ICO to BMP: Extracting Raw Icon Data

Created on 7 October, 2025 • Image Manipulation Tools • 34 views • 2 minutes read

Instantly convert your .ico favicon files into the raw, uncompressed BMP format. Our free tool is perfect for legacy software compatibility and technical analysis.

You have a favicon file in .ico format, and for a very specific technical reason—like legacy software compatibility or low-level graphics programming—you need to extract the image data in its purest, most uncompressed form: a Bitmap (BMP).

What is an ICO to BMP Converter? (A Simple Analogy)

Imagine your .ico file is a tiny, intricate, perfectly assembled Swiss watch. 🇨🇭⌚

An ICO to BMP Converter is like taking that watch to a master watchmaker's workshop. The watchmaker carefully disassembles the entire watch and lays out every single microscopic gear, spring, and screw onto a blueprint in perfect order.

The resulting blueprint with all the raw parts (the BMP file) is huge and no longer tells the time, but it provides a complete, uncompressed, raw representation of every single component of the original watch for detailed technical analysis.

How to Use Our ICO to BMP Converter Tool

Extracting the raw data from your icon is simple:

Step 1: Upload your .ico file.
Step 2: Choose the size you wish to extract from the ICO container.
Step 3: Click the "Convert to BMP" button.
Step 4: The tool will generate a raw, uncompressed BMP file of your icon.

If you need it, click this link>>> ICO to BMP Converter Tool

Why Would You Use This?

✅ Legacy Software Compatibility: The most likely reason. Some very old Windows applications or specific development tools might only be able to import or process icon data in the BMP format.
✅ Raw Pixel Manipulation: For computer graphics students or developers learning about pixel-level manipulation, the simple, uncompressed structure of a BMP file is easy to work with programmatically.
✅ Technical Analysis: Provides the purest possible representation of the icon's pixel data without any compression.
⚠️ Warning: BMP files are large and not suitable for web use. This is a highly specialized conversion.

ICO to BMP in Action: Real-World Scenarios

1. The Retro App Developer A developer is creating a user interface for a legacy Windows XP application. The framework requires all button icons to be in .bmp format. They use an ICO to BMP converter to extract and save their icons in the required format.

2. The Computer Graphics Student A student's assignment is to write a program that manually applies a color filter to an image by manipulating its raw pixel data. They convert a simple ICO file to BMP to get a small, uncompressed file that is easy to read and modify with their code.

Conclusion

While niche, the ability to convert a specialized ICO file into the fundamental, uncompressed BMP format is a crucial tool for specific technical and legacy workflows. Our converter provides a direct and accurate bridge between these two distinct formats.

Need the raw data from your icon? Try our free ICO to BMP Converter today!