There are many file formats used for storing images and icons. Common Graphics provides several classes for reading and writing standard file formats. The following image file formats are supported:

The following icon file formats are supported:

The following table shows the class hierarchy that implements the file format framework of Common Graphics. This framework provides methods to load and unload images and icons in these formats, to test whether a file has a given format, and to detect what the format of a given file is.

In addition to loading from files and unloading into files, Common Graphics provides methods to load from ByteArrays and unload into ByteArrays. Error handling methods are also provided. These methods are described in the following sections.