This page contains information on the PPM file extension (Portable Pixmap file), a popular image file format
File extension | .ppm |
Category | Image File |
Description | The portable pixmap format (PPM) is an image format designed to be easily exchanged between platforms which is used by Netpbm - an open-source package of graphics programs and a programming library, used mainly in the Unix world. The format is a lowest common denominator color image file format and is highly inefficient, containing a lot of information the human eye can’t even discern. The precursor to the PPM format was the PBM format which was invented by Jef Poskanzer in the 1980s as a format that allowed monochrome bitmaps to be transmitted within an email message as plain ASCII text, allowing it to survive any changes in text formatting. By the end of 1988, Poskanzer had developed the PGM and PPM formats along with their associated tools and added them to Pbmplus. The final release of Pbmplus was December 10, 1991. |
Actions | Convert PPM file View other image file formats |
Technical Details | A PPM file consists of a sequence of one or more PPM images. There are no data, delimiters, or padding before, after, or between images. Each PPM image consists of the following:
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Associated programs | Adobe Photoshop Corel Draw GIMP Netpbm |
Developed by | Jef Poskanzer |
MIME type | image/x-ppm image/x‑portable‑pixmap |
Useful links | NetPBM homepage What is the NetPBM format ? Convert PPM file |
Convert PPM file
Using Zamzar it is possible to convert PPM files to a variety of other formats
- ppm to ai (Adobe Illustrator Artwork)
- ppm to bmp (Windows bitmap)
- ppm to eps (Encapsulated PostScript)
- ppm to gif (Compuserve graphics interchange)
- ppm to jpg (JPEG compliant image)
- ppm to pcx (Paintbrush Bitmap Image)
- ppm to pdf (Portable Document Format)
- ppm to png (Portable Network Graphic)
- ppm to tga (Truevision Targa Graphic)
- ppm to tiff (Tagged image file format)
- ppm to wbmp (Wireless Bitmap File Format)
- ppm to webp (Lossily compressed image file)
