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

# ppmrelief(1)

compute a relief of a PPM image

## NAME

ppmrelief - compute a relief of a PPM image

## SYNOPSIS

**ppmrelief**

\[*ppmfile*\]

## DESCRIPTION

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

**ppmrelief** reads a PPM image as input, and writes a relief of that image as a PPM image as output.

The relief process is described in "Beyond Photography" by Holzmann, equation 3.19.  It's a sort of edge-detection and is essentially a convolution with this matrix:

```
<span style="font-family: monospace">
    |  1  0  0 |
    |  0  0  0 |
    |  0  0 -1 |
</span>
```

## OPTIONS

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

## SEE ALSO

[**pamshadedrelief**(1)](/pamshadedrelief/1.md) ,  [**pgmbentley**(1)](/pgmbentley/1.md) ,  [**pgmoil**(1)](/pgmoil/1.md) ,  **ppm**(1)

## AUTHOR

Copyright (C) 1990 by Wilson Bent (*whb@hoh-2.att.com*)

## 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/ppmrelief.html**