1.4.4.1 Saving the image to disk.

"I have rendered an image with POV-Ray, but how do I save it to JPG or GIF or any other image format?"

This is a typical problem of people using the Windows version of the program for first time.

POV-Ray is a raytracer which has only one purpose: To read a source file describing the scene to raytrace and then calculate it and save it to disk in a supported image format, usually TGA (and optionally PNG, BMP, etc).

POV-Ray has always had this goal, and still has, and will (desirably) never change. It is mostly command-line oriented. It supports non-essential things, like showing the image while it is rendering.

A GUI does not change anything. POV-Ray is still POV-Ray, with or without GUI. It takes a source code and calculates the image and saves it to disk. By default it shows the image while it is raytracing it, but that is just a secondary feature, non-essential, irrelevant. It can be turned off and POV-Ray will still make its job.

So the answer to the question is: The image is already saved on disk.

Usually it is saved in TGA or BMP format (it depends on the settings) with the same name as the source code (so if the source is named CHAIR.POV, the image will be named CHAIR.TGA or CHAIR.BMP or whatever). The location is either the same directory where the .pov-file is or else a common directory for images (which you can set up in the main povray.ini file).