# anytopnm

Updated: 15 November 2014
Table Of Contents

## NAME

anytopnm - convert an arbitrary type of image file to PBM, PGM, or PPM

## SYNOPSIS

anytopnm [file]

## DESCRIPTION

This program is part of Netpbm.

anytopnm converts the input image, which may be in any of about 100 graphics formats, to PBM, PGM, or PPM format, depending on that nature of the input image, and outputs it to Standard Output.

To determine the format of the input, anytopnm uses the file program (possibly assisted by the magic numbers file fragment included with Netpbm). If that fails (very few image formats have magic numbers), anytopnm looks at the filename extension. If that fails, anytopnm punts.

The type of the output file depends on the input image.

anytopnm uses the converters for particular graphics formats that are in the Netpbm package, so it can't convert any format that you couldn't convert with some other Netpbm program. What anytopnm adds is the ability to recognize the format and choose the appropriate Netpbm program to convert it. For example, if you invoke anytopnm on a GIF file, anytopnm will recognize that it is a GIF file and therefore giftopnm knows how to convert it to PNM, so anytopnm invokes giftopnm.

anytopnm cannot recognize every possible input format, so you may still be able to convert an image with a specific Netpbm program when anytopnm fails to convert it.

If file indicates that the input file is compressed (either via Unix compress, gzip, or bzip compression), anytopnm uncompresses it and proceeds as above with the uncompressed result.

If file indicates that the input file is encoded by uuencode or btoa, anytopnm decodes it and proceeds as above with the decoded result.

If file is - or not given, anytopnm takes its input from Standard Input.

Many image formats are capable of representing multiple images. In most cases, anytopnm converts these to multi-image Netpbm images, but for some formats, anytopnm converts only the first image and ignores the rest.

In the case of a multi-image GIF input, anytopnm converts all the images starting with Netpbm 10.69 (December 2014), but only the first in earlier releases.

## SEE ALSO

pamfile, pnm, file man page

## AUTHOR

Copyright (C) 1991 by Jef Poskanzer.

## Table Of Contents

- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- SEE ALSO
- AUTHOR