Metafiles contain a series of attributes that set color, shape, and size, usually of a picture or a drawing. After this series is drawn, you can view the assembled image.

Presentation Manager (PM) printer drivers hold print jobs in metafile format while they wait to print. Metafiles can be created by applications using the &os2; graphics engine that is part of PM.

By default, metafiles are associated with the &os2; Picture Viewer, which can display and print metafiles.