Extract text from Live Picture images (IVUE)
To convert IVUE images to another format, you need Live Picture or other Raster Image software.
To convert other file formats to the "Obsolete Image Format" file type, you need software like Live Picture or a similar tool.
The .IVUE file is a proprietary image format developed by HSC Software (later MetaCreations) for the Live Picture image editing application. It uses FITS (Functional Interpolating Transformation System) technology to store massive, multi-resolution image pyramids. This allowed 1990s computers with limited memory to edit huge graphics in real-time by only loading the screen-resolution data needed for the current view.
Today, .IVUE is completely obsolete. The proprietary nature of the format means modern operating systems, web browsers, and standard image viewers cannot open it. Finding software that supports the format natively is extremely difficult, as it often requires running legacy Mac OS or older Windows operating systems on an emulator. Users locked out of their old archives desperately need to migrate these files to modern standards.
When attempting to recover these graphics, users typically want to convert .IVUE to accessible formats like JPG, PNG, or TIFF. Doing so generally flattens the image, meaning the dynamic multi-resolution layers and specific legacy vector paths are lost in translation, but the visual data is preserved for modern use.
This file format is exceptionally difficult to open or convert because its rendering engine is closed-source and long abandoned. Often, only the original legacy software can properly read or export the full data tree. If our analysis detects a supported embedded thumbnail or legacy preview within the container, viewing or partial conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your IVUE file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert IVUE file to , you can use Live Picture or similar software from the "Multi-resolution Image Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to IVUE, try Live Picture or another comparable tool in the "Multi-resolution Image Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our IVUE converter.