Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PBM file.
You'll see a preview.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to save your file in the format you want.
Convert PBM to another file type
The converter easily converts your PBM file to various formats - free and online. No Photoshop or extra software needed.
PBM to JPG
PBM to PNG
PBM to BMP
PBM to PDF
PBM to GIF
PBM to TIFF
PBM to TIF
PBM to WEBP
PBM to ICO
PBM to PSD
PBM to PSB
Convert a file to PBM
The converter also works in reverse, so you can convert other Raster Image formats to PBM with high quality output.
RAW to PBM
PNG to PBM
AI to PBM
NEF to PBM
PSB to PBM
DNG to PBM
SVG to PBM
GIF to PBM
EPS to PBM
JPG to PBM
ARW to PBM
PDF to PBM
About PBM files
The .PBM (Portable Bitmap) format is the lowest common denominator for monochrome raster images, originally designed by Jef Poskanzer for the Netpbm toolkit. It supports only two colors - black and white - meaning it cannot handle grayscale (unlike PGM) or full color (unlike PPM). While its simplicity allows the ASCII variant to be edited in basic text editors like Notepad++, this format is rarely suitable for modern workflows. .PBM files are often uncompressed, leading to inefficient storage usage compared to modern standards, and they are not natively supported by web browsers or standard mobile photo galleries. Users frequently encounter friction when trying to upload these files to the web, share them via email, or view them on non-Unix systems without specialized software like GIMP or XnView. For broad compatibility and web usage, the best practice is to convert .PBM to PNG (which handles 1-bit transparency and compression efficiently) or JPG for general viewing. For archiving scanned documents often saved as PBM, converting to PDF is recommended.
Use Convert.Guru to open and convert your PBM file.
If you want to convert PBM file to CUR, you can use Netpbm or similar software from the "1-bit Monochrome Raster Image" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to PBM, try Netpbm or another comparable tool in the "1-bit Monochrome Raster Image" category.
The PBM Converter Story
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 PBM converter.