Free webp to jpg
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Image MIME Reference
PBM

Portable Bitmap

image/x-portable-bitmap
VS

Portable Network Graphics (Legacy MIME)

image/x-png
PNG

A complete technical comparison of Portable Bitmap and Portable Network Graphics (Legacy MIME) — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

PNG wins on browser support

Feature Support

Feature PBM PNG
Transparency (Alpha) ✕ No Yes
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No Yes
HDR Support ✕ No Yes
EXIF Metadata ✕ No Yes
ICC Color Profile ✕ No Yes
Portable Bitmap
image/x-portable-bitmap
Extension
.pbm
Container Netpbm
Compression Uncompressed
Algorithm
None
Color Depth 1-bit (Monochrome)
Developed by Jef Poskanzer (Netpbm Project)
Released 1988
Magic Bytes
50 31 (ASCII) or 50 34 (Binary)
Full PBM reference →
Portable Network Graphics (Legacy MIME)
image/x-png
Extension
.png
Container PNG Chunk Structure (IHDR, IDAT, IEND)
Compression Deflate (Lossless)
Algorithm
Deflate (LZ77)
Color Depth 1-bit to 16-bit (Grayscale), 8-bit (Indexed Palette), 24-bit (True Color), 32-bit (True Color with Alpha), 48-bit (High Color), 64-bit (High Color with Alpha)
Developed by PNG Development Group
Released 1996
Magic Bytes
89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A
Full PNG reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser PBM PNG
Chrome Chrome
✕
✓ 1
Firefox Firefox
✕
✓ 1
Safari Safari
✕
✓ 1
Edge Edge
✕
✓ 12
IE IE (Legacy)
✕
✓
PBM

PBM Strengths

  • Absolute structural simplicity allows parsers to be written from scratch with just a few lines of code
  • ASCII encoding allows manual editing and debugging directly within a standard text editor
  • Serves as a flawless, lossless intermediary for 1-bit raster data like scanned documents or barcodes
Limitations
  • Strictly limited to 1-bit monochrome images; cannot natively display shades of gray or color
  • Lack of compression results in extremely large file sizes, particularly when using the ASCII 'P1' encoding
  • No support for alpha transparency or modern metadata standards like EXIF
PNG

PNG Strengths

  • The underlying format provides flawless, lossless compression and perfect 8-bit alpha channel transparency
  • Universally supported by every modern operating system, image editor, and web browser
Limitations
  • The 'image/x-png' string is an obsolete vendor quirk that forces backend developers to write redundant normalization logic in file upload scripts
  • If left unnormalized, strict MIME validators or content security policies on modern systems may incorrectly reject valid PNG files

When to choose which format

PBM
Use PBM when…
  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Pre-processing
  • Unix/Linux Command-Line Image Pipelines
  • Academic Image Processing Teaching
PNG
Use PNG when…
  • Legacy Internet Explorer File Uploads
  • Older ASP/PHP Web Applications
  • Lossless Web Graphics

More comparisons

PBM vs ACES → PNG vs ACES → PBM vs APNG → PNG vs APNG → PBM vs AVCI → PNG vs AVCI → PBM vs AVCS → PNG vs AVCS → PBM vs AVIF → PNG vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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