 79 70 61 76 63 69
Full AVCI reference →
MacPaint Image
image/x-macpaint
Extension
.mac.pntg.pnt.macp
Container Raw pixel payload with a 512-byte pattern header
Compression PackBits (Run-Length Encoding)
Algorithm
PackBits (Apple RLE)
Color Depth 1-bit (Monochrome)
Developed by Apple Computer, Inc. (Bill Atkinson)
Released 1984
Magic Bytes
None (Relies on classic Mac OS 'PNTG' OSType)
Full MacPaint reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser AVCI MacPaint
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
AVCI

AVCI Strengths

  • Shares the robust, flexible HEIF container architecture that allows for rich metadata, HDR, and depth maps.
  • Backed by the highly ubiquitous AVC (H.264) codec, which is widely supported in hardware decoding.
  • Supports rectangular cropping and rotation metadata without needing to re-encode the pixel data.
Limitations
  • No native support within web browsers for HTML rendering.
  • Inferior compression efficiency when compared to newer container formats like HEIC (HEVC) or AVIF (AV1).
  • Easily confused with HEIC and AVIF, which use the same base ISOBMFF container.
MacPaint

MacPaint Strengths

  • Profoundly historically significant as the format that introduced millions to the concept of bitmap digital painting
  • Extremely simple PackBits compression makes it easy for emulator developers or archivists to write parsers from scratch in under an hour
Limitations
  • Severely limited: strictly black and white, and hard-locked to exactly 576 x 720 pixels
  • Lack of standard magic bytes makes programmatic file sniffing unreliable on modern filesystems without relying on the file extension
  • Completely obsolete and unsupported by modern web browsers or consumer image viewers

When to choose which format

AVCI
Use AVCI when…
  • Digital Photography
  • Camera Capture
  • Archival Storage
MacPaint
Use MacPaint when…
  • Historical Apple Macintosh Archival
  • Early 1980s Digital Art Preservation
  • Retro UI/UX Academic Research

More comparisons

AVCI vs ACES → MacPaint vs ACES → AVCI vs APNG → MacPaint vs APNG → AVCI vs AVCS → MacPaint vs AVCS → AVCI vs AVIF → MacPaint vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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