This program is part of Netpbm.
bmptopnm reads a Microsoft Windows or OS/2 BMP file as input. and produces a PBM, PGM, or PNM image as output. If the input is colormapped and contains only black and white, the output is PBM. If the input is colormapped and contains only black white and gray, the output is PGM. Otherwise, the output is PPM.
bmptopnm understands BMP files compressed with run length encoding (RLE4/RLE8), but not if that encoding includes a "delta" (which is rare). bmptopnm recognizes the delta and issues an error message.
Before Netpbm 10.75 (June 2016), bmptopnm could not convert Version 4 or Version 5 Windows BMP images.
bmptopnm cannot convert BMP files compressed with JPEG or PNG encoding. It recognizes the compression and issues an error message. Before Netpbm 10.32 (February 2006), bmptopnm couldn't convert RLE8 BMP files either, and before Netpbm 10.85 (December 2018), it couldn't convert RLE4 (between 10.32 and 10.85, it would act like it recognized the format, but produce garbage output).
Before Netpbm 10.18 (September 2003), this program could not convert BMP images with the BI_BITFIELDS format ("compression type"). It would recognize the format and issue an error message.
bmptopnm cannot convert OS/2 BMP files with 16 bits per pixel (only because the author did not have a complete specification for them). It recognizes the format and issues an error message. Before Netpbm 10.16 (June 2003), it also could not convert Windows BMP files with 16 bits per pixel.
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm (most notably -quiet, see Common Options), bmptopnm recognizes the following command line option: