It didn't take long for the experienced developers of Irfanview and Xnview to be able to decode those images. You could not use any other graphic images because their file format was unique, and you could not use their images in anything else. One example of a unique graphic file format was created by a company that wanted to sell a product that would change the desktop background daily, but they also wanted to sell the images you could use. It is due in part to these two freeware programs that we now have a few other commercial graphic file conversion programs. Two somewhat competing programs were Irfanview and Xnview, both freeware programs, and both adding more and more formats that they could handle.

As graphic program developers reverse engineered the various formats, they could save the data in a different format. It was only later on that someone wanted to convert one of those special formats to something else.

For them and their intended users, everything worked just fine. Generally, they were to work within a specific program or specific hardware. Over the course of history in graphic file evolution, there have been many manufacturers that have created their own format, but not with the intent that images in their format would ever need converting to anything else. Almost no one 'needs' 50 formats unless they are in the business of converting a wide range of formats to a more common format. The point is not that anyone needs 50+ formats.

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