---
name: "anytopnm"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "netpbm"
version: "10.86.51-2"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/anytopnm"
---

# anytopnm(1)

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

## NAME

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

## SYNOPSIS

**anytopnm** \[*file*\]

## DESCRIPTION

This program is part of **Netpbm**(1) .

**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.

## OPTIONS

There are no command line options defined specifically for **anytopnm**.

**anytopnm** does not recognize the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (See \
  Common Options ⟨index.html#commonoptions⟩ .)  However, the **-version** option works.

## SEE ALSO

[**pamfile**(1)](/pamfile/1.md) , **pnm**(1) , **file** man page

## AUTHOR

Copyright (C) 1991 by Jef Poskanzer.

## DOCUMENT SOURCE

This manual page was generated by the Netpbm tool 'makeman' from HTML source.  The master documentation is at

-

  **http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/anytopnm.html**