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

# pamsharpness(1)

measure the sharpness of a PNM/PAM image

## NAME

pamsharpness - measure the sharpness of a PNM/PAM image

## SYNOPSIS

**pamsharpness** \[*imagefile*\]

## DESCRIPTION

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

**pamsharpness** reads a Netpbm image (PNM or PAM) and prints a message to Standard Output giving a number that tells how sharp it is.

Sharpness is a measure of how suddenly (in space) colors change in the image.  **pamsharpness** computes the sharpness of the image as the average difference in intensity between each pixel and its 8 surrounding pixels, in each of the color components (R, G, B).

**pamsharpness** does not include the edges of the image, where there are not 8 pixels surrounding a pixel, in its computation.

**pamsharpness** assumes that the image is a PNM or PNM equivalent PAM.  If it isn't, the results are not necessarily meaningful.

## OPTIONS

There are no command line options defined specifically for **pamsharpness**, but it recognizes the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (See \
  Common Options ⟨index.html#commonoptions⟩ .)

## SEE ALSO

[**pamsharpmap**(1)](/pamsharpmap/1.md) , [**pammasksharpen**(1)](/pammasksharpen/1.md) , **pam**(1) , **pnm**(1)

## HISTORY

**pamsharpness** was added to Netpbm in Release 10.21 (March 2004).  Bryan Henderson derived it from the program **pnmsharp** by B.W. van Schooten and distributed as part of the Photopnmtools package.

## 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/pamsharpness.html**