Convert ART to BMP — Free Online Converter
Convert AOL Compressed Image (.art) to Bitmap Image (.bmp) online for free. Fast, secure image conversion with no watermarks or registration....
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Works Everywhere
Any browser, any device
How to Convert
Upload your .art file by dragging it into the upload area or clicking to browse.
Choose your output settings. The default settings work great for most files.
Click Convert and download your .bmp file when it's ready.
About ART to BMP Conversion
ART files are relics of America Online's dial-up era, created using Johnson-Grace compression to squeeze images through painfully slow modem connections in the 1990s. These proprietary AOL images used aggressive lossy compression optimized for 14.4 and 28.8 kbps modems, sacrificing quality for speed in an age when loading a single photograph could take minutes. BMP (Bitmap) is the uncompressed raster format native to Windows, storing every pixel without any compression artifacts.
Converting ART to BMP extracts the image data from AOL's proprietary container and saves it as a raw pixel grid. This is particularly useful for digital archaeologists, web historians, and anyone who has discovered old AOL archives on forgotten hard drives or backup CDs. The BMP output provides a clean, uncompressed baseline that can then be processed further without introducing additional compression artifacts on top of the Johnson-Grace degradation already baked into the source.
Why Convert ART to BMP?
The ART format is effectively dead — no modern image viewer, browser, or editing application supports it natively. AOL discontinued the format along with its proprietary browser, leaving millions of ART files stranded without software capable of opening them. Converting to BMP rescues these orphaned images into a format that every Windows application from Paint to Photoshop can open without hesitation.
BMP is the ideal intermediate format when you want to preserve every pixel exactly as decoded from the ART source. Since BMP applies no compression whatsoever, the conversion introduces zero additional quality loss. This matters when dealing with already-degraded ART files where further lossy compression would compound the artifacts. From the BMP, you can then decide whether to archive losslessly or compress to a web-friendly format.
Common Use Cases
- Recover images from archived AOL email attachments and instant message logs
- Digitally preserve early internet artwork and web graphics from the AOL era
- Extract images from old AOL backup CDs and floppy disks for family photo recovery
- Create uncompressed working copies of AOL images for restoration and enhancement
- Migrate legacy AOL content libraries into modern asset management systems
How It Works
ART files use Johnson-Grace compression, a proprietary wavelet-based lossy algorithm developed specifically for AOL's low-bandwidth network. ImageMagick decodes the ART container, reconstructing the pixel data from the compressed stream, then writes it as an uncompressed BMP with 24-bit RGB color depth. The BMP output uses the standard BITMAPINFOHEADER structure with bottom-up row ordering, compatible with virtually every Windows application and image library.
Quality & Performance
The output BMP preserves every pixel exactly as decoded from the ART source — no additional quality loss occurs during conversion. However, ART files were originally compressed with aggressive lossy settings tuned for dial-up transmission, so expect visible compression artifacts including color banding, blurring, and blockiness in the source material. The BMP simply provides a faithful, uncompressed representation of what the ART file contains.
Device Compatibility
| Device | ART | BMP |
|---|---|---|
| Windows PC | Partial | Native |
| macOS | Partial | Partial |
| iPhone/iPad | Partial | Partial |
| Android | Partial | Partial |
| Linux | Partial | Partial |
| Web Browser | No | No |
Tips for Best Results
- 1Use BMP as an intermediate step before applying noise reduction or upscaling to avoid compounding compression artifacts
- 2Batch convert entire AOL archive folders at once since each ART file is typically very small
- 3Compare the BMP output against the original ART rendering in ImageMagick to verify accurate color reproduction
- 4Consider converting to PNG instead of BMP for long-term storage — same lossless quality at a fraction of the file size
- 5Label converted files with their original AOL dates if available, as ART metadata is lost during conversion
Converting ART to BMP is the first step in rescuing images from AOL's defunct proprietary format, delivering an uncompressed pixel-perfect decode ready for archival or further processing.