Portable Anymap (PAM) is a flexible, multi-purpose bitmap image format part of the Netpbm image conversion toolkit. Unlike more rigid formats, PAM supports multiple color depths and channel configurations, allowing representation of grayscale, RGB, and multi-channel images with varying bit depths. It uses a plain text header describing image dimensions, color space, and channel information, followed by raw pixel data.
Highly flexible multi-channel support, human-readable header, compact storage, platform-independent, supports wide range of color depths, easy to parse and generate, excellent for scientific and technical image processing tasks.
Large file sizes compared to compressed formats, limited native support in consumer image software, slower rendering performance, not ideal for web or photographic image storage, requires specialized tools for manipulation.
PAM is primarily used in scientific imaging, digital image processing, and computational graphics where flexible image representation is crucial. Common applications include medical imaging, satellite imagery processing, computer vision research, and as an intermediate format for image conversion and manipulation. It's particularly valuable in open-source image processing pipelines and academic research environments.