Quickstart

Install the netpbmfile package and all dependencies from the Python Package Index:

python -m pip install -U "netpbmfile[all]"

See Examples and Documentation for using the programming interface.

Source code and support are available on GitHub.

Requirements

This revision was tested with the following requirements and dependencies (other versions may work):

• CPython 3.12.10, 3.13.16, 3.14.8, 3.15.0 64-bit

• Numpy 2.5.4

Revisions

2026.10.15

• Fix silent truncation of samples not fitting dtype of maxval.

• Write to open files at current position (breaking).

• Do not close caller-owned file handle on parsing error.

• Raise when writing XV format instead of writing PAM (breaking).

2026.7.25

• Drop support for Python 3.11 and numpy 2.0 (SPEC0), support Python 3.15.

2026.1.29

• …

Refer to the CHANGES file for older revisions.

Examples

Import functions and classes used in these examples:

>>> from netpbmfile import NetpbmFile, imread, imwrite

Write a numpy array to a Netpbm file in grayscale binary format:

>>> import numpy
>>> data = numpy.array([[0, 1], [65534, 65535]], dtype=numpy.uint16)
>>> imwrite('_tmp.pgm', data)

Read the image data from a Netpbm file as numpy array:

>>> image = imread('_tmp.pgm')
>>> numpy.testing.assert_equal(image, data)

Access meta and image data in a Netpbm file:

>>> with NetpbmFile('_tmp.pgm') as pgm:
...     pgm.magicnumber
...     pgm.axes
...     pgm.shape
...     pgm.dtype
...     pgm.maxval
...     pgm.asarray().tolist()
...
'P5'
'YX'
(2, 2)
dtype('>u2')
65535
[[0, 1], [65534, 65535]]

View the image and metadata in the Netpbm file from the command line:

$ python -m netpbmfile _tmp.pgm