Read and write Netpbm files
Netpbmfile is a Python library to read and write image files in the Netpbm or related formats:
PBM (Portable Bit Map): P1 (text) and P4 (binary)
PGM (Portable Gray Map): P2 (text) and P5 (binary)
PPM (Portable Pixel Map): P3 (text) and P6 (binary)
PNM (Portable Any Map): shorthand for PBM, PGM, and PPM collectively
PAM (Portable Arbitrary Map): P7, bilevel, gray, rgb, and arbitrary depths
PGX (Portable Graymap Signed): PG, signed grayscale
PFM (Portable Float Map): Pf (gray), PF (rgb), and PF4 (rgba), read-only
XV thumbnail: P7 332 (rgb332), read-only
The Netpbm formats are specified at https://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/.
The PGX format is specified in ITU-T Rec. T.803.
No gamma correction or scaling is performed.
- Author:
- License:
BSD-3-Clause
- Version:
2026.10.15
- DOI:
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):
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
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for netpbmfile 2026.10.15
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| netpbmfile-2026.10.15.tar.gz | 32.0 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| netpbmfile-2026.10.15-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 46.7 kB
Release files / netpbmfile-2026.10.15.tar.gz
| Download URL | netpbmfile-2026.10.15.tar.gz |
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| Size | 32.0 kB |
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| Download URL | netpbmfile-2026.10.15-py3-none-any.whl |
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| Size | 14.7 kB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
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