Convert PCX to PGM

The PCX file extension, standing for PiCture eXchange, is a raster image format developed by ZSoft Corporation in 1985 for its PC Paintbrush software. It became one of the first widely accepted DOS imaging standards, supporting palette-indexed images from 2 to 256 colors and later true-color (24-bit) images. PCX files use RLE (Run-Length Encoding) compression, making them smaller in size. Although largely replaced by formats like BMP, JPEG, and PNG, PCX was pivotal in early computer graphics and is still supported by various image processing software.

The Portable Graymap (PGM) file extension, originating in the late 1980s as part of the Netpbm project, stands for "Portable Gray Map". It serves as a simple, versatile format for grayscale images, enabling easy reading and writing by various programs. Due to its straightforward structure and plain text encoding, it's often used in academic and research settings where ease of parsing and accessibility are crucial. PGM files store grayscale images in a compact, efficient manner, making them an essential tool for image processing tasks.