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Supported image formats, color profiles, and tips

When you upload an image into Micrio, it gets processed by our tiling servers. This means that the original image, even if it's a 5GB TIFF file, will be broken up to individual tiles on multiple zoom levels, optimizing it for good streaming delivery in the user's browser. Meaning, the user will only download the parts of the image that they are looking at, and zooming into.

So for Micrio, it really doesn't matter how large the original size of your upload is-- the processed image results in a large number of individual tiles, in most cases JPEG images.

Image formats

The default supported image formats by Micrio are:

  • JPEG
  • PNG
  • WebP
  • TIFF

There are no hard resolution limits inside Micrio's system-- however, some file formats are limited themselves. For instance, JPEG supports images up to 4 gigapixels (65,535 x 65,535px), and PNG is limited to (about) 2.5 gigapixels.

Additionally, when you have more specialized image formats, there is a wide additional range supported for Enterprise accounts (RAW/PSD/PSB/BMP/various medical/scientific formats).

TIP

For large images, we recommend using the Tiled TIFF Pyramid format for uploading your files.

Vector images

Only rasterised images are supported for zoomable images. Micrio doesn’t support SVGs because drawing these is a very heavy operation for the browser which results in a suboptimal experience for the user. To use your vector image, export is as a high resolution image to JPG or PNG and upload it in the dashboard.

Color profiles

Since Micrio is a web-based platform for use in the browser, it does not support advanced or custom image color profiles. When you are uploading images in Micrio, please make sure that they are in Standard RGB (sRGB, or IEC 61966-2-1:1999) color format.

Failing to do so may result in a wrong, more dull colouring after the image processing.

Since custom or commercial color profiles allow for many degrees of freedom and color fine tuning, if you are unsure, please get in touch with the original image creator(s) and ask them for an sRGB version of the images you want to upload.

Image layers

If you are uploading an image that contains multiple layers (TIFF, PSB for instance), they will be flattened to a single raster layer by our tiling servers.

This can possibly result in some artifacting when you are using transparency in your layers.

We recommend preparing your image by flattening it to a single raster layer. Not only does this prevent artifacting, it also greatly reduces the image file size, and Micrio processing time.

Micrio output image formats

In most cases, images uploaded in Micrio will result in JPEG encoded image tiles. This is generally the most optimal for a balanced image size and quality.

If you are working with very detailed images, or images that contain transparency, and want to maintain those in Micrio, it is possible to use PNG as the output tile format. This increases the individual tile sizes, so there will be more storage and bandwidth used. However, those images will allow lossless encoding and transparency.

You can easily enable this by uploading a PNG original into the dashboard. You will be automatically prompted to whether the tiling should be done to JPG or PNG.

Micrio also supports WebP tiling. However, since this is not available in (really) old browsers, this feature is not enabled by default. If you would like to use WebP for your images, contact us!