Add your CUR file
Drop one or more .cur 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.
CUR to PGM
Converting a .cur image to .pgm re-encodes the pixels for a different balance of size, quality, and support. 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 CUR 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 Windows cursor to Portable graymap
Converting a .cur image to .pgm re-encodes the pixels for a different balance of size, quality, and support. A .cur file is a Windows cursor: a container holding one or more pointer images at different sizes, plus a hotspot — the exact pixel within the image that counts as the click point. It shares its structure with the Windows icon format and differs from it in only two fields.
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 CUR to PGM?
The practical trigger for this conversion is usually a mismatch: with .cur, windows-specific; macOS and Linux use entirely different cursor mechanisms. 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.
CUR vs PGM at a glance
| Aspect | Windows cursor (.cur) | 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 | the directory header is identical to ICO except that the type field at offset 2 is 2 rather than 1 — that single value is what makes a file a cursor instead of an icon | p2 stores samples as whitespace-separated ASCII integers; P5 stores them as raw bytes |
| Strongest at | extracting a cursor image for documentation, screenshot annotation or design reference | machine vision and image-processing pipelines that operate on intensity alone |
| Weak spot | windows-specific; macOS and Linux use entirely different cursor mechanisms | uncompressed, so files are large relative to PNG for the same data |
| Metadata | the hotspot coordinates and the per-entry size table belong to the container rather than to the image, and no raster target has anywhere to record them. The embedded PNG frame's own metadata is carried through the conversion | 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. Decoding and re-encoding happen on your device using the browser's native image pipeline and hand-tuned encoders.
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.
CUR to PGM questions, answered
Will converting CUR to PGM lose quality?
Since cur 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 CUR files here?
Yes — the .cur file is processed inside your browser tab and never uploaded. Decoding and re-encoding happen on your device using the browser's native image pipeline and hand-tuned encoders. 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 CUR?
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 CUR file?
In .cur, the hotspot coordinates and the per-entry size table belong to the container rather than to the image, and no raster target has anywhere to record them. The embedded PNG frame's own metadata is carried through the conversion. 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.