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Manpage of pnmtotiff

pnmtotiff

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 24 January 2001
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NAME

pnmtotiff - convert a PNM image to a TIFF file  

SYNOPSIS

pnmtotiff [-none|-packbits|-lzw|-g3|-g4] [-2d] [-fill] [-predictor n] [-msb2lsb|-lsb2msb] [-rowsperstrip n] [-minisblack] [pnmfile]

Minimum unambiguous abbreviations of options are acceptable.

 

DESCRIPTION

Reads a PNM image as input. Produces a TIFF file as output.

The output goes to Standard Output, which must be a seekable file. That means no pipes, but any regular file should work.

 

OPTIONS

By default, pnmtotiff creates a TIFF file with no compression. This is your best bet most of the time. If you want to try another compression scheme or tweak some of the other even more obscure output options, there are a number of flags to play with.

Actually, the best default would be to use LZW compression, which is what pnmtotiff used to do by default. However, the Tiff library no longer does LZW compression due to concerns with violating Unisys's patent on LZW compression.

The -none, -packbits, -lzw, -g3, and -g4 options are used to override the default and set the compression scheme used in creating the output file. The CCITT Group 3 and Group 4 compression algorithms can only be used with bilevel data. -lzw doesn't really work because the Tiff library doesn't do LZW compression. It used to, but its developers removed the function out of concern about violating Unisys's patent. This option remains in case you use a Tiff library that cooperates, now or in the future. The -2d and -fill options are meaningful only with Group 3 compression: -2d requests 2-dimensional encoding, while -fill requests that each encoded scanline be zero-filled to a byte boundry. The -predictor option is only meaningful with LZW compression: a predictor value of 2 causes each scanline of the output image to undergo horizontal differencing before it is encoded; a value of 1 forces each scanline to be encoded without differencing. By default, pnmtotiff creates a TIFF file with msb-to-lsb fill order. The -msb2lsb and -lsb2msb options are used to override the default and set the fill order used in creating the file.

The fill order is the order in which pixels are packed into a byte in the Tiff raster, in the case that there are multiple pixels per byte. msb-to-lsb means that the leftmost columns go into the most significant bits of the byte in the Tiff image. However, there is considerable confusion about the meaning of fill order. Some believe it means whether 16 bit sample values in the Tiff image are little-endian or big-endian. This is totally erroneous (The endianness of integers in a Tiff image is designated by the image's magic number). However, ImageMagick and Netpbm both have been known to implement that interpretation. 2001.09.06.

If the image does not have sub-byte pixels, these options have no effect other than to set the value of the FILLORDER tag in the Tiff image (which may be useful for those programs that misinterpret the tag with reference to 16 bit samples).

The -rowsperstrip option can be used to set the number of rows (scanlines) in each strip of data in the output file. By default, the output file has the number of rows per strip set to a value that will ensure each strip is no more than 8 kilobytes long.

The -minisblack option forces the output image to have a "minimum is black" photometric even when using Group 3 or Group 4 compression, in which case CCITT fax standards say the proper photometric is "minimum is white."

Without the -minisblack option, pnmtotiff follows the standard. This usually results in better compression and is generally preferred for bilevel coding.

Before February 2001, pnmtotiff always produced "minimum is black," due to a bug. In either case, pnmtotiff sets the photometric interpretation tag in the TIFF output according to which photometric is actually used.

 

NOTES

There are myriad variations of the TIFF format, and this program generates only a few of them. pnmtotiff creates a grayscale TIFF file if its input is a PBM (monochrome) or PGM (grayscale) file. pnmtotiff also creates a grayscale file if it input is PPM (color), but there is only one color in the image. If the input is a PPM (color) file and there are 256 colors or fewer, but more than 1, pnmtotiff generates a color palette TIFF file. If there are more colors than that, pnmtotiff generates an RGB (not RGBA) single plane TIFF file. Use pnmtotiffcmyk to generate the cyan-magenta-yellow-black ink color separation TIFF format.

The number of bits per sample in the TIFF output is determined by the maxval of the PNM input. If the maxval is less than 256, the bits per sample in the output is the smallest number that can encode the maxval. If the maxval is greater than or equal to 256, there are 16 bits per sample in the output.

 

SEE ALSO

tifftopnm(1), pnmtotiffcmyk(1), pnmdepth(1), pnm(5)

 

AUTHOR

Derived by Jef Poskanzer from ras2tiff.c, which is Copyright (c) 1990 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Author: Patrick J. Naughton (naughton@wind.sun.com).


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
NOTES
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR

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