'Interchange File Format' FileType Plugin (.IFF, .ILBM, .LBM, .ANIM)

[midora]

 

'Interchange File Format' FileType Plugin (.IFF, .ILBM, .LBM, .ANIM)

Summary

Paint.NET FileType plugin which loads images and animations in some of the IFF file formats. Some because IFF is a container format which may contain all kind of data (images, animations, documents, audio, video, ...). This format was used on Atari and Amiga computers in the Nineties of the 20th century.

 

Supported open formats:
- IFF-ILBM: Interleaved images with 1 to 8, 24, and 32 planes. HAM-6 and HAM-8 subformats are supported.
- IFF-PBM: Non-interleaved images
- ILBM images containing color cycles. Color cycles are a method to create animations by changing entries in the color map
  instead of the image data. Each possible cycle will create a new frame.
- IFF-ANIM: Animations providing a base frame and additional delta frames.
  Delta operations 5,7, and 8 are supported.

Supported save formats:
- None.

 

Each frame of an animation will be loaded as a layer in Paint.NET. The layer name will me marked with !ST<duration>, where duration is the time the frame should be shown in milliseconds. If a layer is not marked with !ST<duration> then the time of the previous frame will be assumed. This marker is recognized by the PDNAnimator tool and can be used to transform the animation in a more modern file format (like APNG).

Author

Martin Osieka

Download

Find the latest version of the plugin here >> ImIFF.FileType v1.0 (31.10.2014)

Installation

Follow the instructions carefully

• Copy the file ImIFF.FileType.dll to the Paint.NET\FileTypes\ folder
• Remove other plugins supporting the same file types (.iff, .ilbm, .lbm, .anim) from Paint.NET\FileTypes\ folder (to avoid possible conflicts) I.e. 'PDNIFFPLUGIN.dll' plugin.
• After a restart of Paint.NET you will find two new entries in the file types popup of the 'Open' dialog:
  • IFF Images (.iff,*.ilbm,*.lbm)
  • IFF-Animations (*.anim).
•  Be aware any of these extensions may load all kinds of supported IFFs. The selected extension is just used as dialog filter.

Compatibility

Paint.NET 3.5.11 and 4.0.5

Supported languages

• English

Known issues

• If the file contains color cycles with different frequencies then only the frames for the first color cycle will be generated. The reason is that trying to generate all possible combinations of the different color cycles may generate an infinite number of frames.

Unknown issues

• If you are not able to load an iff image or animation and you are 99% sure that the file is not damaged then provide a copy for testing.

To Do list

• Some options to adapt the imported files (like respecting the aspect ratio).

Examples

None

History

• 1.0 (31.10.2014)
  First public release

Edited October 11, 2017 by midora
Adjusted spacing of table + added zipped dll link

[midora]

Two additional remarks:

 

If you are looking for animations in the IFF format then you should not miss the following page:

 

http://www.randelshofer.ch/animations

 

There are two other entries supporting iff plugins in the filetypes section. These plugins never worked quite well in 3.5.11 and they do not work in Paint.NET 4.0.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Adjusted spacing of table + added zipped dll link

[Firefly123]

I have two iff photos that will not open. They give a debug error report. I suspect they are 2bit images. Where do I send the files so the bug can be fixed? (Files attached to this post)

iff.zip

[IRON67]

I can open the files (electronic circuit plans) without any problem with XnView Imageviewer.

Edited December 5, 2017 by IRON67

[hexaae]

Would be possible to add SAVE as IFF too?

[midora]

What type of IFF image you are looking for? IFF ist just the basic container format.

[hexaae]

Amiga ILBM ("picture" and "brush"), can be handy to load on a shared dir with Personal Paint or Deluxe Paint on the Amiga through WinUAE emulator...

Edited September 2, 2021 by hexaae

[hexaae]

Today I needed again to save directly to IFF ILBM image format (to be exact in 5 bit-planes, 32 colors)...

@midora
News? 🙏🏻

Edited June 19, 2023 by hexaae

[PaintyBoi]

I have a couple .LBM files that I can't seem to open. Made an account on here specifically to ask for help. I tried opening them with several programs and plugins for them, including GIMP, IrfanView, ImageGlass, very old piece of software Ultimate Paint and obviously paint.net with your plugin as well - However, none can seem to open or recognize those files as images, so I'm wondering if these are even image files at all? It would be great if someone could take a look at what these files actually are and how to open them. They come from an old game, Astro Avenger 2 for Windows. I found them next to old 3D Direct X .X model files, so at first I assumed they were textures for these models but I have no idea. In addition to all of that, all of them have something like this inside when opened with Notepad++:

I'm attaching a few of these files in a .ZIP archive for anyone to possibly figure out, any help appreciated.

AstroAvenger2LBM.zip

Edited March 28 by PaintyBoi

[null54]

10 hours ago, PaintyBoi said:

I found them next to old 3D Direct X .X model files, so at first I assumed they were textures for these models but I have no idea.

Based on the text in that image, it looks like those files may be some kind of 3D rendering configuration for the model. But I don't know for sure.

[PaintyBoi]

Quote

Based on the text in that image, it looks like those files may be some kind of 3D rendering configuration for the model. But I don't know for sure.

Oh, that's pretty interesting. So they are not images then. That's good to know, I do appreciate the hint for what these might be. I will do some research into those files on my own later.