View PFM files in your browser
The plainest HDR image there is: floats after a three line header. Open a PFM right here, tone mapped, and keep it as PNG. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your image opens tone mapped for your screen, shrunk to fit.
- Exposure • Brighten or darken by up to 6 stops
- Tone mapped from its own light
- Drag to pan • Pinch or scroll to zoom
- Export • Save as PNG or JPEG
About PFM
PFM, the Portable FloatMap, comes from Paul Debevec's HDR Shop and follows Netpbm's PPM and PGM, and it's what renderers, depth estimators and image research write when they want every pixel's light exactly, with no packing at all.
A PFM is three lines of text, PF for color or Pf for gray, the width and height, and a scale whose sign says the byte order, then a 32 bit float for each sample, the bottom row first.
Filepeek reads it in your browser and tone maps its light for your screen, Exposure brightens or darkens it by up to 6 stops, and Export saves it as PNG or JPEG.
Portable FloatMap
.pfm
Format
- MIME type
- image/x-portable-floatmap
- Made by
- Paul Debevec's HDR Shop, after Netpbm
Inside the file
- Samples
- 32 bit floats
- Channels
- RGB, gray, or RGBA as PF4
- Header
- Three lines of text
- Rows
- Bottom first
Opens in every browser
Filepeek decodes PFM in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. No browser shows it by itself.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open PFM
- WindowsPhotoshop, GIMP and ImageMagick
- MacPhotoshop, GIMP and ImageMagick
- iPhone and iPadNo app opens it
- AndroidNo app opens it
Questions
Why is my PFM upside down in some apps?
A PFM keeps its bottom row first, and apps that read its rows as a PPM's show it flipped. Filepeek turns it the right way up.
Why does it look too dark or too bright?
A PFM holds light, not screen colors, often far past white. Filepeek tone maps it for your screen, and Exposure brightens or darkens it by stops.
How do I convert PFM to PNG?
Open it, then choose Export and Save as PNG. It saves the picture at the exposure on show.
Is a .pfm always a picture?
No. Windows names a Type 1 font's metrics .pfm too. Dropped with its .pfb, that font opens in the font viewer, and a .pfm without the FloatMap's header isn't taken for a picture.