Add your ARW file
Drop one or more .arw files onto the converter above, or browse for them. They load into browser memory only — nothing is uploaded, so there is no size-based pricing and no server queue.
ARW to PGM
Developing a .arw camera file into .pgm turns unprocessed sensor data into a finished image any app can open. Free, private, and validated — the file never leaves your browser.
Private for supported formats — processed in your browser
Runs on your deviceConvert supported files
Drop ARW files here
Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.
Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.About converting Sony RAW to Portable graymap
Developing a .arw camera file into .pgm turns unprocessed sensor data into a finished image any app can open. An .arw file is a Sony Alpha RAW photograph holding unprocessed sensor data from Sony's mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Since Sony sensors also power much of the industry, .arw files from bodies like the a7 series are among the most common RAW files in circulation today.
A .pgm file is a Portable Graymap: a single-channel greyscale image storing one intensity value per pixel, with the maximum value declared in the header. It is the middle rung of the Netpbm ladder — richer than a one-bit bitmap, simpler than a colour pixmap. For this route the practical draw is raw samples in a declared range — no codec, no colour management, nothing to misinterpret and supports 16-bit depth, which most consumer formats do not — balanced against uncompressed, so files are large relative to PNG for the same data, which is worth knowing before you commit a large batch.
Why convert ARW to PGM?
The practical trigger for this conversion is usually a mismatch: with .arw, legacy lossy-only compression on older bodies occasionally shows artifacts under heavy editing. Switching to .pgm buys you raw samples in a declared range — no codec, no colour management, nothing to misinterpret, which is why it is the better fit for machine vision and image-processing pipelines that operate on intensity alone. Because the conversion runs locally, trying it costs nothing but a few seconds of compute on your own machine.
ARW vs PGM at a glance
| Aspect | Sony RAW (.arw) | Portable graymap (.pgm) |
|---|---|---|
| Format type | Lossless — every pixel or sample is preserved exactly | Lossless — every pixel or sample is preserved exactly |
| How it stores data | tIFF-based layout carrying Bayer mosaic data at 12 or 14 bits per photosite | p2 stores samples as whitespace-separated ASCII integers; P5 stores them as raw bytes |
| Strongest at | raw development from Sony a1/a7/a9/a6000-series and RX cameras | machine vision and image-processing pipelines that operate on intensity alone |
| Weak spot | legacy lossy-only compression on older bodies occasionally shows artifacts under heavy editing | uncompressed, so files are large relative to PNG for the same data |
| Metadata | standard EXIF plus Sony MakerNotes covering lens corrections, focus data, and camera settings; XMP edits are typically stored in sidecar files by raw editors | none beyond header comments. No colour profile, no EXIF, no acquisition metadata — anything an instrument recorded alongside the pixels has to travel in a separate file |
Pick PGM as the output
Select .pgm in the output menu next to each file. The menu only offers targets this engine can genuinely produce, so if PGM is selectable, the route is real and validated.
Convert on your device
Press Convert. A LibRaw WebAssembly decoder demosaics the sensor data in your browser and renders a developed image ready for export.
Verify and download
Each result is signature-checked before the download unlocks, so a failed encode can never masquerade as a valid PGM file. Outputs keep the original filename with the .pgm extension.
ARW to PGM questions, answered
Will converting ARW to PGM lose quality?
Since arw is lossless-oriented and pgm is lossless-oriented, the conversion preserves the source content exactly as stored; no additional compression pass is applied beyond what .pgm itself requires.
Is it private to convert ARW files here?
Yes — the .arw file is processed inside your browser tab and never uploaded. A LibRaw WebAssembly decoder demosaics the sensor data in your browser and renders a developed image ready for export. Close the tab and the file is gone from memory.
Where will the PGM file work?
Standard in scientific and machine-vision toolchains — OpenCV, ImageMagick, MATLAB and Netpbm all read it — and absent from consumer software and browsers. Novus Convert decodes both ASCII and binary PGM locally, honours the declared maximum value when scaling to 8-bit output, and converts to the standard raster formats.
Will the PGM file be bigger or smaller than my ARW?
It depends on the content: p2 stores samples as whitespace-separated ASCII integers; P5 stores them as raw bytes. Convert one representative file first and compare before batch-processing a large set.
What happens to the metadata in my ARW file?
In .arw, standard EXIF plus Sony MakerNotes covering lens corrections, focus data, and camera settings; XMP edits are typically stored in sidecar files by raw editors. Re-encoding through the browser pipeline does not carry embedded metadata into the output, which doubles as a privacy scrub — check the exported file if you specifically need tags preserved.