Man page 1 : netpbm

ppmtompeg

    convert series of PPM frames to an MPEG movie

jpegtopnm

    convert JFIF/JPEG/EXIF file to Netpbm format

pnmtojpeg

    convert PPM to JPEG/JFIF/EXIF format

anytopnm

    convert any graphics format to Netpbm format

bmptoppm

    convert Windows or OS/2 Bitmap file to PPM

ppmtobmp

    convert PPM to Windows or OS/2 Bitmap file

winicontoppm

    convert Windows icon file to PPM

ppmtowinicon

    convert PPM to Windows icon file

giftopnm

    convert GIF to portable anymap

ppmtogif

    convert PPM to GIF

pnmtopng

    convert Netpbm format to Portable Network Graphics

pngtopnm

    convert PNG (Portable Network Graphics) to Netpbm formats

palmtopnm

    convert Palm pixmap to Netpbm formats

pnmtopalm

    convert Netpbm formats to Palm pixmap

jbigtopbm

    convert JBIG BIE (compressed bitmap) to PBM

pamtopnm

    convert a PAM image to PBM, PGM, or PPM

pbmtojbig

    convert PBM to JBIG BIE (compressed bitmap)

pnmtofiasco

    convert Netpbm image to Fiasco (wfa) highly compressed format

fiascotopnm

    convert Fiasco (wfa) highly compressed format to Netpbm image

hpcdtoppm

    convert photo CD to PPM

pbmtonokia

    convert PBM to Nokia Smart Messaging Format (SMF)

pbmtowbmp

    convert PBM to WAP (Wireless App Protocol) Wireless Bitmap

wbmptopbm

    convert WAP (Wireless App Protocol) Wireless Bitmap to PBM

neotoppm

    convert Atari Neochrome (.neo) image to PPM

ppmtoneo

    convert PPM image to Atari Neochrome (.neo)

pbmtomda

    convert from PBM to Microdesign (for Amstrad PCWs)

mdatopbm

    convert from Microdesign (for Amstrad PCWs) to PBM

atktopbm

    convert Andrew Toolkit raster object to PBM

pbmtoatk

    convert PBM to Andrew Toolkit raster object

brushtopbm

    convert Xerox doodle brushes to PBM

cmuwmtopbm

    convert CMU window manager format to PBM

g3topbm

    convert Group 3 FAX to PBM

pbmtog3

    convert PBM to Group 3 FAX

icontopbm

    convert Sun icon to PBM

pbmtoicon

    convert PBM to Sun icon

gemtopnm

    convert GEM .img format to PBM or pixmap

macptopbm

    convert MacPaint to PBM

pbmtomacp

    convert PBM to MacPaint

mgrtopbm

    convert MGR format to PBM

pbmtomgr

    convert PBM to MGR format

pi3topbm

    convert Atari Degas .pi3 to PBM

pbmtopi3

    convert PBM to Atari Degas .pi3

xbmtopbm

    convert X10 or X11 bitmap to PBM

pbmtoxbm

    convert PBM to X11 bitmap

pbmtox10bm

    convert PBM to X10 bitmap

ybmtopbm

    convert Bennet Yee "face" file into PBM

pbmtoybm

    convert PBM into Bennet Yee "face" file

pbmto10x

    convert PBM to Gemini 10x printer graphics

pbmtoascii

    convert PBM to ASCII graphic form

asciitopgm

    convert ASCII character graphics to PGM

pbmtobbnbg

    convert PBM to BBN BitGraph graphics

pbmtocmuwm

    convert PBM to CMU window manager format

pbmtoepson

    convert PBM to Epson printer graphics

pbmtogem

    convert PBM into GEM .img file

pbmtogo

    convert PBM to GraphOn graphics

pbmtolj

    convert PBM to HP LaserJet black and white graphics

ppmtolj

    convert PPM to HP LaserJet color graphics (PCL)

pjtoppm

    convert HP PaintJet file to PPM

ppmtopj

    convert PPM to HP PaintJet file

thinkjettopbm

    convert HP Thinkjet printer stream to PBM

pbmtoplot

    convert PBM into Unix plot(5) file

pbmtoptx

    convert PBM to Printronix graphics

pbmtozinc

    convert PBM to Zinc Interface Library icon

fitstopnm

    convert FITS format to portable anymap

pnmtofits

    convert Netpbm formats to FITS format

fstopgm

    convert Usenix FaceSaver(tm) format to PGM

pgmtofs

    convert PGM to Usenix FaceSaver(tm) format

hipstopgm

    convert HIPS format to PGM

lispmtopgm

    convert a Lisp Machine bitmap file into PGM format

pgmtolispm

    convert PGM into Lisp Machine format

pnmtops

    convert Netpbm formats to Postscript

pstopnm

    convert Postscript to Netpbm formats

psidtopgm

    convert PostScript "image" data to PGM

pbmtolps

    convert PBM image to Postscript using lines

pbmtoepsi

    convert a PBM image to encapsulated Postscript preview bitmap

pbmtopsg3

    convert PBM images to Postscript using G3 fax compression.

rawtopgm

    convert raw grayscale bytes to PGM

pgmtopbm

    convert PGM to PBM

gouldtoppm

    convert Gould scanner file to PPM

ilbmtoppm

    convert IFF ILBM to PPM

ppmtoilbm

    convert PPM to IFF ILBM

imgtoppm

    convert Img-whatnot to PPM

mtvtoppm

    convert MTV ray-tracer output to PPM

pcxtoppm

    convert PC Paintbrush format to PPM

pgmtoppm

    colorize a portable graymap into a PPM

pi1toppm

    convert Atari Degas .pi1 to PPM

ppmtopi1

    convert PPM to Atari Degas .pi1

picttoppm

    convert Macintosh PICT to PPM

ppmtopict

    convert PPM to Macintosh PICT

qrttoppm

    convert QRT ray-tracer output to PPM

rawtoppm

    convert raw RGB bytes to PPM

sldtoppm

    convert an AutoCAD slide file into a PPM

spctoppm

    convert Atari compressed Spectrum to PPM

sputoppm

    convert Atari uncompressed Spectrum to PPM

tgatoppm

    convert TrueVision Targa file to PPM

ppmtotga

    convert PPM to TrueVision Targa file

ximtoppm

    convert Xim to PPM

xpmtoppm

    convert XPM format to PPM

ppmtoxpm

    convert PPM to XPM format

yuvtoppm

    convert Abekas YUV format to PPM

eyuvtoppm

    convert Encoder/Berkeley YUV format to PPM

ppmtoeyuv

    convert PPM to Encoder/Berkeley YUV format

ppmtoyuv

    convert PPM to Abekas YUV format

ppmtoyuvsplit

    convert PPM to 3 subsampled raw YUV files

yuvsplittoppm

    merge 3 subsampled raw YUV files to one PPM

ppmtoacad

    convert PPM to AutoCAD database or slide

ppmtoicr

    convert PPM to NCSA ICR graphics

ppmtopcx

    convert PPM to PC Paintbrush format

ppmtopgm

    convert PPM to portable graymap

ppmtopuzz

    convert PPM to X11 "puzzle" file

rasttopnm

    convert Sun raster file to Netpbm formats

pnmtorast

    convert Netpbm formats to Sun raster file

tifftopnm

    convert TIFF file to portable anymap

pnmtotiff

    convert Netpbm formats to TIFF RGB file

pnmtotiffcmyk

    convert Netpbm formats to TIFF CMYK file

xwdtopnm

    convert X10 or X11 window dump to Netpbm formats

pnmtoxwd

    convert Netpbm formats to X11 window dump

pnmtoplainpnm

    convert regular Netpbm format image into plain Netpbm format

pbmtopgm

    convert PBM file to PGM by averaging areas

411toppm

    convert 411 (Sony Mavica) to PPM

ppmtosixel

    convert PPM to DEC sixel format

ppmtouil

    convert PPM to Motif UIL icon file

sbigtopgm

    convert Santa Barbara Instrument Group CCD file to PGM

vidtoppm

    convert Parallax XVideo JPEG to sequence of PPM files

pnmtorle

    convert PNM to Utah Raster Toolkit (urt/rle) file

rletopnm

    convert Utah Raster Toolkit (urt/rle) file to PNM

ppmtoleaf

    convert PPM to Interleaf

leaftoppm

    convert Interleaf to PPM

bioradtopgm

    convert Biorad confocal image to PGM

pbmtoln03

    convert PGM image to Dec LN03+ Sixel image

pbmtopk

    convert PBM image to packed format (PK) font

pktopbm

    convert packed format (PK) font to PBM image

All of these generate Netpbm format output.

pbmmake

    create a blank PBM image of a specified size

ppmmake

    create a PPM image of a specified size and color

pgmramp

    generate a grayscale ramp

ppmpat

    create a pretty PPM image

ppmrainbow

    create a spectrum-like image with colors fading together.

pgmnoise

    create a PGM image of white noise

pbmtext

    render text into a PBM image

pbmupc

    create a Universal Product Code PBM image

ppmcie

    generate a CIE color map PPM image

pbmpage

    create a printer test pattern page in PBM format

ppmcolors

    create a color map (PPM image) containing all possible colors of given maxval

All of these work on the Netpbm formats

ppmlabel

    Add text to an image

pnmshadow

    add a shadow to an image so it looks like it's floating

ppmbrighten

    brighten or dim an image -- change saturation and value

ppmdim

    dim an image - different way from ppmbrighten

pbmreduce

    reduce a PBM N times, using Floyd-Steinberg

pgmnorm

    normalize contrast in a PGM image

ppmnorm

    normalize contrast in a PPM image

pbmpscale

    enlarge a PBM image with edge smoothing

pnmscale

    scale an image with high precision

pnmscalefixed

    scale an image quickly with low precision

pnmenlarge

    enlarge an image N times

ppmdither

    ordered dither for color images

pnmcolormap

    Choose the N best colors to represent an image; create a colormap

pnmremap

    Replace colors in an image with those from a color map

ppmquant

    quantize colors in a color image down to fewer colors

pnmquant

    quantize colors/shades in a color or grayscale image down to fewer

ppmquantall

    quantize colors on many files

ppmrelief

    run a Laplacian Relief filter on a PPM

pnmarith

    perform arithmetic on two images

pnmcat

    concatenate images

pnmpad

    add borders to an image

pnmcomp

    create composite (overlay) of images

ppmmix

    mix (overlay) two images.

pnmcrop

    crop all like-colored borders off an image

pamcut

    select a rectangular region from an image

pnmcut

    obsolete version of

pamcut (kept because it may have fewer bugs)

pamdice

    slice an image into many horizontally and/or vertically

pamdeinterlace

    remove every other row from an image

pamchannel

    extract a single plane (channel, e.g. R, G, or B) from an image

pnmdepth

    change the maxval in an image

pnmflip

    perform one or more flip operations on an image

pamstretch

    scale up an image by inserting interpolated pixels

pamstretch-gen

    scale by non-integer values using pamstretch and pnmscale

pnminvert

    invert an image

pnmgamma

    perform gamma correction on an image

pnmhisteq

    histogram equalize image to increase contrast

pnmmargin

    add a margin to an image

pnmpaste

    paste a rectangle into an image

pnmrotate

    rotate an image

pnmshear

    shear an image

pnmsmooth

    smooth am image

pnmtile

    replicate an image into a specified size

pbmclean

    remove lone pixels (snow) from a PBM image

pnmalias

    antialias an image

ppmchange

    change all of one color to another in PPM image

pnmnlfilt

    filter an image by replacing each pixel with a function of nearby pixels

ppmshift

    shift lines of PPM image left or right a random amount

ppmspread

    move pixels of PPM image a random amount

pnmconvol

    general MxN convolution on an image

rgb3toppm

    combine three portable graymaps into one PPM

ppmtorgb3

    separate a PPM into three portable graymaps

pbmlife

    apply Conway's rules of Life to a PBM image

ppmdist

    map colors to high contrast grayscales arbitrarily

ppmntsc

    adjust colors so they are legal for NTSC or PAL television

These all work on the Netpbm formats as input.

pnmfile

    describe an image's vital characteristics

pnmpsnr

    measure difference between two images

pgmedge

    edge-detect a PGM image

pgmenhance

    edge-enhance a PGM image

pgmslice

    print grayscale values for a row or column of a PGM image

pgmtexture

    calculate textural features on a PGM image

pgmhist

    print a histogram of the values in a PGM image

ppmhist

    print a histogram of a PPM

pnmhistmap

    draw a histogram of a PGM or PPM

ppmtomap

    generate a map of all colors in an image

ppm3d

    generate a blue/green 3D glasses image from two images

ppmsvgalib

    display a PPM image on a Linux virtual console using Svgalib

pbmmask

    create a mask bitmap from a regular bitmap

ppmcolormask

    create mask of areas of a certain color in an image

pnmsplit

    split a multi-image Netpbm file into multiple 1-image files

pnmindex

    build a visual index of a bunch of Netpbm images

pcdindex

    build a visual index of a photo CD from PCD overview file

pnmmontage

    build multiple Netpbm images into a single montage image

pgmbentley

    Bentleyize a PGM image

pgmcrater

    create cratered terrain by fractal forgery

pamoil

    turn a PNM or PAM image into an oil painting

ppmforge

    fractal forgeries of clouds, planets, and starry skies

pgmkernel

    generate a convolution kernel

ppmtv

    Make an image lined so it looks like an old TV

pbmto4425

    Display PBM image on AT&T 4425 ASCII terminal with gfx chars

pnmtoddif

pnmtosgi

pnmtosir

ppmflash

ppmqvga

ppmtomitsu

ppmtopjxl

sgitopnm

sirtopnm

spottopgm

xvminitoppm

zeisstopnm

    

As a collection of primitive tools, the power of Netpbm is multiplied by the power of all the other unix tools you can use with them. These notes remind you of some of the more useful ways to do this. Often, when people want to add high level functions to the Netpbm tools, they have overlooked some existing tool that, in combination with Netpbm, already does it. Often, you need to apply some conversion or edit to a whole bunch of files. As a rule, Netpbm programs take one input file and produce one output file, usually on Standard Output. This is for flexibility, since you so often have to pipeline many tools together. Here is an example of a shell command to convert all your of PNG files (named *.png) to JPEG files named *.jpg:

for i in *.png; do pngtopnm $i | ppmtojpeg >`basename $i .png`.jpg; done Or you might just generate a stream of individual shell commands, one per file, with awk or perl. Here's how to brighten 30 YUV images that make up one second of a movie, keeping the images in the same files:

ls *.yuv \

| perl -ne 'chomp;

print

mv tmp$$.yuv $_\n

' \

| sh The tools

find (with the

-exec option) and

xargs are also useful for simple manipulation of groups of files. Some shells' "process substitution" facility can help where a non-Netpbm program expects you to identify a disk file for input and you want it to use the result of a Netpbm manipulation. Say printcmyk takes the filename of a Tiff CMYK file as input and what you have is a PNG file

R abc.png . Try:

printcmyk <({ pngtopnm abc.png | pnmtotiffcmyk ; }) It works in the other direction too, if you have a program that makes you name its output file and you want the output to go through a Netpbm tool.

Netpbm contains primitive building blocks. It certainly is not a complete graphics library. The first thing you will need to make use of any of these tools is a viewer. For the X inclined, there is

R xzgv . See

R ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/viewers/X .

xloadimage and its extension

xli are also common ways to display a graphic image in X.

ImageMagick is like a visual version of Netpbm. Using the X/Window system on Unix, you can do basic editing of images and lots of format conversions. The package does include at least some non-visual tools. Convert, Mogrify, Montage, and Animate are popular programs from the

ImageMagick package.

ImageMagick runs on Unix, Windows, Windows NT, Macintosh, and VMS. The Gimp is a visual image editor for Unix and X, in the same category as the more famous, less capable, and much more expensive Adobe Photoshop, etc. for Windows. See

R http://www.gimp.org . The

file program looks at a file and tells you what kind of file it is. It recognizes most of the graphics formats with which Netpbm deals, so it is pretty handy for graphics work. Netpbm's

anytopnm program depends on

file. See

R ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file . The Utah Raster Toolkit serves a lot of the same purpose as Netpbm, but without the emphasis on format conversions. This package is based on the RLE format, which you can convert to and from the Netpbm formats.

http://www.cs.utah.edu/research/projects/alpha1/urt.html gives some information on the Utah Raster Toolkit, but does not tell where to get it. There are some Netpbm-like graphics tools distributed by the Army High Performance Computing Research Center at

R http://www.arc.umn.edu/gvl-software/media-tools.html . These operate directly on non-Netpbm format images, so they aren't included in the Netpbm package. However, you can use them with any image format by using the Netpbm format converters.

Ivtools is a suite of free X Windows drawing editors for Postscript, Tex, and web graphics production, as well as an embeddable and extendable vector graphic shell. It uses the Netpbm facilities. See

R http://www.ivtools.org .

Ilib is a C subroutine library with functions for adding text to an image (as you might do at a higher level with

R pbmtext etc.). It works with Netpbm input and output. Find it at

R http://www.radix.net/~cknudsen/Ilib . Netpbm also includes character drawing functions in the

libppm library, but they do not have as fancy font capabilities (see

ppmlabel for an example of use of the Netpbm character drawing functions).

GD is a library of graphics routines that is part of PHP. It has a subset of Netpbm's functions and has been found to resize images more slowly and with less quality.

pnm2ppa converts to HP's "Winprinter" format (for HP 710, 720, 820, 1000, etc). It is a superset of Netpbm's

pbmtoppa and handles, notably, color. However, it is more of a printer driver than a Netpbm-style primitive graphics building block. See

R http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1322 . The program

morph morphs one image into another. It uses Targa format images, but you can use

tgatoppm and

ppmtotga to deal with that format. You have to use the graphical (X/Tk) Xmorph to create the mesh files that you must feed to

R morph .

morph is part of the Xmorph package. See

R http://www.colorado-research.com/~gourlay/software/Graphics/Xmorph . To create an animated GIF, or extract a frame from one, use

R gifsicle .

gifsicle converts between animated GIF and still GIF, and you can use

ppmtogif and

giftopnm to connect up to all the Netpbm utilities. See

R http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle . To convert an image of text to text (optical character recongition - OCR), use

gocr (think of it as an inverse of

R pbmtext ). See

R http://altmark.nat.uni-magdeburg.de/~jschulen/ocr/ .

http://schaik.com/pngsuite contains a PNG test suite -- a whole bunch of PNG images exploiting the various features of the PNG format. Another version of

R pnmtopng / pngtopnm is at

R http://www.schaik.com/png/pnmtopng.html . The version in Netpbm was actually based on that package a long time ago, and you can expect to find better exploitation of the PNG format, especially recent enhancements, in that package. It may be a little less consistent with the Netpbm project and less exploitive of recent Netpbm format enhancements, though.

jpegtran Does some of the same transformations as Netpbm is famous for, but does them specifically on JPEG files and does them without loss of information. By contrast, if you were to use Netpbm, you would first decompress the JPEG image to Netpbm format, then transform the image, then compress it back to JPEG format. In that recompression, you lose a little image information because JPEG is a lossy compression.

jpegtran comes with the Independent Jpeg Group's (http://www.ijg.org) JPEG library. Some tools to deal with EXIF files (see also Netpbm's

jpegtopnm and

R pnmtojpeg ): To dump (interpret) an EXIF header: Exifdump ((http://topo.math.u-psud.fr/~bousch/exifdump.py) or Jhead (http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead). A Python EXIF library and dumper: http://pyexif.sourceforge.net. Latex2html converts Latex document source to HTML document source. Part of that involves graphics, and Latex2html uses Netpbm tools for some of that. But Latex2html through its history has had some rather esoteric codependencies with Netpbm. Older Latex2html doesn't work with current Netpbm. Latex2html-99.2beta8 works, though.

People never seem to tire of inventing new graphics formats, often completely redundant with pre-existing ones. Netpbm cannot keep up with them. Here is a list of a few that we know Netpbm does nothandle (yet). CAL (originated by US Department Of Defense, favored by architects). http://www.landfield.com/faqs/graphics/fileformats-faq/part3/section-24.html array formats dx, general, netcdf, CDF, hdf, cm CGM+ Windows Meta File (.WMF). Libwmf converts from WMF to things like Latex, PDF, PNG. Some of these can be input to Netpbm. Microsoft Word, RTF. Microsoft keeps a proprietary hold on these formats. Any software you see that can handle them is likely to cost money. DXF (AutoCAD)