Is it a meta-file or an image format? What is a PICT? — Aperture For anyone interested, you may view this tutorial. For more information, see PICT documentation. PICT Format: The Basic Knowledge What does PICT look like in a real image? This is a very brief explanation, written by a native Mac developer, describing PICT in its simplest form in their tutorial. For a more thorough reading, I encourage you to visit their PICT Wiki. You may also take the time to read this Apple Technical Note. (Note that Apple has released their own PICT for iOS, which is similar in its approach to Quicker, just a tad different in a few ways.) PICT is a very easy to learn format, at least for non-coding Macintosh experts. There is not much more to know about it. It is a very small amount of computer code — just over 4000 lines long! There are no functions, and not even keywords or punctuation. For the casual Mac user, there is not even a “P” in a PICT file. The only thing you use is “Q” to open and “P” to save it when you have finished. If you already know how to use Macintosh's file sharing, then PICT is really no trouble at all for you. The rest of this article is for people like me, who can be more involved in understanding what a PICT is and how it works. Why Should I Use PICT as opposed to, say, QuickTime? — Aperture I am not an expert in either QuickTime or PICT; I have always felt it would be more productive and fun to read the actual specification, rather than read descriptions of each feature that QuickTime or PICT has. But as a beginner, it is good to get the fundamentals of an image format down in an easy-to-understand way. How does a QuickTime or PICT image work? If you look at QuickTime's QuickTime.MTV file, this is how a QuickTime image will work. It is just a standard “MIFF” file, and the first few bytes of the MIFF file represent the file name: QuickTime.MPEG “.