Extract text from brushes and maps (BBM)
To convert BBM files to another format, you need Deluxe Paint or other Raster Image software.
To convert other file formats to the "Legacy Bitmap Image" file type, you need software like Deluxe Paint or a similar tool.
The .BBM file extension has three distinct and highly incompatible uses. Its most common historical use is as a Deluxe Paint bitmap image, generated by Electronic Arts for the Deluxe Paint graphics editor on Amiga and early MS-DOS systems. Modern users also encounter .BBM files as XML-based model train track layouts created with BlueBrick, or as game level map data for PC titles like Barotrauma.
Because these are three radically different formats sharing the exact same extension, users face severe compatibility conflicts. Legacy Deluxe Paint files utilize obsolete bitplane compression that modern web browsers and operating systems natively reject. They are proprietary and effectively dead unless you use specialized retro-viewers. The BlueBrick and game map formats, while often based on highly readable XML or NET data structures, are useless visually outside of their specific parent applications. A standard image viewer will crash if forced to open an XML map, and a text editor will show scrambled binary garbage if it opens a legacy image.
If you have a legacy image, converting .BBM to PNG or JPG is mandatory to guarantee modern web compatibility, though some Amiga-specific color palette metadata may be lost in the process. For layout or map files, converting or renaming them to standard XML or TXT ensures the underlying code is readable for manual auditing.
These files are notoriously difficult to convert because standard online converters blindly guess the format and fail completely. Emphasizing that often only the original software can properly read or export the data, your options can feel limited. However, convert.guru provides a pragmatic solution. Just drag and drop your file to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible. Our platform inspects the internal hex data to determine if you have a legacy binary image or a modern XML structure. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your BBM file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted LBM, BM and BM_ files.
If you want to convert BBM file to JPG, PDF, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, TIF, WEBP, ICO, CUR, PSD or PSB, you can use Deluxe Paint or similar software from the "Legacy Bitmap Image Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert RAW, PNG, AI, NEF, PSB, DNG, SVG, GIF, EPS, JPG, ARW or PDF files to BBM, try Deluxe Paint or another comparable tool in the "Legacy Bitmap Image Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our BBM converter.