What is PCD? PCD Image File Format Description

What is PCD?

PCD stands for Photo CD and means a high (actually the highest) resolution format for images on a CD. It was developed by Kodak. A PCD file contains five different resolution (ranging from low to high) of a slide or film negative. Due to it PCD is often used by many photographers and graphics professionals for high-end printed applications.

PCD files can be accessed in a variety of dimensions and color depths, which is quite handy, and the format is good at encoding and storing authentic color information. The PCD files are typically 4 to 6 MB in size and, therefore, take some time to transfer via the web.

Each PCD file contains five scans of the same image at the following resolutions:

192 x 128 - 73,728 bytes
384 x 256 - 294,912 bytes
768 x 512 - 1,179,648 bytes
1536 x 1024 - 4,784,128 bytes
3072 x 2048 - 19,070,976 bytes
6144 x 4096 - 75,694,080 bytes

The disadvantage is that not all CD-ROM drives can access Photo-CDs. However most of the graphic software such as Adobe Photoshop, Pagemaker, and CorelDraw support Photo CD format. Other software include Microsoft Office version 7 and above, Extensis Portfolio image database software and Macintosh Apple Quicktime.