Supported video and image sequence formats

Last updated on Oct 10, 2026

Learn which video and color formats and image sequences are supported by video layers in Adobe Photoshop on desktop.

Video formats

Photoshop supports the following video formats for import into video layers:

Format

File Extension

Notes

MPEG-1

.mpg or .mpeg

Requires the appropriate codec

MPEG-4

.mp4 or .m4v

Requires a compatible codec

MOV

.mov

Requires compatible QuickTime codecs

AVI

.avi

Requires compatible codecs installed on the system

MPEG-2

.mpg or .mpeg

Requires an MPEG-2 codec/encoder installed on the computer

Image sequence formats

Photoshop can import numbered image sequences as video layers from the following formats.

  • BMP
  • DICOM
  • JPEG
  • OpenEXR
  • PNG
  • PSD
  • Targa
  • TIFF
  • Cineon (requires plugin installation)
  • JPEG 2000 (requires plugin installation)

Image sequence files must use sequential numbering (for example, frame001.png, frame002.png) and be stored in the same folder. Photoshop uses the numbering sequence to create the video layer.

Color mode and bit-depth support

Video layers support RGB documents with 8 bpc, 16 bpc, and 32 bpc color depth. Higher bit depths provide greater color fidelity and tonal range but may result in larger file sizes and increased processing requirements. Most video workflows use 8-bit or 16-bit color depth.