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

# ppmtoppm(1)

copy PPM image

## NAME

ppmtoppm - copy PPM image

## SYNOPSIS

**ppmtoppm**

## DESCRIPTION

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

**ppmtoppm** simply copies a PPM image from Standard Input to Standard Output.  This may seem an unnecessary duplication of **cat**, but remember that a PPM program can read a PBM or PGM image, and the right kind of PAM, as if it were PPM.  So **ppmtoppm** can read either a PBM, PGM, or PPM image and produce a PPM image as output.

Even that is of limited usefulness because of the fact that almost any program to which you would feed the resulting PPM image could also just take the original image directly.  However, sometimes you really need a true PPM image.

When you know you have a PGM image and want a PPM image, **pgmtoppm** is a more general way to do that conversion. When you know you have a PBM image, use that and **pbmtopgm**.

## OPTIONS

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

## SEE ALSO

[**pgmtopgm**(1)](/pgmtopgm/1.md) , [**pamtopam**(1)](/pamtopam/1.md) , [**pamtopnm**(1)](/pamtopnm/1.md) , [**pgmtoppm**(1)](/pgmtoppm/1.md) , [**pbmtopgm**(1)](/pbmtopgm/1.md) , **pbm**(1) , **pgm**(1) , **ppm**(1)

## HISTORY

This program was added to Netpbm in Release 10.9 (September 2002).

## 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/ppmtoppm.html**