4 file types use the .pic file extension.

What is a PIC file?

Bitmap image created by IBM Lotus or a variety of other applications; possible programs include Advanced Art Studio, Micrografx Draw, and SoftImage 3D; should not be confused with the .PICT format.

Category: Raster Image Files

Houdini Raster Image

Deep Raster image created by Houdini, a 3D modeling and animation application; stores a run-length encoded image, including the colors, color map, and size of the picture; supports any number of planes per pixel; stores images that can be included with 3D scenes.

The PIC format is proprietary and is the native format used for internal Deep Raster images saved with Houdini.

Programs that open or reference PIC files

Updated: June 22, 2010

Pictor Paint Image

A PIC file may also be an image file saved in the PICtor raster image format. It is the native file format used by Pictor Paint (PC Paint) and Graphics Animation System for Professionals (GRASP), which were both developed by John Bridges for the MS-DOS operating system.

PICtor PIC files are uncommon since the programs that support them are no longer developed. They were often used in the 1980s and 1990s to save and share images but are now rare. If you do encounter a PIC file, it most likely is an old image created by an MS-DOS paintbrush program. The image may also be a frame of a video sequence.

The PICtor format is similar to the Paintbrush Bitmap Image .PCX format. It includes a header that contains information about the display device, which allows it to be viewed on different systems. After the header, the format stores image data that may be uncompressed or compressed with Run-length encoding (RLE)compression.

You can open a PIC file with PMView Pro in Windows. You can also convert the PIC file to a more common format with FFmpeg and view it with an image viewer.

Programs that open PIC files

Updated: September 2, 2020

QuickDraw Picture

A PIC file may also be an image saved in the QuickDraw Picture format, used by old Macintosh computers. It is a vector image that may contain an embedded raster image . PIC files are the same as .PICT and .PCT files.

QuickDraw was a 2D graphics library and API used by Classic Mac OS . Various Mac OS apps, including Apple Keynote and Apple QuickTime, used QuickDraw to create, read, and display vector and raster images. These images were saved as PICT files or, less commonly, PIC or PCT files.

While the PIC format is technically a vector graphic format, each PIC file can also contain an embedded raster graphic. On occasion, PIC files contain no vector image data, and instead contain just a raster image.

NOTE: Apple deprecated QuickDraw in 2005, with the release of Mac OS X v10.4.

You can open a PIC file with:

You can use XnViewMP , Apple Preview , Adobe Photoshop , or IrfanView to convert PIC files to other image formats. For example, XnViewMP can convert PIC files to the following formats (and many others):

Programs that open PIC files

Updated: July 11, 2023