Is bmp really dead? It's my go-to file format when playing around with graphic image programming (just stupid hobby stuff). It's easy to pick a format and write one out, and most everything reads it as a format that I've used, even on linux. It can be tricky reading one created by something else, but if you make assumptions based on the header sizes and the fact that you rarely run into one that not a simple 24-bit pixel array, its' not too bad. I do only use it as an interim format, though.