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Image MIME Reference
NAPLPS

North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax

image/naplps
VS

PaintShop Pro Image

image/x-paintshoppro
PaintShop-Pro-PSP

A complete technical comparison of North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax and PaintShop Pro Image — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature NAPLPS PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Transparency (Alpha) ✕ No Yes
Animation Support Yes ✕ No
Progressive Loading Yes ✕ No
HDR Support ✕ No Yes
EXIF Metadata ✕ No Yes
ICC Color Profile ✕ No Yes
North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax
image/naplps
Extension
.nap.naplps
Container NAPLPS Byte Stream
Compression Uncompressed (Tokenized ASCII Commands)
Algorithm
None (Coordinate encoding)
Color Depth 16-color palette (Indexed from larger color spaces)
Developed by ANSI / CSA (Based on Canadian CRC's Telidon)
Released 1983
Magic Bytes
1B (Variable / ESC sequences)
Full NAPLPS 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 NAPLPS PaintShop-Pro-PSP
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
NAPLPS

NAPLPS Strengths

  • Extremely bandwidth-efficient, enabling colorful graphical interfaces over early 300 baud dial-up connections
  • Resolution-independent vector scaling allowed the exact same file to be displayed accurately on varied early PC monitors and television sets
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete and unsupported by modern web technologies
  • Relies heavily on stateful parsing and terminal emulators rather than straightforward file decoding
  • Easily misidentified by MIME sniffers as plain text or generic binary streams due to the lack of a standardized file header
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

NAPLPS
Use NAPLPS when…
  • 1980s Videotex Services
  • Prodigy Online Service Graphics
  • Historical BBS Terminal Graphics
  • Legacy Teletext Broadcasts
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

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