PBM
A simple Netpbm raster format for black-and-white images, available in both plain-text and compact binary encodings.
General information
- Format name
- Portable Bitmap
- Extension
.pbm- MIME type
image/x-portable-bitmap- Category
- image
- Data type
- Binary And Text
Image properties
- Structure
- Raster
- Compression
- Uncompressed
- Transparency
- No
- Animation
- No
File signatures
| Offset | Hexadecimal | ASCII | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 50 31 | P1 | Magic number for the plain-text PBM representation. |
| 0 | 50 34 | P4 | Magic number for the binary PBM representation. |
Common uses
Monochrome bitmap images
Image-processing pipelines
Format conversion
Simple test images
Unix graphics workflows
Related formats
Technical resources
| Resource | Publisher | Link |
|---|---|---|
| The PBM Format | Netpbm | Open resource ↗ |
Record information
- Verified
- October 4, 2026
- Last updated
- October 4, 2026