[lug] Are xcf (gimp) files that much smaller than bmps?

[Jeff Schroeder]

> Are xcf files really that much better at compression than windows
> bitmaps?

I don't know how the internals of the XCF format work, but since a BMP 
is an uncompressed format, it's a trivial matter to use a lossless 
compression scheme to shrink the file size considerably.

As a test, try gzip-ing your BMP file and see if it compares to the XCF 
file size.  gzip is a lossless compression scheme, although there are 
certainly better schemes tailored for image data.

$0.02,
Jeff