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

# xpmtoppm(1)

convert an X11 pixmap to a PPM image

## NAME

xpmtoppm - convert an X11 pixmap to a PPM image

## SYNOPSIS

**xpmtoppm**

\[**--alphaout=**{*alpha-filename*,**-**}\] \[**-verbose**\]

\[*xpmfile*\]

## DESCRIPTION

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

**xpbtoppm** reads an X11 pixmap (XPM version 1 or 3) as input and produces a PPM image as output.

## OPTIONS

In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (most notably **-quiet**, see \
  Common Options ⟨index.html#commonoptions⟩ ), **xpmtoppm** recognizes the following command line options:

- **--alphaout=***alpha-filename*

  This option causes **xpmtoppm** to create a PBM file containing the transparency mask for the image.  If the input image doesn't contain transparency information, the *alpha-filename* file contains all white (opaque) transparency values.

  If you don't specify **--alphaout**, **xpmtoppm** does not generate a transparency file, and **xpmtoppm** discards any transparency information the input image contains.

  If you specify **-** as the filename, **xpmtoppm** writes the transparency output to Standard Output and discards the image.

  See [**pamcomp**(1)](/pamcomp/1.md)  for one way to use the transparency output file.

  **xpmtoppm** can't handle a line longer than 8K characters in the XPM input.  If an input line exceeds this limit, **xpmtoppm** quits with an error message to that effect.  Before Netpbm 10.30 (October 2005), the limit was 2K.

- **--verbose**

  **xpmtoppm** prints information about its processing on Standard Error.

## LIMITATIONS

**xpmtoppm** recognizes only a limited set of the features of XPM Version 3; i.e. it rejects many valid XPM images as invalid.

The only place a comment block is valid is starting in Column 1 of the line immediately after "static char ...".

In addition, **ppmtoxpm** properly recognizes any single-line comment that begins in Column 1 in the color table part of the file.

There must be for every pixel a default colorname for a color type visual.

Before Netpbm 10.58 (March 2012), zero bytes per pixel causes the program to fail with a message about premature EOF on input.

## SEE ALSO

[**ppmtoxpm**(1)](/ppmtoxpm/1.md) , [**pamcomp**(1)](/pamcomp/1.md) , **ppm**(1)

## AUTHOR

Copyright (C) 1991 by Jef Poskanzer.

Upgraded to work with XPM version 3 by Arnaud Le Hors\<*lehors@mirsa.inria.fr*\>, Tue Apr 9 1991.

## 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/xpmtoppm.html**