Is there any quality difference between PNG vs BMP image formats?

I have just learned that PNG is a lossless image format while BMP can be both uncompressed or lossless format. Should there be a quality difference between these two? If not, does it mean that other lossless formats like TIFF, JPEG2000 and PNG offer the same quality as BMP?

Solution 1:

BMP is both uncompressed and lossless. PNG is compressed but lossless. Thus, with a lossless format the only visible difference is the file size. I'd recommend using PNG over BMP unless you can't for compatibility reasons.

Solution 2:

There's no quality difference between BMP & PNG format (except PNG is compressed using deflate algorithm).

BMP8 can be compressed using RLE (run-length-encoding) algorithm, but BMP16/24/32/64 doesn't support compression yet.

BMP32 support alpha channel just like PNG32 support transparency.

Solution 3:

No difference in quality, both standards are lossless. BMP uncompressed takes more space, but when compressed (e.g. when put in a .zip or .7z file) BMP can be better.

Having done some experiments, I saved a photo in BMP and in PNG, and compressed both files. (.zip) The BMP was 1.8% bigger, but that would vary between photos.

If you are compressing photos, it makes no difference.

However simple picture, such as a drawing you did in paint, or a diagram, will compress much better with .bmp rather than .png.

I again, tested this. I did a logo in paint (similar to a ford logo) and compressed it with 7zip. Uncompressed, the png was 136kb, the bmp 1.7 MB. Compressed, the png was ~100kb and the bmp was 18kb.

If you want to compress pictures, save in .bmp. If not, use .png.

Both when compressed whooped jpeg btw.