CID to SUN Converter

Render CID-keyed font glyphs as Sun rasterfile images online

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Solaris Ready

SUN rasterfiles integrate directly with Solaris display and imaging tools. Get your CID-keyed CJK font renders into Unix workflows easily.

Platform Independent

No Sun workstation required. Convert CID to SUN format from Windows, macOS, or Linux — all through your web browser.

Secure Handling

CID font uploads are deleted immediately after conversion. SUN rasterfile outputs are purged within 24 hours for complete privacy.

How to convert CID to SUN

1

Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.

2

Choose sun or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)

3

Let the file convert and you can download your sun file right afterwards

About formats

CID (Character Identifier) is a font architecture developed by Adobe Systems and specified in June 1993 to address the challenges of fonts containing very large glyph sets, particularly for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) scripts. Traditional PostScript fonts identify glyphs by name, which becomes impractical when a font contains tens of thousands of characters — a typical Japanese font may include over 20,000 glyphs. CID-keyed fonts replace glyph names with numeric identifiers organized by a character collection and ordering (such as Adobe-Japan1 or Adobe-GB1), dramatically reducing overhead for glyph access and subsetting. The architecture defines three PostScript font types: Type 9 (CID-keyed Type 1 outlines), Type 10 (CID-keyed Type 3), and Type 11 (CID-keyed Type 42/TrueType). A primary advantage is efficient handling of massive character sets — the numeric CID approach eliminates the memory and processing cost of maintaining thousands of glyph name strings. CID fonts also support sophisticated CMap resources that map encoding values to CIDs, enabling a single font to serve multiple encoding schemes (Unicode, Shift-JIS, Big5) without duplicating glyph data. The architecture integrates well with PDF subsetting, allowing documents to embed only the glyphs actually used. CID-keyed technology laid the foundation for CJK support in both OpenType and modern PDF workflows, and remains active in print production and document processing systems worldwide.
Developer: Adobe Systems
Initial release: June 11, 1993
SUN is a raster image format associated with Sun Microsystems workstations, encompassing both the Sun Raster format (.ras) and the Sun Icon format used for window system icons and cursors on SunOS and Solaris systems. Sun Raster files, identifiable by their 0x59a66a95 magic number, store bitmap images in 1-bit monochrome, 8-bit indexed color, 24-bit BGR, or 32-bit XBGR modes, with optional run-length encoding compression and a 32-byte header. The Sun Icon subset is a simpler text-based format used for small monochrome bitmaps — window icons, cursor images, and toolbar graphics — stored as C-language data arrays that could be directly compiled into X Window and SunView applications. These icon files begin with a comment block specifying width, height, and optionally hot spot coordinates (for cursor images), followed by hexadecimal pixel values in a format readable by both the C compiler and the iconedit tool. Sun workstations running SunOS and later Solaris were foundational platforms for Unix computing, networking, and the early internet, and the SUN image formats were integral to their graphical environments. One advantage is the format's dual text/binary nature: Sun Icons are valid C source code that can be #included directly into applications, a practical approach to resource embedding that predates modern asset management systems. The Sun Raster variant's simplicity provides another strength — the 32-byte header and straightforward encoding make it one of the easiest binary image formats to parse. SUN format files are supported by ImageMagick, GIMP, XnView, and Unix image viewing tools.
Developer: Sun Microsystems
Initial release: 1982

Frequently Asked Questions

Why convert CID to SUN?

SUN rasterfile is the native bitmap format for Sun Microsystems workstations — needed when CID glyph images must integrate with Solaris tools.

How do I open SUN images?

Sun/Solaris display tools, GIMP, ImageMagick, and XnView open SUN rasterfiles. Most Unix-based image utilities support the format.

Is SUN the same as RAS?

Essentially yes — SUN and RAS both refer to the Sun rasterfile format. The naming varies by tool and context but the format is identical.

Does SUN support color images?

Yes — Sun rasterfiles handle 1-bit, 8-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit depths. CID font renders adapt to the chosen color depth.

Is this free on Convertio?

Yes — convert CID to SUN at no cost. No registration, no Solaris system needed — just your browser.