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Image Alchemy User`s Manual

1. A directory containing the fonts supplied with Alchemy PS only included with Alchemy PS 1 Insert disk 1 in your disk drive 2 Open the disk drive icon 3 Double click on the setup exe icon 4 When prompted change diskettes and press any key to continue Repeat this step for each diskette 5 You have now successfully installed Image Alchemy 6 The file readme txt contains information which has changed since the manual was printed To display this file double click on it CD ROM installation instructions Environment variables and config sys config sys autoexec bat path PostScript fonts 1 Insert the CD ROM in your CD ROM drive 2 Open the CD ROM drive icon 3 Double click on the setup exe icon 4 You have now successfully installed Image Alchemy 5 The file readme txt contains information which has changed since the manual was printed To display this file double click on it Image Alchemy uses several different environment variables to determine its behavior These control among other things how Image Alchemy uses memory where PostScript fonts are stored which display resolutions are available for image viewing and where temporary files are stored To insure that Image Alchemy can open the various files it needs while running you should verify that the files value in your config sys file is set to at least 30 and the buffers value is set to at least 20 if you are running M
2. 1 Specifying a negative decrement is not necessary nor possible When reading a multi page document you can use sequential filename mode to specify the name of the output files In this case the startInput endInput and incrementInput values are not specified See below of an example You must specify both an input filename and an outputfilename when using this option This option cannot be combined with multiple input filenames i e alchemy test 4H is not allowed Convert the files image001 gif image002 gif image003 gif to TIFF files with the names file 001 file 002 file 003 alchemy imag gif file t Do the same thing but use the filenames image1 gif image2 gif image3 gif through image100 gif as the input files alchemy image gif file 1 100 t Do the same thing but skip the even numbered files image1 gif image3 gif imageS gif alchemy image gif file 1 100x2 t Do the same thing but name the output files file 300 file 297 file 294 1 100x2 alchemy image gif fil 300 1x3 t Convert all the pages in addendum pdf to TIFF files name the output files addendum 01 tif addendum 02 tif addendum 03 tif alchemy addendum tif addendum U es ee sb eE Do the same thing but starting number
3. FBM E FBM is the native file format of the Fuzzy pixmap manipulation package Syntax F Extensions fom Creator Michael L Mauldin Used by Fuzzy pixmap manipulation package Variations 8 bit paletted and grayscale and 24 bit true color Comments The Fuzzy pixmap manipulation package is freely available from ftp nl cs cmu edu usr mlm ftp fbm tar Z Example Convert the file children rast to a FBM file alchemy children rast F 132 Image Alchemy First Publisher ART F Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Examples First Publisher ART files are black and white images used as clip art by First Publisher F art Software Publishing Corp First Publisher Black and white 1 bit per pixel Convert the image scan pcx to a First Publisher ART file alchemy scan pcx F Image Alchemy 133 FLC read only FLC files are a simple animated file format Extensions fle fli Creator Autodesk Used by Various shareware readers Variations 8 bit paletted Limitations Read only Comments FLC files are multi page files to read all of the pages in a FLC file use the U option see Chapter 6 Examples Convert the FLC file movie flc to a multi page GIF file alchemy movie flc g1 U U movie gif 134 Image Alchemy Freedom of Press f Syntax Extension Creator Variations Comments Example Freedom of Press is a PostScript interpreter from Custom Applications that converts PostS
4. This command can be useful if you have a variety of images and want to scale them all to be no smaller than a certain size If this command is not used all of the images that are large will be scaled up Scale all the GIF files in the current directory to be no smaller than 640 x 480 preserving aspect ratio and placing the output files in the directory called new alchemy gif new Xb640 Yb480 mc Preserve Aspect Ratio Purpose Syntax Comments Limitations Related options Examples Preserve aspect ratio when scaling If specified with either the X or Y option Alchemy will choose the other dimension to preserve the aspect ratio of the image If specified in conjunction with both X and Y Alchemy will use the values specified as a bounding box reducing one dimension if necessary to preserve the image aspect ratio Does not pay attention to the pixel aspect ratio values in the input image X Scale image in horizontal dimension Y Scale image in vertical dimension Change the size of the image toobig gif so that the width is 640 and the height is the correct number to preserve the aspect ratio of the image the new image will be called new gif alchemy toobig gif new X640 g Do the same thing but guarantee that the image will not be larger than 640 by 480 alchemy toobig gif new X640 Y480 g Do the same thing but use better quality scaling alchemy toobig gif new Xb6
5. b c 0000 Type 2 XPM2 style XPM2 F2 nA D2 a c 000000 b c ff0000 Image Alchemy 249 The 48 bit color XPM files are identical except that the color values are written as a 48 bit number instead of a 24 bit number Some software expects XPM files that have 48 bit numbers Alchemy automatically reads either For example Type 10 XBM similar style with 48 bit colors define typeO_format 1 static char typeO_colors a 000000000000 pb f L 00000000 The other formats 11 and 12 are analogous When writing an XPM file with less than 27 colors Alchemy writes 1 character XPM files otherwise Alchemy writes 2 character XPM files XPM files are usually quite small therefore many utilities the PBM toolkit for example may have trouble reading large XPM files Examples Convert the file picture im32 to an XPM file using high quality 250 scaling and preserving the aspect ratio alchemy picture im32 x Xb64 Do the same thing but write an XPM3 style file with 48 bit colors alchemy picture im32 x11 xb64 Image Alchemy Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Example W XWD is the file format used by xwd the X window dumping utility W type type 0 Z type 1 XY type The default is Z type xwd MIT The X Windowing System 1 4 8 and 24 bits per pixel Z format and 1 4 and 8 bi
6. 1 3 and 4 channel Thermal files 1 and 3 channel Dye Sub photo realistic files write only Reading Dye Sub photo realistic files is not currently supported When writing a dye sub photo realistic file the Fargo supplied file primera fzp must be located in the directory the source file is in The Primera printer needs the information to print dye sub images There seems to be little difference in the quality of Thermal 3 Pass files versus Thermal 4 Pass files Examples When printing onto the T Shirt transfer material you will probably want to use the mirror image option see Chapter 8 so that the image will appear correct after it is transferred The Primera printer tends to print the left edge of the page off of the paper You will probably want to specify a small image offset to prevent this see the _ option Image Offset in Chapter 8 To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the sample JPEG file sample jpg to a Thermal 3 Pass file alchemy sample jpg k Convert the sample JPEG file sample jpg to a Dye Sub 3 Pass file scaling the image to be 6 inches wide and a proportionate height offsetting the image 1 inch from the left edge and 3 inches from the top of the page alchemy sample jpg k10 Xb6i D200 200 _ 1i 31 Image Alchemy 131
7. Binary Information Files for more information B outputType outputT ype 0 Standard 1 3 Files 2 ASCII 3 Group III 4 Group IV 5 Packed 1 bit per pixel black and white The default is Standard See the comments section below for more information on the output types bif For ASCII file describing image raw For actual image data Handmade Software Inc Image Alchemy Various image processing software 24 bit true color 8 bit gray scale and 1 bit black and white Limitations Conments Paletted files cannot be read in a work around is to generate a PAL file and then false color the gray scale image using the F option BIF files are used to read and write files which consist entirely of image data You have to generate a text file which describes the format of the data you are trying to read in This file is called a BIF file The format of BIF files is documented in Appendix E Binary Information Files You then instruct Alchemy to read the image data by giving it the name of the BIF file Alchemy can generate a variety of different types of BIF data The standard BIF file consists of either gray scale or byte interleaved RGB data in binary form Each pixel is stored as one or three bytes and there is no padding at the end of lines or at the end of the image This is the most common output type The three file BIF data has the red green and blue data stored in separate files The red data will be sto
8. CMYK density If there is a line which says only HSI CMYK density map then correction tables the next 256 non comment lines contain density correction tables corresponding to cyan magenta yellow and black values of O white to 255 Each of these lines has four numbers representing in order the amount of cyan magenta yellow and black to use in place of the corresponding computed values These tables are only applied during dithering they will not be used for those CMYK output formats which are continuous tone as devices which take continuous tone input data should be doing their own correction Comments Any line beginning with is a comment and is ignored Example The following undercolor removal file has undercolor removal tables CMYK density correction tables and a CMY color correction matrix Undercolor removal file r WN Fr Oo WN rRFrR Oo 256 entries total 169 169 169 169 170 170 r Image Alchemy 405 406 Image Alchemy HSI CMY matrix the following matrix leaves the Cyan and Yellow planes alone and subtracts a bit from the Magenta plane when there s Cyan present 256 0 0 32 256 0 0 0 256 i HSI CMYK density map r 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 256 entries total 248 248 248 248 25L 254 251 252 253 253 253 253 255 255 255 255 HSI PAL Files Overview File format Example HSI PAL files are text files which contain a palette in an ASCII form Alchemy can
9. False color the file scan gif using the palette from the file colorful pcx creating the GIF file new gif alchemy scan gif new F colorful pcx g Gana Correction G Purpose Syntax Parameters Conments Specify the gamma of an input output or palette file and or perform gamma correction G gammaType gammaValue gammaType i Specify input gamma o Specify output gamma p Specify gamma of palette gammaValue 0 1 to 10 0 Gamma correction can be used to compensate for dot gain when generating a file that will be printed on an inket or laser printer Dot gain occurs because each dot that is placed on the paper is actually round and in order to completely fill in a square grid with round pixels the round pixels have to be larger than the square This allows black areas to appear as solid black however it also causes gray areas to appear darker than they should See Appendix A for a more complete discussion of dot gain A good starting place when using Gamma Correction to correct for dot gain is to specify an input gamma of 1 0 and an output gamma of 2 0 If the image appears to light on the page decrease the output gamma if it is too dark increase the output gamma Image Alchemy 297 Related options Examples 298 Image Alchemy To perform gamma correction Alchemy needs to know both the input and output gamma For some file formats the gamma is known if you re reading a file with known gamma such as JPEG PI
10. Image Alchemy Select Printers fromtheSt art menu under Settings Programs gt A Documents gt EN Settings W Control Panel 7 N Find A Taskbar Ht amp Windows cT Shut Down This brings up the Printers window Double click on the Ad d Printer icon 3 Printers O x File Edit View Help t HP LaserJet 4y 2 objects This brings up the Add Printer Wizard This pad heb pabo ei poe pander guand sn merh la begn niaig pour parim deck Hd Erari E Click Ne xt gt to continue with the procedure Ciok the rarae ped nebi pa pi our piia e h min drb okk Have Cede I ya paea erea dej corel pya perder dorarisan ka a coagebtie pander Aaqut achat Fintan OMG Code iiot 100 bade 100 OE ler cept SAD OMG Cole tsp IA DMS Colo op Lacer 1000 is Ere Choose QMS from the Manufacturers window then select QMS ColorScript 100 Model 30 from the Printers list Image Alchemy 73 74 Image Alchemy Now click on the Ne x t gt button to bring up the connect dialog box ok the oat pou pL bo une sail Oss Deirdre hes chk Hat EPt peat Larimer store Port Gmg Pot is race Select the F LE itemfromtheAvailable Ports list This indicates to Windows 95 that the device doesn t actually exist and that output sent to that driver should be directed to a file Click on the Ne x t gt button to accept this choice If you want to make
11. alchemy image tif r10 yf samples blur X2500 Y2550 Flip Image Purpose Comments Related options Example Flip image vertically turn image upside down caret Causes the image to be turned upside down May be combined with the mirror image option see below to cause the image to be rotated 180 degrees Mirror image Convert the Targa file head tga to another Targa file called tail tga alchemy head tga tail tga a Image Alchemy 327 Mirror Image Purpose Flip image horizontally mirror image Syntax caret Comments Causes the image to be mirrored May be combined with the flip image option see above to cause the image to be rotated 180 degrees Related options A Flip image Example Convert the Targa file left tga to another Targa file called right tga alchemy left tga right tga a 328 Image Alchemy Offset Image Purpose Parameter Comments Limitations Related options The offset image option changes the position of the image on the page It only effects printer and plotter formats _ xOffset units yOffset units underscore xOffset The amount to shift the image horizontally yOffset The amount to shift the image vertically units The units each size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is pixels The units value must immediately follow the appropriate offset parameter The offset is measure
12. 0 eee eeeeeseesecseceseceeeeeeeeees 182 MacPhie raene a eo RaR E EEE Ai 184 MIFE non eg etal ele natant nin dete 185 Mimaki MRA Sereniteit e e 186 MEV Ray Tracer nnan e eeeasea ede 187 Mullti Image Palette inion inane 188 O5 2 Bitmap oeeo e B NENE ah 190 OSZ Colo eae aera e aa a eee 191 PCPAINT Pictor Page Format o e 193 POX AEE E ET 196 PDS si ead tate as a ta ee n eee aaa 199 PHOTO E D orrea stent tases katara EEE RE 201 Pixar PICe nserit ai E ANE 202 Pixel Power Collage ceeeeeesceeseecseceseceseeeeeeeeenees 203 PNG Portable Networks Graphics cesseeeseeees 204 Portable BitMap PBM c cceescecssceeseeceeseceneeeeenees 206 OO hede tk eR AG eee eet 209 ODD 3 mna a Berk Shc eha fel eo en a ees 210 ORT RaW enna a E E S tecdedl vecdeiies 211 Raster Graphics y c cts iiessindsseeesizsceesestaadstataearbadnessessties 212 RIX NEE E centile 213 REG meena deiae EO a aoc ted e e alate 214 Scitex CP rre a ae a E aas 215 COG Creep troas eer aee aa ENOR EE EGEE EE AEE EE 216 SGI ma ses e E E a ioan 218 Sharp GPBo scnnen nania i a agaaa 219 Spaceward Graphics sseeeseeeeeeereereseeresresreerssreereses 220 SPOT Image iin fcc ee eh ees 221 SLOT sre E E E E EEEE E E E 223 Sun TEON ian via knee AT Ai 225 SUN RASTET riene eie a ee a aee 226 Targa Kuigi iasa a ar 228 MPT A EOE E EE 230 US Patent Imagen nennen a n ea e i 234 Utah Raster Toolkitit cerir ineat eie 235 Verity Image Format VIP 0 0 ce ceeeeeee
13. 49 24 i 00 00 00 DB 6D 00 00 49 24 24 FI 04 01 40 00 C8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 DB 6D 6D FF 92 DB FF B6 92 FF FF DB 6D 24 24 DB 92 6D 6D 04 01 40 00 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 24 24 49 24 24 49 24 24 49 24 24 49 24 24 49 24 24 49 24 24 49 T E stream register int temp temp getc stream lt lt 8 return getc stream i FI temp E stream putc i gt gt 8 return putc i amp 0xff stream stream Image Alchemy 00 00 92 FF 49 00 00 24 49 24 00 00 FF DB 49 00 00 49 24 24 40l 402 Image Alchemy Undercolor Removal Files Summary Undercolor removal files are text files which control the conversion from RGB to CMYK color space This conversion consists of four steps The first is to convert an RGB value to an ideal CMY value this simply involves negating the RGB values The next step is to determine how much black is in that color this is done by finding the minimum of the CMY values and using that as an index into the black removal portion of the Undercolor Removal tables documented below These tables have independent values for how much black to use for that pixel and how much black to subtract from the CMY values Next a linear transform is optionally applied to the CMY portion of the CMYK pixel Finally the CMYK values are optionally translated independently through the CMYK density correction t
14. BIF filename sample raw width 640 height 480 header 0x020 Plane Interleaved This example shows how to read an image which is plane interleaved i e all of the blue pixels are first followed by the green and finally the red BIF filename planar img width 1024 height 1024 channels 3 interleave 2 order bgr Separate RGB files This is an example BIF file which would be used to read a 512x512 RGB file which has each of the different color pixels in a separate file Note that the width height and planes tags must all be present to read a file of this type BIF filename image red filename image grn filename image blu width 512 height 5T2 planes 5 Group IV Fax This BIF file can be used to read a page of Group IV compressed compressed patent data as distributed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office BIF filename 4456956 001 width 2320 height 3408 channels eli format group4 faxoptions bitreversal Image Alchemy 393 394 Packed black and white data 16 Bit Data ASCII Data Image Alchemy This is an example BIF file which would be used to read a black and white image which is packed at 8 pixels per byte Note that the width height and bitspersample tags must all be present to read a file of this type the bitorder tag isn t necessary in this case since msb Isb is the default order but it is included because we figured you were curious what that tagged looked like BIF filename scan
15. D command Image Alchemy 159 160 Image Alchemy Output types 11 through 16 are only available on Revision B HP 650C and newer DesignJets Types 11 and 12 are the same as types 2 and 7 respectively with the difference that types 11 and 12 allow for independent control over the black channel types 2 and 7 always perform 100 black removal Types 13 through 16 send 24 bit data to the plotter allowing it to perform the RGB to CMYK conversion types 13 and 14 use a stochastic dither pattern types 15 and 16 use a digital halftone dither Types 13 through 16 can also be used to scale the image by specifying a different dpi value than the dpi value the plotter natively uses see the examples section below for an example Specifying on the fly mode instructs the plotter to start plotting as soon as it receives data as opposed to buffering the data until the end of the image Using on the fly mode is a good idea when plotting large images on the 650c and newer plotters otherwise the plotter will buffer the data until it fills its memory then it will plot that information and then revert to on the fly mode The two different plotting methods produce a slightly different banding effect which can be noticeable in the output image Alchemy will generate a color RTL file unless the input file is black and white or grayscale or the b option is specified as part of the conversion There is no additional setup required for the PaintJet or
16. D300 300 Image Alchemy 323 Change Image Resolution y Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments 324 Image Alchemy Change the image resolution see the comments section below for a more detailed explanation y scaleType dotsPerInchxX dotsPerInchY scaleType The type of scaling to use a Nearest Neighbor b Averaging Linear Interpolation c Lanczos2 d Lanczos3 scaleType is optional the default is Nearest Neighbor The higher the scale type the higher the quality and the longer the processing time dotsPerInchx The resolution of the image in the X direction in dots per inch dotsPerInchY The resolution of the image in the Y direction in dots per inch Changing the resolution of an image is a combination of changing the image dpi and the image size in pixels For example if you print an image which was scanned at 600 dpi on a 300 dpi laser printer the printed image would ordinarily be twice the size of the original image You could use Alchemy to scale the image a proportional amount using in this case X 0 5x Y 0 5x D300 300 but this method requires you to calculate the scale factor 0 5 in this case Changing the image resolution does this for you Related options Examples Nearest neighbor type scaling is faster than the other types but introduces aliasing which reduces image quality The highest quality scaling supported is lanczos3 but it takes much longer than averaging linear interpo
17. Syntax Comments Examples 256 Image Alchemy Disable automatic appending of the output image type to the output file name period By default if there s no in the output filename Alchemy will add an extension indicating the type of file If the option is specified no extension will be added This is most useful on non MS DOS systems where is not a special character in filenames Convert the file called infile gif to a PCX file called outfile if you did not use the option Alchemy would automatically change the output file name to outfile pcx alchemy infile gif outfile p Do Not Remove Old Extension Purpose Syntax Comments Limitations Examples Allows appending a new extension instead of removing the existing extension Generates filenames such as test tif gif Only works on operating systems that support long filenames Convert all the files in the series filename 001 filename 002 into TIFF format while adding a tiff extension in order to create filenames such as filename 001 tif filename 002 tif alchemy filename z e Do the same thing on Windows 95 or Windows NT alchlong filename 20k Image Alchemy 257 Help h Purpose Give you information on how to use Image Alchemy Syntax h option Parameter option 0 General help 1 General options 2 Output formats A through L 3 Output formats M through Z 4 Color options 5 Scaling and Filtering Options 6 Di
18. g Zp 2 Convert pages 2 through 9 of the file test ps to multiple GIF files alchemy test ps g Zp 2 9 Convert pages 2 through 9 of the file test ps to a single multi page GIF file called pages gif alchemy test ps gl Zp 2 9 U pages gif Convert all the pages in the file test ps to a single multi page GIF file called pages gif alchemy test ps g1 Zp U pages gif Pre load Fonts Parameter Comments Example Zf Specify whether or not to pre load fonts Zf mode mode 0 Don t pre load fonts 1 Pre load fonts The default is Don t pre load fonts The command causes Alchemy PS to load all of the PostScript fonts installed in the fontmap when it starts up rather than as needed This is primarily useful when converting PostScript files that change their behavior depending on the available fonts a font catalogue program for example Convert the file fontlist ps to a PCL file preloading all fonts alchemy fontlist ps P Zf1 Image Alchemy 6l Preserve Aspect Ratio Z Preserve aspect ratio when scaling Syntax Z plus Comments If specified with the Zo option Alchemy will use the values specified as a bounding box reducing one dimension if necessary to preserve the image aspect ratio Example Convert the file contract ps which was originally created to print on legal size paper 8 5 x 14 to a PCL file at 300 dpi and fit it to 8 5 x 11 alchemy contract ps P Zi 8 5i 141 Z
19. set alchemy 800 at the DOS prompt if your monitor only supports 640x480 mode and 800x600 mode To disable 8514 A checking disable extended expanded memory usage and limit the viewing resolution to 640x480 use set alchemy 8x640 When performing a long conversion Alchemy will automatically display an estimate of the time needed to complete the operation To disable the display of this information set the environment variable alchemy to p type set alchemy p at the DOS prompt Note that during PostScript conversions a completion time estimate is not displayed This is because the speed of various PostScript operations varies widely and any time estimate would be inaccurate To disable 8514 A checking disable extended expanded memory usage limit the viewing resolution to 640x480 and disable time estimation use set alchemy 8x640p UNIX Installation Required equipment Disk space Packing list Hoppy disk or tape installation instructions At a minimum you must have the following hardware to run Image Alchemy A hard drive with as much free space possible Converting very high resolution images can require large amounts of disk space for example a 8 5 x 11 color PostScript file converted at 300 dpi will require up to 50 megabytes of disk space The enclosed diskettes CD ROM or tape is in tar format and contains the following files alchemy The Alchemy software alchfont A tool for installing PostScrip
20. various combinations of 24 8 b and c In this case it is usually best to use no compression t0 while experimenting with the other options as many TIFF readers have difficulty with compressed files When you find a set of options that work then you can try various compression modes to save space Be aware that using the b option will force the output file to be gray scale and you will lose the color information in the file most desktop publishing programs only have support for gray scale TIFF files You may also have to use the Dn n option to specify the resolution of the image this is especially true when converting from a file format which does not have a value for image resolution You can generally tell if this is necessary because the program you are using to read in the TIFF file will claim that the file is unreasonably large or small Usually if you are using a 300 dpi Laser Printer you want to make the TIFF file 300 dpi x 300 dpi D 300 300 If you would like further information specific to using Image Alchemy with your word processor or desktop publishing program please contact us we will be maintaining a list of how to make Alchemy work with other software packages Similarly if you figure out how to import files into a specific package let us know and we will add your tips to our documentation Image Alchemy 367 368 Question Answer Image Alchemy When I convert a GIF file to a JPEG file and then back
21. 215 cut 118 dat 221 dcx 196 doc 169 epi 120 eps 120 epsi 120 ers 124 fal 209 fom 132 fle 134 fli 134 fop 135 g 220 g8 116 gif 139 gis 126 gm 104 gm2 104 gm4 104 goe 144 grb 164 hdr 221 hrf 148 hst 146 ibg 199 ico 191 225 icon 225 idc 114 idx 223 iff 171 ilbm 171 im 226 im1 226 im24 226 im32 226 im8 226 img 95 100 126 136 169 172 173 219 240 imq 199 Jpg 165 178 lan 126 bm 171 mac 184 mif 185 miff 185 mrl 186 mtv 187 p 173 pal 118 166 188 pat 234 pbm 206 207 pcd 201 pcl 150 pcx 196 pdf 96 pgm 206 207 pic 103 168 182 194 202 pict 182 Image Alchemy 429 pm 248 png 204 pnm 206 207 ppm 206 207 pre 223 prn 111 130 156 psd 98 puzzle 208 pzl 208 q0 209 qdv 210 r 220 r8 116 ras 226 rast 226 raw 108 167 211 rg 212 rgb 174 209 rix 213 tla 241 rlb 241 tle 214 tle 95 235 tl 158 scd 216 scx 213 sgi 218 sst 105 tab 223 tdi 129 tga 228 tif 230 tiff 230 vi 177 vif 237 vit 239 wpg 245 430 Image Alchemy x 107 xbm 246 xim 247 xpm 248 XV 238 xwd 251 Numbers 1200C 322 329 15 bits 314 16 Bit 394 16 bits 315 24 bits 316 300XL 158 322 329 32 bits 318 386MAX 25 650c 322 329 7600 322 329 8 bits 302 8514 A 21 25 350 A Acknowledgments 409 Acrobat 96 Actions during viewing 352 add fonts 87 Adding fonts
22. 9 Viewing Options MS DOS Only IntrodUCtiON enaner eir o elbeee isis eee 349 Display Hardwares cnrs snreni sec innronn inier 349 Display Res lutions ein eie ea 352 Wrong RGB Ord rssmocsiiecnisciiecnanan iiaii 352 Actions During Viewing ee eee eseeseceeceseceeeeeeeeeneeenees 352 Viewing Options Offset Vie Werter steel sateen ketene cle erase eres ake 354 Slide SHOW eesi eneee ieee vee tins E E a 355 NieW Image ennn e E e TE a 356 View Image in True Color Mode o 357 View Scaled Image cee eeeeseessecseceseceseceneeeeeenaeens 359 View Scaled Image in True Color Mode 361 Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions AE AE EEA P E E EEEE E E A 363 Appendix B Color and Dithering A E EE EE A ESS 375 Appendix C JPEG Description A TE E E A EEEE 381 Appendix D Customer Support E EE E E E EEST 385 Appendix E Binary Information Riles BIF E AE EEE N 387 Appendix F HSI Raw Files EAN A E E ET ER 397 Appendix G Undercolor Removal Files A AEE E E ETE TEAS 403 Appendix H HSI PAL Files side gun EEE E A E EE ET 407 Appendix Acknowledgments AAA E EE AE E E R 409 xii Appendix J Other Useful Software PE AAE E A A E A 415 Glossary EEEN AE N EE E PE NTA EI E EN 419 References a RRL ORR ES ee ea 421 Colophon AE bee N ENE I EA IA E E T 425 Index a aa E E EE EE N TEAN 427 xiii XIV Introduction to Image Alcheny What is Image Alchemy Image Alchemy is a software u
23. Comments Example C Computer aided Acquisition and Logistics Support CALS files are black and white images used by the US Government as part of their transition to electronic media C cal Defense Logistics Agency DLA Department of Defense DoD Type 1 Group 4 raster CALS images Document labels such as document ID and figure ID are ignored CALS images are Fax Group IV compressed and are therefore a good way of storing black and white line drawings and scans Convert the TIFF file page1 tif to a CALS file alchemy pagel tif c Image Alchemy 113 Core IDC Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Examples 114 Image Alchemy Core IDC files are used by Core Software s GIS software B idc Core Software Technology Core Software Technology 1 and 3 band 8 bit files Only 8 bit images can be read Alchemy cannot read 2 channel or 4 or more channel images without using the Z option see the comments section below for more information 1 band files are read in as gray scale images 3 band files are read in as true color images The default color mapping between RGB and bands 1 2 and 3 is Red Band 1 Green Band 2 and Blue Band 3 this can be changed by using the Z option See the example section below for details Using the Z option it is possible to select a single channel or 3 channels when reading a multi channel Core IDC image To use the Z
24. D Customer Support The output option consists of a single letter followed by any options needed for the file format you are writing The output option like all Alchemy options is preceded by a dash The less common output options consist of a letter preceded by two dashes Some of the output formats have several variations in those cases you specify which variation you want with an optional letter and or number after the output option Image Alchemy 91 Example Further variations Example Identifying image files 92 Image Alchemy The option to generate a Windows Bitmap file is w There are two types of Bitmap files uncompressed and Run Length Encoded RLE To write out an uncompressed Bitmap file use w0 to write out an RLE Bitmap file use w1 the default Bitmap file is uncompressed so a w without any parameter following it would also generate an uncompressed Bitmap file Note that Alchemy allows spaces between the option and parameter so typing w 1 would be the same as w1 Be aware that the other options specified on the command line may also affect the type of file that is generated Within the Windows Bitmap file type there are 1 bit 4 bit 8 bit and 24 bit files Alchemy always generates a file using the best match of the file type and the output image So in the case of Windows Bitmap files if the output image is black and white a 1 bit file is generated If the output image is pa
25. DesignJet plotters HP7600 series plotters should be in HP GL 2 mode best results will generally be achieved with compensation off To get color plots from the HP7600 series the plotter must be in 4 or 5 pass mode If the input is black and white you can do the conversion without an undercolor removal file and with dithering off This will result in a faster conversion Examples If the input is gray scale you probably do want to use an undercolor removal file to perform density correction but with 100 black removal the black removal tables should contain 0 through 255 increasing by one each line so that the output won t contain cyan magenta or yellow The samples directory on the distribution diskette has a UCR file called gray ucr which has 100 black removal MS DOS users can send the RTL file directly to the plotter when generating an RTL file of type 0 1 2 6 7 and 9 through 16 To send the file directly give the name of the output device as the output file for example if your plotter is connected to your computer via lpt1 specifying lpt1 as the output file will send output directly to that device You may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information The best quality dither for HP RTL output is generally type 3 Jarvis Judice amp Ninke with a serpentine raster and some dithering noise use ds3 10 for exa
26. Digital Research for use with GEM 8 img Digital Research Inc GEM 1 8 bit grayscale and 3 and 4 bit color files reading 1 3 and 4 bit grayscale and 3 and 4 bit color files writing The support for color and multiple bit grayscale GEM files is not very universal Therefore make sure the application you are using to read the GEM files supports them Alchemy defaults to writing out a 1 bit black and white GEM file You can explicitly force a 3 plane color file by use of the c8 option and a 4 plane color file by use of the c16 option you may add a b to write a grayscale file instead of a color file Because color GEM files have only 3 or 4 bits of information and no palette support the quality is generally not very good for scanned images The GEM format seems to have been designed for line drawings Convert the image scan pcx to a black and white GEM file alchemy scan pcx g Convert the image bigscan tga to a 640x480 8 color GEM file using nearest neighbor scaling and type 2 dithering alchemy bigscan tga c 8 g X640 Y480 d2 Do the same thing but write an 8 shade grayscale file with no dithering alchemy bigscan tga c 8 g X640 Y480 d b Image Alchemy 137 GIF Parameter 138 Image Alchemy 8 GIF files were developed by CompuServe as a machine independent image file format GIF files are the most popular way of storing 8 bit scanned or digitized images GIF files are frequently
27. Gil 0 Go2 0 Image Alchemy 123 ER Mapper Raster m Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments 124 Image Alchemy ER Mapper files are used by ER Mapper satellite image analysis software m ers Header data Pixel data Earth Resource Mapping ER Mapper 1 channel and 3 channel images Alchemy cannot read 2 channel or 4 or more channel images without using the Z option see the comments section below for more information ER Mapper files are actually two files one with the extension ers and the other without any extension The ers file contains header information and the non extensioned file contains the actual image data You specify the name of the ers file and Alchemy automatically generates the name of the other file When writing an ER Mapper file Alchemy will overwrite without warning existing ER Mapper image data files Using the Z option it is possible to select a single channel or 3 channels when reading a multi channel ER Mapper image To use the Z option follow it with a single number to indicate which channel is to be read as a gray scale image or three numbers to indicate which channels are to be read as a 24 bit color image See the example section below for details Examples Convert the Sun Raster file earth ras to an ER Mapper file alchemy earth ras m The ER Mapper file Landsat_TM_year_1991 ers contains 7 bands the next examples show various ways to r
28. Glossary Anonymous FTP Black and white Dithering Gray scale An easy way to transfer files via the Internet If you don t have Internet access you can t use anonymous FTP if you do have Internet access you probably already know about it if you don t ask your system administrator or local network guru An image which contains just two colors black and white Many file formats such as TIFF and Sun Raster have special variations for black and white images You can force Alchemy to write a black and white image by specifying b c2 as options A technique for reducing the amount of color banding in an image when converting from a large number of different colors to a small number of different colors Different dithering techniques are usually named after the person or persons who first invented them Alchemy supports Floyd Steinberg Stucki and JJN dithering these are further described in Digital Halftoning by Robert Ulichney MIT Press An image which contains just shades of gray Many file formats such as TIFF and Silicon Graphics have special variations for gray scale images You can force Alchemy to write a gray scale image by specifying b 8 as options Image Alchemy 419 420 Header Heckbert color quantization Magic Number Paletted True color Image Alchemy The portion of an image file that is not the actual image data The data in a header generally includes the image size in pixels the
29. If the paperSize selected is not available the printer s control panel will display a message The paperTray option varies with different model LaserJets and with what options are installed The only way to determine what your printer Image Alchemy 151 152 Image Alchemy The Reset printer Do not reset printer option is useful if you are generating PCL files which will be sent to the printer by another application If you select the Do not reset printer option the resulting PCL file can be sent as part of a larger PCL stream The Do not include position information is similarly useful if you choose that option the application that sends the generated PCL data can send a PCL position command before the PCL data When converting color or gray scale images to PCL3 or PCL5 you will probably want to scale the output so the image will be larger than the input image This will allow the dithering to preserve more detail in the image This is not necessary with PCL XL the printer will do the appropriate conversion preserving detail PCL XL has advantages of other PCL types in that the printer will automatically scale the image perform color grayscale density correction and dither the image If you use the X and Y options with Alchemy you can set the DPI values such that the printer will print the image at your desired size see the Examples section below for an example The best quality dither for PCL output is generally type 3
30. Jarvis Judice amp Ninke with a serpentine raster and some dithering noise use ds3 10 for example Not all PCL compatible printers can print all types of compressed PCL file Specifically LaserJet II IID and earlier printers can print only uncompressed PCL files LaserJet Ip printers can print only uncompressed and RLE compressed files LaserJet II ID Mp Isi and 4 printers can print all types of compressed PCL files In general the higher the compression type the better the compression ratio The Landscape option can be used to write a landscape PCL file Because of changes in the PCL format only LaserJet HI and newer printers will correctly print Alchemy produced landscape PCL files PCL files can be used to generate output which can be printed on HP LaserJet and compatible printers The easiest method is to simply generate a PCL file and then copy it to the printer by using the copy command when using the copy command from MS DOS you will have to use a B to make sure the entire file is copied to the printer see the example below for more information For MS DOS users it is possible to write a PCL file directly to a HP LaserJet or compatible printer If you use the name of the device as the output file name Alchemy will redirect output to that device for example use prn as the output file name if your LaserJet is attached to the prn port You may want to adjust the output gamma to compensate for dot gain
31. Output Filenames 270 Response Paired Filenames 272 RIX 213 RIX Softworks 213 RJ 1300 160 RJ 1800 160 RJ 4000 160 RJ 800 160 RLC 214 RLE 235 rotate 42 Rotate Image 63 RTL 158 159 161 162 S Scale Image in Horizontal Direction 335 Scale Image in Vertical Direction 338 scale to gray 285 Scaling and Filtering Options 321 Scan for fonts 89 Scitex CT 215 Scodl 70 216 screen capture 364 sequential filenames 38 273 serpentine raster 293 378 Set Horizontal DPI 340 Set Vertical DPI 342 SGI Image 218 Shake 129 Sharp 219 Sharp GPB 219 sharpen 326 Sierra Lite 293 signed 391 Silicon Graphics Inc 218 Sixteen bits 315 slash 30 Slide Show 355 Software Publishing Corp 133 Spaceward Graphics 220 spawn 410 Specify Image Aspect Ratio 344 Specify Image Resolution 64 346 Spiff 310 SPOT Image 221 Image Alchemy 437 SPOT Image Corp 221 SSTMAP 105 status messages 267 Stevenson and Arce 293 Stone Soup Group 411 Stork 223 Stork Colorproofing B V 223 Storyboard Live 168 stretching 310 Stucki 293 Sun Icon 225 Sun Microsystems Inc 225 226 Sun Raster 226 SVGA 21 350 351 Swap RGB 312 T Tagged Interchange File Format 230 366 tar 27 Targa 228 363 Temporary disk files 24 29 temporary files 29 The PNG development group 204 Thermal 130 Thermal Transfer Printer 111 Thirty two bits 318 Thomas W Spencer 412 TIFF 230 366 409 Time Arts 181 time estimation 29 Ti
32. Pix Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Example 100 Image Alchemy Alias is a modeling software package for SGI and Macintosh computers I upper case i img als Alias Research Inc Alias Vivid Ray Tracer 24 bit RLE files This is the same format as used by the Vivid ray tracer see Vivid below Convert the file spheres qrt to an Alias Pix file alchemy spheres qrt I Alpha Microsystems BMP M Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Examples Alpha Microsystems BMP files are used by Alpha Microsystems M compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Packed The default is None bmp Alpha Microsystems Alpha Microsystems workstations 1 4 8 and 24 bit unpacked and packed run length encoded RGB images Reading and writing HLS images is not supported When reading an image without a palette Alchemy will assume the image is gray scale Convert the GIF file bigpict gif to an uncompressed Alpha Microsystems BMP file alchemy bigpict gif M Do the same thing but force a 24 bit image and compress the image alchemy bigpict gif M1 24 Image Alchemy 101 ALPS Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Examples 102 Image Alchemy a Alps files are used by Alps Micro Dry printers a _prn Alps Alps printers 1 bit black and white and 4 bit CMYK
33. SGI Image files are used by Silicon Graphics workstations n compressionType compressionType 0 Verbatim uncompressed 1 RLE compressed The default is 0 Verbatim Sgi Silicon Graphics Inc Silicon Graphics workstations 8 bit gray scale and 24 bit RGB verbatim uncompressed and RLE files with and without alpha channels Only gray scale images may be 8 bit files Alchemy will automatically switch to 24 bit mode when writing a color image Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the Sun raster file sun im8 to a SGI file called sgiout alchemy sun im8 sgiout n Do the same thing but write out a RLE compressed SGI file alchemy sun im8 sgiout n1 Sharp GPB Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Example Ee Sharp GPB files were developed by Sharp G img Sharp Sharp 1 bit black and white 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit color images Convert the JPEG file image jpg to a Sharp GPB file alchemy image jpg G Image Alchemy 219 Spaceward Graphics S Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Conments Example 220 Image Alchemy Spaceward Graphic files were developed and are used by Spaceward Graphics s compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Compressed The default is None T Red channel image data 2 Green channel image data b Blue channel image data a Al
34. TIFF file so that it can be imported by a word processor Keep the image at the original size using the bounding box information in the EPS file to only convert the relevant portion of the image This examples assumes the TIFF file will be printed on a 300 dpi laser printer alchemy logo eps logo tif t1 Ze 1 Do the same thing this time assuming that the TIFF file will be printed on a 1440 dpi typesetter alchemy logo eps logo tif t1 zd 1440 1440 Ze 1 This time convert the EPS file but don t use the bounding box instead instruct Alchemy PS to clip to the active image area alchemy logo eps logo tif t1 zd 1440 1440 Zc 1 Convert an AutoCad drawing saved as a PostScript file to a PCX file for sending with a fax modem The resolution of fax machines in fine mode is 200 dpi x 200 dpi alchemy drawing ps drawing pcx p Zd 200 200 If we were sending in normal mode 200 dpi x 100 dpi we would use a Zd 200 100 instead alchemy drawing ps drawing pcx p Zd 200 100 Image Alchemy 67 Viewing a file on a VGA screen MS DOS only Plotting a PostScript file on a large format plotter 68 Image Alchemy View a color PostScript file on a SVGA screen The original image was 8 5 x 11 the final image is being rendered to be screen sized 640 pixels x 480 pixels alchemy drawing ps v Zm 2 Zo 640p 480p Z If you have a 24 bit capable SVGA card you can replace the v command with the v command for better viewi
35. Used by Variations Limitations Conments Examples read only TDI is used by the Alias Wavefront Explore system tdi Nothing Real Explore Shake 24 bit true color with alpha channels read only The TDI file format specification is not published Alchemy s support for the format is based on examining customer supplied files There are variations of the TDI format including grayscale and files without alpha channels which we do not support because we have not had such files to examine Because of the lack of a published specification Alchemy cannot write TDI files If you have TDI files which Alchemy cannot read please contact us Similarly if you are interested in having Alchemy write TDI files please contact us Alpha channel data can be read by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the sequence of TDI files frame 000 through frame 499 to TIFF files with the names 0 tif through 499 tif alchemy frame serf tO 0 499 Image Alchemy 129 Fargo Primera Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments 130 Image Alchemy k Fargo Primera files are used by Fargo Primera color printers k type type 0 Thermal 3 Pass Color CMY 1 Thermal 4 Pass Color CMYK 2 Thermal Black and White K 10 Dye Sub 3 Pass Color 11 Dye Sub Black and White The default is 0 prn Fargo Electronics Inc Fargo Primera printers
36. Write only Alps printers are capable of 300 and 600 dpi in color or black and white mode Alps printers also support 1200 x 600 dpi for black and white mode To position the image on the page use the offset image option _ or the center image option _ see Chapter 8 for details To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the JPEG file sample jpg to an Alps file five inches wide at 600 dpi Alchemy sample jpg a Xb5i D600 600 Autodesk PIC CEL l Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Example Autodesk PIC CEL files are files developed by Autodesk lower case L pic cel Autodesk Animator and Animator PRO 15 bit per pixel RGB and 24 bit per pixel RGB with Alpha channel Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file image tga to an Autodesk PIC file preserving the Alpha channel information alchemy input tga l I Image Alchemy 103 Autologic Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Examples 104 Image Alchemy a Autologic files are black and white or gray scale files for use with Autologic typesetting equipment a gm gm2 gm4 Autologic Incorporated Autologic typesetting equipm
37. XLI 413 XPM 248 XWD 251 Y YCbCr 382 Z ZSoft Corporation 196 Image Alchemy 439 440 Image Alchemy
38. Y and commands will cause the dimensions given to be treated as a bounding box X Set Horizontal DPI Preserve aspect ratio Set the vertical dpi value so that the image test tif is converted to an EPS file that will be 5 inches high when printed alchemy test tif e Y 5i Do the same thing but preserve the aspect ratio so the horizontal dpi will be set to the same value as the vertical dpi alchemy test tif e Y 5i Do the same thing but set the horizontal size to 6 inches this will cause the 6 in x 5 in dimension to be treated as a bounding box alchemy test tif X 61 Y 5i 4 Image Alchemy 343 Specify Image Aspect Ratio D Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Limitations 344 Image Alchemy Specify aspect ratio for the output image D aspectRatio aspectRatio The percentage of the width of a pixel to its height This option does not actually change the aspect ratio of the image it just adds the aspect ratio value to the output file This is important when trying to export the image to software which expects this information The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of a single pixel to the height of a single pixel So to specify an aspect ratio of 5 6 use D 83 since 5 6 100 is 83 Alchemy attempts to preserve the aspect ratio value when converting images whenever one is found in the input image but since so few file formats have aspect ratio information this ha
39. Zo 2000p 1366p Z Xb2000 Yb1366 Zc 1 Zr 90 Generating PostScript files for use with Image Alchemy PS Generating a PostScript file using Microsoft Windows 95 Most programs have the ability to generate a PostScript file Generally you can select a PostScript device as the output device and then generate a disk file This file can then be interpreted by Alchemy PS Some programs give you a choice of PostScript printers usually there is a generic PostScript printer which should be used You may also have to specify if you want black and white grayscale or color output Because of the increase in the file size and rendering time you should select the simplest format which meets your requirements for example if you will be generating a PostScript file which you will be sending via fax it is best if you generate a black and white PostScript file Generating a PostScript file which can be read by Image Alchemy PS when running Microsoft Windows 95 requires setting up a PostScript output device that Windows can print to Microsoft Windows 95 includes several different PostScript device drivers including drivers for the Apple LaserWriter HP LaserJet PostScript NEC Colormate PS etc However most of these do not include color support therefore we recommend selecting the QMS ColorScript 100 as the printer driver You accomplish this with the following procedure Image Alchemy 71 72 Setting up Microsoft Windows 95
40. beginning with a are treated as comments Comments and blank lines are ignored when processing the BIF file If the binary file has a palette available you can use that palette by writing your own software to convert it to a PAL file and using the F option while reading the BIF file Assuming the BIF file is called sample bif the following Alchemy command can be used to convert the image to a GIF file alchemy sample bif g A BIF file is treated as an ordinary file so all the standard Alchemy commands may be used with it Image Alchemy 391 392 Standard BIF files Hex Data Image Alchemy This is an example BIF file which can be used to read a 640 pixel wide true color HSI Raw file Note that HSI raw files have a 32 byte header which is being skipped Also note that the height tag is not needed Alchemy will automatically calculate the height based on the length of the file and the other tags Of course you could read the Raw file directly using Alchemy but this is after all an example of a BIF file BIF width 640 skip past header header 32 filename sample raw planes 3 the tags below aren t actually needed since rgb and non interleave ar the default but they are included here to give an example of what those tags look like order rgb interleave 0 If you have certain values in hex you can put them in a BIF file directly by preceding them with a Ox
41. case the bitorder tag determines whether the data is MSB to LSB or LSB to MSB see bitorder below 8 bits per sample is the standard way of storing data with one byte storing one pixel 16 bits per sample is used when reading data which is stored as two bytes per pixel In this case Alchemy automatically scans the data to determine the minimum and maximum values Then when the image is being read the data is scaled to 8 bits The 16 bits per sample value can be used for 2 bit to 16 bit data as long as the data is padded to 2 bytes By default 16 bit data is presumed to be unsigned and Motorola byte ordered see signed and byteorder respectively below bitorder byteorder signed Comments Palette files Examples Using a BIF file The bit ordering in a 1 bit per sample packed image msblsb Most significant byte first Isbmsb Least significant bit first The default is msblsb most significant byte first This option lets you specify the bit ordering when reading 1 bit per sample data The byte ordering in a 16 bits per sample image motorola Motorola byte ordered most significant byte first intel Intel byte ordered least significant byte first The default is Motorola byte ordered This option lets you specify the byte ordering when working with 16 bit per sample data The presence of this tag indicates that the data is signed By default it is assumed that 16 bit per sample data is unsigned Lines
42. command can be used alchemy pairs j Sequential Filenames Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Allow the conversion of a sequentially numbered series of files i e image000 tif image001 tif image002 tif startInput endInput xincrementInput startOutput endOutput xincrementOutput startInput The number of the first input image defaults to 0 endInput The number of the last input image defaults to 9999 incrementInput The increment between input values defaults to 1 StartOutput The number of the first output image defaults to the startInput value endOutput The number of the last output image defaults to the endInput value incrementOutput The increment between output values defaults to the incrementInput value Insert characters pound signs in the input and output filenames where the sequence numbers belong using multiple to indicate leading zeros For example would be replaced by 1 2 3 999 and would be replaced by 0001 0002 0003 0999 assuming the specified range was 1 to 999 Image Alchemy 273 Limitations Examples 274 Image Alchemy Alchemy will automatically skip missing files so if you specify image as the input filename but only image 005 and image 006 exist only those files will be converted If the starting value is greater than the ending value the value will be decremented i e 50 1 will be treated as 50 49 48
43. device in dots per inch e The size of the PostScript image in inches cm or pixels e The desired size of the output image in inches cm or pixels Image Alchemy 4l 42 Identifying PostScript files Disk space requirements Image Alchemy e Whether the output device is black and white grayscale or color e Which page s of the PostScript file to convert e Whether or not to clip the border of the image e Whether or not to rotate the image Alchemy PS makes reasonable assumptions for default values for each of these parameters so in practice it is usually not necessary to specify all of them These parameters are described below Image Alchemy PS can automatically identify most PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript files However some non standard PostScript files may not be recognized by Image Alchemy If Alchemy fails to identify a PostScript file correctly the 14 option can be used to force Alchemy to recognize the input file as a PostScript file see the option in Chapter 7 for more information Note that rendering PostScript files may require a lot of disk space or virtual memory For example rendering an 8 5 x 11 page at 300 dpi in color generates a temporary file which is up to 25 megabytes in size In addition if there isn t enough real RAM available Alchemy will use up to another 25 megabytes for swap space for a total of 50 megabytes If you tell Alchemy to generate a color file when in
44. dimension larger so the actual image Alchemy displays is 291x400 which is the same ratio as 320x440 However this is obviously wrong as you can tell when you examine an image As near as we can tell the correct aspect ratio of these images is 5 3 the math we used to come up with this number is 640 320 480 400 And if you tell Alchemy to override the aspect ratio by using a D 167 option 167 because 5 3 100 is 166 6666 the image displays correctly Why Amigas create images which claim they are 1 1 1 remains a mystery Image Alchemy 369 370 Question Answer Question Answer Image Alchemy I told Alchemy to convert a PCX file to an 8 bit GIF file using the 8 option Yet when I get statistics on the file using x Alchemy reports the file only has 16 colors Alchemy will always store the file using the smallest bits per pixel allowable for the given image this results in the smallest possible file In this case the input file only had 16 colors in it Things get more unpredictable with formats such as Sun Raster which requires 1 bit files to be black and white and SGI which requires 8 bit files to be gray scale In these cases Alchemy will always do the best it can giving you a warning message if it does something which may surprise you later I ve converted a Mac PICT file to a GIF file but the GIF file is missing some or all of the information that was in the PICT file What happened to it PICT files ar
45. dpi using TIFF compression alchemy small gif P2 X2000 Y2000 D 300 300 out2 Print the image madonna gif directly to your LaserJet 4 at the largest resolution using Delta Row compression with dithering type 22 printing directly to the printer works only in the MS DOS version of Alchemy alchemy madonna gif prn P104 D600 600 Xb4800 YB6600 d22 Print all the TIFF files in the current directory directly to a HP LaserJet while scaling them to fill the page and performing gamma correction to compensate for dot gain alchemy tif prn P D 300 300 Xb2400 Yb3000 Gil 0 Go2 0 Convert the page 3 of the HP PCL file contract pcl to a TIFF file alchemy contract pcl U 3 t Convert all of the pages in the file to TIFF files the output files will be called contract 001 contract 002 alchemy contract pcl U t Convert the file sample jpg to an HP PCL XL file setting the DPI such that the file will print out at 8 inches by 6 inches alchemy sample jpg X8i Y6i P200 Image Alchemy 155 HP PhotoSmart S HP PhotoSmart files are used by PhotoSmart printers Syntax S paperType dryTime Parameter paperType 0 Glossy 1 Glossy Reverse Side 2 Matte 3 Deluxe 4 InkJet 5 Plain 6 Project 7 Project Reverse Side 8 Transparency The default is 0 dryTime 0 Short 1 Normal 2 Long The default is 1 Extension prn Creator Hewlett Packard Company Used by HP PhotoSmart printers Variat
46. eeeeeeeeereeeneeees 309 O Ai u TAE iocaeeb laviesoda heal Hhisvetssstaaiecstscevbelarweeieedes 310 Swap RGB ps cess cas seeds raa E S abon E PEE EEKi 312 Transparent yrei E a e E Ea 313 True Color 15 Dit cccsccccessececsesseecneseseessseeeensaaes 314 Tr e Color TODI J erheen cases bsbacesasbeses 315 Prue Color 24 DIB Fa AAA 316 True Color OVDB cca sedecid cdl a E S 318 Uniform Palette snenie a e ETA E 319 Chapter 8 Scaling and Filtering Options Introduction i aeriene eren otis a ea ee a s 321 Center IMA Ensaio aseteta aaee aee aatre a aiei taei 322 Change Image Resolution ssssseseeeeeeeeeereresresrreresresrsees 324 Conyvolye Image ee eepe aree aa ERE eE eE ei E R eE 326 Flip IMai ferronnerie ani E E edi eos 327 Mirror Ima En eeroreese neroa eae aeia aee aeni e aaee 328 Offset Imaje a a aa e ed 329 Only Scale If Too Large oo eee ceeceseeereeereeereeeeeneeees 331 Only Scale If Too Small oo ee eeceeeeeseeereeereeeeeneeees 332 Preserve Aspect Ratio 0 cee ceeceecesscecssecneceseceseeeseseneeenees 333 Preserve Palette While Scaling 0 0 ee eeeeeeeeereeeeeeees 334 Scale Image in Horizontal Direction 0 cee eeeeeeeees 335 Scale Image in Vertical Direction 338 Set Horiz nta DPI jrn ecient ae 340 Set Vertical DPW sieisisitestsstuiksibesleasextoca detaletets a eatelisiats 342 Specify Image Aspect Ratio eeeeeseeseceeeeeeeereeenees 344 Specify Image Resolution eee eeeeseeseeeneeneeeseeeees 346 Chapter
47. either the alchemy ps directory the psfonts directory or the directory pointed to by the alchemyps environment variable Type 1 fonts generally come with several files the only file which Alchemy needs is the pfb file the other files contain various information that programs which generate PostScript files use Image Alchemy 87 Usage Instructions 88 Listing installed fonts Adding fonts Aliasing a font Image Alchemy alchfont list List fonts in the fontmap The list of fonts will be quite long you will probably want to redirect the output to a file for printing or use the more utility to page through the list alchfont list more alchfont fontfile Add the font found in fontfile to the fontmap thereby making it available to Alchemy For example alchfont gn pfb will add the font GillSans to the fontmap alchfont aliasname fontname Alias the font fontname with the name aliasname Aliasing a font defines an alternate name which may be used to refer to the font This is useful for some programs like Microsoft Word for DOS which creates PostScript files that refer to all fonts other than the standard 35 fonts as realfontname F for these files use realfontname F realfontname for example for Gill Sans use GillSans F GillSans In this case alchfont GillSans F GillSans will tell Alchemy PS to use the font GillSans when the font GillSans F is specified Scanning for fonts Removing fonts Spe
48. extract palettes from other file formats and write HSI PAL files Alchemy can also use HSI PAL files when converting images The first line contains the letters PAL this identifies the file as a palette file The next line contains an integer indicating the number of palette entries Valid values are 2 through 256 The rest of the file consists of lines of 3 numbers representing the red green and blue values for each of the colors These have a range of 0 black to 255 full intensity Any information after the 3 numbers is treated as a comment and ignored PAL 8 colors 0 0 0 black 2 55 0 0 bright red 0 128 0 dark green 255 255 0 7yellow 0 0 255 blue 255 0 255 magenta 63 63 63 gray 255 255 7 25 5 white Image Alchemy 407 408 Image Alchemy Acknowledgments Summary TIFF VGA display Almost all the software which comprises Image Alchemy was written in house However some of the modules are modifications of software originally written by other people or software that we ve licensed Image Alchemy s TIFF I O is based on libtiff which is copyright by Sam Leffler and is used with his permission If you are interested in reading or writing TIFF files we strongly suggest that you start with libtiff Libtiff is available by anonymous ftp as ftp ucbvax berkeley edu pub tiff tar Z or ftp uunet uu net graphics tiff tar Z If you cannot get a copy of libtiff via anonymous ftp please co
49. fact there is only gray scale or black and white data in the PostScript file Alchemy will fall back to gray scale or black and white and the temporary file size will be smaller but Alchemy will still need a large amount of real memory or swap space Rendering large images Progress information Disk space requirements decrease dramatically for 1 bit black and white images for example the same 8 5 x 11 image at 300 dpi would only require a 1 megabyte temporary file and 1 megabyte of memory The memory and disk space requirements and processing time can increase dramatically when rendering PostScript images directly for use on large format devices For example rendering a full color PostScript image to 34 inches by 44 inches at 300 dpi the size of a Novajet plotter requires up to 800 megabytes of disk space A way to reduce the memory requirement is to render the image to an intermediate size and then use Alchemy PS s raster scaling operators X and Y to increase the image to its final size This requires much less disk space since the raster scaling is done on the fly For example rendering the same image to 17 x 22 and then raster scaling it to 34 x 44 reduces the disk space requirements to 200 megabytes and rendering to 8 5 x 11 and then raster scaling to 34 x 44 requires only 50 megabytes Performing the image scaling in two steps may reduce the quality of the final image somewhat but generally the results w
50. files without warning when creating Stork files To improve the quality of output may want to use a color correction file when converting to the CMYK variation of this format See the C option in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the file image tga to an uncompressed Stork image called image pre and image idx using the undercolor removal file sample ucr alchemy image tga K Csample ucr Sun Icon Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comnents Example N Sun Icon files are used by Sun Microsystems workstations to contain icon information N icon 1CO Sun Microsystems Inc Sun workstations 1 bit black and white This is not the same format as Sun Raster see below Convert the sun raster file icon im1 to a sun icon file called program ico alchemy icon iml program ico N Image Alchemy 225 Sun Raster Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments 226 Image Alchemy S Sun Raster files are used by Sun Microsystems workstations s compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Run length compression The default is None rast Tas aim am ims im24 im32 Sun Microsystems Inc Sun workstations 1 8 24 and 32 bit Standard BGR RGB and Byte Encoded RLE files input 1 8 24 and 32 bit Standard files and 1 and 8 bit Byte Encoded RLE files output There is no standard extension for Sun Raster files the extensions that Alc
51. i type 0 Binary 1 Packed Binary 2 ASCII The default is Binary img For pixel data doc For image header information Clark University IDRISI for Windows 8 bit grayscale 16 bit grayscale 32 bit floating point Alchemy always converts 16 bit and 32 bit images to 8 bit when reading you can control whether to use the min and max values that are stored as part of the data by using the Z option see below for more information IDRISI images require two files one with the extension img and the other with the extension doc The img file contains the actual image data and the doc file contains the header information You specify the name of the doc file and Alchemy automatically generates the name of the img file When writing an IDRISI file Alchemy will overwrite without warning existing img files Image Alchemy 169 Examples 170 Image Alchemy Using the Z option it is possible to choose whether or not to use the min and max values that are stored as part of the header information when reading a 16 bit IDRISI file The default is to not use the values instead the 16 bit date is scaled to 8 bit by discarding the lower 8 bits Using a Z1 option will cause the 16 bit data to be scaled to 8 bits using the min and max values See below for an example Convert the PCX file earth pcx into an IDRISI file alchemy earth pcx I Convert the 16 bit IDRISI file earth doc to a GIF file using the min and max
52. if writing a multi page GIF file the delay between images and the repeat count cannot be specified when using this option Convert all the files called image to files with the same format flipping the files and placing the output in a directory called flipped alchemy image flipped Do the same thing but replace the existing files with the new files instead alchemy image O Do the same thing using type 1 compression what that actually means depends on the file format being written alchemy image 1 3 0 Image Alchemy 277 Use Input Filename for Output O Purpose Causes Alchemy to write out a file with the same name as the file being read replacing the input file Syntax o lowercase letter O Comments If the input file is read only this command will fail Example Convert the GIF file test gif to a GIF file scaling it to 640x480 and keeping the same name alchemy test gif g xXb640 Yb480 o 278 Image Alchemy Use 3 Letter Extensions 3 Purpose Syntax Comments Example Causes Alchemy to use 3 letter extensions this is the default under MS DOS 3 Ordinarily Alchemy will use the extension specified by the image file format GIF for example however some file formats such as TIFF specify that on systems which allow it the extension should be more than 3 letters TIFF in the case of TIFF This can be a problem if you are interchanging files with an
53. image resolution in dots per inch for the output image D dotsPerInchX dotsPerInchY dotsPerInchx The resolution of the image in the X direction in dots per inch dotsPerInchY The resolution of the image in the Y direction in dots per inch You must specify both dotsPerInchX and dotsPerInchY even if they are the same When converting from a raster file this command does not actually change the resolution of the image it just adds the resolution fields to the output image This is important when trying to import the image into software which expects this information For example Microsoft Word is much more likely to give the expected results when importing a TIFF image for printing on a laser printer if the image has a resolution of 300 dpi Reasonable values to use for dotsPerInch include 72 the resolution of a 13 inch monitor displaying 640x480 and 300 the resolution of many laser and inkjet printers To write an image without resolution information specify a resolution of 0 0 zero zero Alchemy will preserve this information when converting files whenever possible Limitations Related options Examples Many file types do not have a resolution value specifying one when writing such a file will only effect raster scaling functions when using the inches or centimeter output option This option also effects the MS DOS version of Alchemy when displaying images It is not possible to specify both an aspect ra
54. img width 2700 height 3300 bitspersample 1 bitorder msblsb You can use BIF files to read 16 bit data only 8 bits of data will actually be read but Alchemy will automatically scale the data to preserve the most information possible This BIF file can be used to read a 1024 x 1024 image which is 16 bit Intel byte ordered BIF filename lunar dat width 1024 height 1024 channels 1 bitspersample 16 byteorder intel BIF files can read data in hex or decimal ASCH for example if you had a file that looked like this a small black and white checkerboard which changes from hex to decimal halfway through for no obvious reason 0x00 Oxff 0x00 Oxff Oxff 0x00 Oxff 0x00 0 255 295 255 0u 255 0 This BIF file could be used to read this data note that we have to supply width height and channels Alchemy can t calculate one from the other in this case BIF filename checker txt width 4 height 4 channels 1 format ascii The data file can be much less well organized Alchemy just looks for sequences of number separated by whitespace spaces tabs commas carriage returns etc For example this file is equivalent 0x00 O0xff 0x00 Oxff Oxff 0x00 Oxff 0x00 0 255 0 255 255 0 255 0 Image Alchemy 395 396 Image Alchemy HSI Raw Files History Overview Variations The HSI Raw format was originally an internal format to Image Alchemy Because of user demand the format has been documented to allow
55. in these cases Because GIF files only store the size of the palette to the nearest power of 2 the exact palette size is lost when converting to and from GIF files For example if you convert a 240 color Sun Raster file to a GIF file and back to a Sun Raster file the resulting Sun Raster file will have 256 colors GIF89A files are a newer variation of GIF files that were introduced in 1990 They allow the inclusion of transparency information text simple animation and multiple pages in GIF files Image Alchemy 139 140 Image Alchemy When writing a simple GIF file you will want to use the GIF87A variation since the GIF89A extensions aren t necessary to store single images and some software still can t read GIF89A images The advantages of GIF89A are aspect ratio information is preserved transparency information is stored and multiple pages are allowed The GIF format includes a field for storing the color to be used for the background when viewing files Alchemy does not make use of this value Alchemy sets the background color to the darkest color in the palette when viewing files and organizes the palette such that the first color is the darkest color when writing GIF files if the palette is created by Alchemy you can override this by using the z option To write a GIF file with transparency information use the t option see below When writing a GIF file with transparency information Alchemy defaults to making th
56. in this capability please contact us Comments Examples 1 band files are read in as gray scale images 3 band files are read in as true color images The default color mapping between RGB and bands 1 2 and 3 is Red Band 1 Green Band 2 and Blue Band 3 this can be changed by using the Z option See the example section below for details Using the Z option it is possible to select a single channel or 3 channels when reading a multi channel Erdas image To use the Z option follow it with a single number to indicate which channel is to be read as a gray scale image or three numbers to indicate which channels are to be read as a 24 bit color image See the example section below for details Convert the GIS file texas gis to a Sun raster file alchemy texas gis s Convert the file satellite image to a GIS file alchemy satellite image satellite gis b e The Erdas file miami gis contains 4 bands the next examples show various ways to read selected bands out of the image Convert the first band in the image to a grayscale Sun Raster file alchemy miami gis Z 1 s Convert the fourth band in the image to a grayscale Sun Raster file alchemy miami gis Z 4 s Image Alchemy 127 Convert the image to a 24 bit color Sun Raster file using band 2 as the red channel band 1 as the green channel and band 4 as the blue channel alchemy miami gis Z 2 1 4 s 128 Image Alchemy Explore TDI Extensions Creator
57. information to an image JPEG compression attempts to remove much of that information In addition JPEG images are always continuous color images so when the JPEG file is decompressed it has to be color quantized and dithered again Dithering a previously dithered image reduces the quality even more The solution is to use the best starting quality you can for JPEG compression ideally a continuous tone image The compressed image size will be smaller than if you had started with a paletted image and the quality will be better Question Answer I converted a PCX file with 16 colors to a 16 shades of gray TIFF file using the b and t options The 16 color PCX file had some shades of gray in it which were changed in the TIFF file How can I prevent this The problem is that gray scale TIFF files have a uniformly spaced gray palette If you create a TIFF file with 16 shades of gray it will have the following shades in it 0 17 34 51 68 85 102 119 136 153 170 187 204 221 238 and 255 However the 16 color PCX file you started with probably didn t have those exact colors in it for example PCX files written out by Windows 3 0 Paint have shades of gray which correspond to 0 128 192 and 255 So Alchemy did the best it could and matched the input colors to the output colors and depending on the other options that you specified may also have dithered the image The solution is to tell Alchemy to write out a 256 color gray s
58. is white or black which would make the interesting portion of the histogram too small Peak ignore does the same thing except it automatically decides what are the most used intensities and ignores them The cumulative option generates a cumulative histogram instead of a discrete histogram The white background option makes the background white which is nice if you are going to be printing the histogram Generate a histogram for the image sample jpg alchemy sample jpg H Generate a histogram for the image tiger ras ignoring the white background alchemy tiger ras H 1 Do the same thing but make it a cumulative histogram alchemy tiger ras H 11 Image Alchemy 147 Hitachi Raster Format h Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples 148 Image Alchemy Hitachi Raster Format HRF files are black and white images used by CADCore h hrf Hitachi Software Engineering Co Ltd Information and Graphics Systems Inc IGS Black and white 1 bit per pixel Alchemy can read and write multi page HRF files use the U option to read pages other than page 1 and option U to write a multi page HRF file see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the TIFF file page1 tif to a HRF file alchemy pagel tif h Convert the TIFF files page1 tif through page9 tif to a multi page HRF file alchemy page tif h U output hrf HP Printer Command Language PCL P HP PCL files ar
59. jpg to Raster Graphics format alchemy sample jpg g 212 Image Alchemy RIX Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Example RIX files were developed by ColoRIX to use with their paint software R SCX TIX RIX Softworks Inc ColoRIX software Type 0 8 bits per pixel and Type 4 4 bits per pixel images We would like to add support for Type 1 and Type 2 images but we haven t been able to find any documentation on this variation If you have information please contact us A type 0 file will be written if there are more than 16 colors in the image otherwise a type 4 file will be written Convert the file test gif to a RIX file alchemy test gif R Image Alchemy 213 RLC Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples 214 Image Alchemy R Little is known about this format it was added at the request of a customer If you have any information please contact us R tlc Unknown Unknown 1 bit black and white There is some confusion about the orientation of RLC files If the RLC files you are reading are backwards use the to mirror them Because of a shortage of test files this feature has not been extensively tested if you have RLC files which Image Alchemy cannot correctly read please contact us Convert the file sample jpg into RLC format alchemy sample jpg R Scitex CT Syntax Extensions Creator Used b
60. least three values typically red green and blue True color images are generally produced by scanners and digitizers and are better quality and much larger than paletted images Most display systems cannot display true color images References General Computer Graphics Computer Graphics Principles and Practice Second Edition Commonly referred to as Foley and van Dam J D Foley A van Dam S K Feiner and J F Hughes Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 12110 7 Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics Commonly referred to as Newman and Sproull W M Newman and R F Sproull McGraw Hill ISBN 0 07 046338 7 Algorithms for Graphics and Image Processing Theo Pavlidis Computer Science Press ISBN 0 914894 65 X Graphics Gems I through various Academic Press various Image Lab Tim Wegner Waite Group Press ISBN 1 878739 11 5 Image Alchemy 421 Specific Topics 422 Color Dithering File Formats Image Alchemy Digital Color Management Edward J Giorgianni and Thomas E Madden Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 63426 0 The Reproduction of Color in Photography Printing amp Television R W G Hunt Fountain Press ISBN 0 85242 356 X Digital Halftoning Robert Ulichney MIT Press ISBN 0 262 21009 6 The File Formats Handbook Giinter Born International Thomson Computer Press ISBN 1 85032 117 5 Graphics File Formats Reference and Guide C Wayne Brown and Barry J Shephard Manning Publica
61. option follow it with a single number to indicate which channel is to be read as a gray scale image or three numbers to indicate which channels are to be read as a 24 bit color image See the example section below for details Convert the Core IDC file atlanta idc to a Sun raster file alchemy atlanta idc s Convert the file satellite image to a Core IDC file alchemy satellite image satellite idc B The Core IDC file newyork idc contains 9 bands the next examples show various ways to read selected bands out of the image Convert the first band in the image to a grayscale Sun Raster file alchemy newyork idc Z 1 s Convert the sixth band in the image to a grayscale Sun Raster file alchemy newyork idc Z 6 s Convert the image to a 24 bit color Sun Raster file using band 2 as the red channel band 7 as the green channel and band 4 as the blue channel alchemy newyork idc Z 2 7 4 s Image Alchemy 115 Cubicomp PictureMaker P Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments 116 Image Alchemy Cubicomp PictureMaker files are used in broadcast quality three dimensional modeling and animation P type type 0 Allow any size image 1 Adjust image size to 512 x 488 The default is 0 18 Red channel image data 28 Green channel image data b8 Blue channel image data a8 Alpha channel image data optional Cubicomp Corp Cubicomp PictureMaker 24 bit RGB images w
62. other number of colors specified with c will cause Alchemy to generate a file with that many shades of gray uniformly distributed from 0 to 255 If the c option is not used the default is to write a file with 256 shades of gray when converting from a true color image When converting from a paletted image the number of shades of gray defaults to the number of colors in the original image When converting from true color the image will be changed to a paletted image unless the 24 option is used You can use the b option combined with c 256 and a scaling option to perform scale to gray Scale to gray converts a black and white image at high resolution to a grayscale image at lower resolution while preserving readability It is often used when converting fax received data to a format for displaying on a monitor See below for an example Related options 8 Paletted output 24 True color output c Specify number of colors Examples Convert the file sample jpg into a 256 shades of gray raw file alchemy sample jpg b r Image Alchemy 285 286 Image Alchemy Convert the file madonna jpg into a 4 shades of gray gif file called gray gif alchemy madonna gif gray gif b c4 g Perform scale to gray scaling on the file fax tif converting the file to a grayscale GIF file which is no larger than 800 x 600 alchemy fax tif g c256 b Xb800 Yb600 Brightness Purpose Parameter Comments Related options Exa
63. palette will be used and the image will be dithered dithering may be disabled by use of the d option see above See Appendix B Color and Dithering for more information V Reduce image to fit display View the image madonna gif alchemy madonna gif v View Image in True Color Mode V Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments View file using 15 16 or 24 bits pixel mode This allows true color images to be viewed without dithering to a uniform palette v horizontalResolution horizontalResolution 640 Use 640x480 mode 800 Use 800x600 mode 1024 Use 1024x768 mode 1280 Use 1280x1024 mode Requires a VESA compatible SVGA board or a Tseng 4000 S3 ATI Genoa Speedstar24 or a Speedstar24X with an appropriate DAC and at least 1 megabyte of memory on the SVGA board Resolutions above 640x480 are only supported by SVGA boards with a VESA driver 640x480 mode is supported for various SVGA boards with sufficient memory and the correct DAC Alchemy automatically picks the highest color resolution which will fit the image you are trying to view For example if your SVGA board supports 800x600x15 bit and 640x480x24 bit Alchemy will use the 640x480x24 bit mode when viewing images which are 640x480 and smaller and the 800x600 mode when viewing larger images You can of course override this by giving Alchemy a resolution parameter after the view command for example v 640 to view in 640x480x24 bit mode You may also set the e
64. standard 13 fonts these fonts are included as part of Alchemy PS You may also choose None if you have copies of all the fonts used in the document installed for use with Alchemy PS Enter a valid file name to generate and click the Save button This will generate a PostScript file which Alchemy PS can read Image Alchemy 83 84 Image Alchemy If you are using the newer LaserWriter 8 0 driver things will look slightly different yet again After choosing Print from the File menu in your application the print dialog box looks like this 8 4 2 Printer HP LaserJet 6P w Destination Copies E Pages All From To Paper Source All pages from Auto Select vj First page from Remaining fram Tray 2 Paper Cassete w You select File from the Destination choice If you wish to generate a grayscale or color PostScript file that choice is now found in the Color Matching dialog box 8 4 2 Printer HP LaserJet 6P w Destination p Color Matching v Print Color Color Grayscale vj Printer Profile l Printers Be fauit The font Inclusion option is now found in the Save as File dialog box 8 4 2 Printer HP LaserJet 6P w Destination p Save as File vj Format PostScript Job v PostScript Level Level 1 Compatible Level 2 Only Data Format ASCII Binary Font inclusion All To include the fonts used in the docu
65. sub sampling when writing JPEG files which means that the first component luminance has twice as many samples horizontally as the other two components chrominance and the same number of samples vertically Alchemy can read JPEG files with any sub sampling allowed by the standard The transformed data is quantized so some information is thrown away The samples representing higher frequencies are generally quantized using larger steps than those representing low frequencies JPEG Interchange Format JAF Step 4 The quality level you specify is used to scale a set of quantization values which have been found to cause the quantized data to all have approximately equal importance visually A lower quality number will cause larger quantization steps to be used and hence increase the compression ratio and decrease the image quality The quantized data is compressed using an entropy coder Huffman and Arithmetic coding are allowed by the JPEG standard only Huffman coding is allowed by the JFIF standard Huffman coding can either be done with a set of fixed tables or custom tables can be generated for an image Alchemy by default uses a fixed set of tables but can also generate custom tables which usually produce 5 20 depending on the image and quality setting better compression However producing custom tables requires an additional pass over the image data and therefore takes a little longer This data corresponds to the
66. text file the commands or input filenames in this file will be processed by Alchemy in the same way as if you had put the parameters on the command line filename filename An ASCII file containing a list of Alchemy options and or a list of input filenames Lines beginning with are treated as comments and ignored You must use the Wildcard option if the response file contains multiple filenames Response files may contain response file commands Wildcards and in response files do not work under UNIX If you have a response file called resize which contains the following Xb640 Yb480 The following command will use this response file to scale a set of JPEG files to GIF files alchemy jpg g resize If you have a list of files that you want to convert called files test1 jpg image tga scanl tif scan2 tif scan3 tif This command will convert them to GIF files alchemy files g You can use multiple response files in this case one contains the list of input filenames and the other the scaling commands alchemy files resiz g Image Alchemy 269 Response Output Filenames Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Limitations Example 270 Image Alchemy Allows you to specify an arbitrary list of filenames that the output files are to be called filename filename An ASCII file containing a list of output filenames Lines beginning with are treated as comment
67. than in the RGB Color or CMYK 32 bit modes However the only dither algorithm available with this mode is a digital halftone Image Alchemy 47 Examples 48 Image Alchemy Using CMYK 32 bit mode can be useful if you have color separations in the PostScript file for example CMYK EPS files The CMYK 32 bit option will preserve these separations so the color representations will be more accurate and has an advantage over the CMYK 4 bit mode in allowing any of the dithering types to be used Convert the file poster ps to a color RTL file for plotting on a NovagJet plotter alchemy poster ps Zm2 rio Do the same thing but go directly to 4 bit CMYK alchemy poster ps Zm3 r10 Do the same thing but generate a 32 bit CMYK file and then convert it to RTL using dither type 3 alchemy poster ps Zm4 d3 rio Image Offset Parameter Comments Specify image offset Z_ xOffset xUnits yOffset yUnits xOffset yOffset Distance to offset the image The default is 0 x 0 xUnits yUnits The units the offset parameters are in p pixels i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the offset parameter Using the Use Bounding Box option Ze described below will often automatically accomplish the same thing as using this option Many modern PostScript files contain a bounding box which includes the image offset This opti
68. the JPEG file sample jpg to a high quality JPEG compressed PDF file with binary encoding alchemy sample jpg d 17 Convert all the pages in the TIFF file doc tif to a multi page Group 4 compressed PDF file for more information on the U option see Chapter 6 alchemy doc tif d 4 U U Image Alchemy 97 Adobe Photoshop p Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments 98 Image Alchemy Adobe Photoshop files are used by Adobe Photoshop p compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Compressed 0 RGB 400 CMYK The default is None RGB psd Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe Photoshop Writes 1 bit black and white 8 bit grayscale 8 bit paletted 24 bit color images and 32 bit CMYK images with and without alpha channels Photoshop 3 x files cannot be read we are planning an update to address this issue check with us to see if it is available Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information To improve the quality of output may want to use a color correction file when converting to the CMYK variation of this format See the C option in Chapter 8 for more information Examples Convert the JPEG file sample jpg to an uncompressed Photoshop file alchemy sample jpg p Convert the Targa file alpha tga to a compressed Photoshop file with alpha channel alchemy sample jpg pl I Image Alchemy 99 Alias
69. this the default printer you can select Y e s to the Do you want to use this printer as the default printer question This isn t recommended since it will make it more difficult to use your normal printer with Windows You may want to change the name of the printer perhaps to Generate PostScript file to better reflect what this printer choice is used for TU Car Mapes Of nas ba his pindiy or yim Gard Le Des pares supper lrk 4 hen pees herro hrabe ciet Har Pride rais EE Dcp paar pyar Waaa pogana io ie hih parie si ihe deak priate Click Ne xt gt to finish the installation procedure Ai par piris by inched ioa y rii g a page pou oon anm ha heo prei ered popa whould oa bha k pri a mt pra E Fes feconareaded DW TE a Image Alchemy 75 76 Image Alchemy You may be prompted to insert one or more of the Windows 95 distribution diskettes at this point The printer is now available for use However there are a couple of settings under the Properties sheet that you may want to change To bring up the Properties sheet select the printer by single clicking on it and choosing Properties from the File menu Under the Paper tab you can select whether you want Portrait orLandscape to be the default choice for printing 045 Cole 10 Bode I0 Mopaiiar ill Fa se Gand Dea Pape Graphic Pope cee Latin E a 11 00 ir Lagu Dha fe 2 i Qeeristion es pees a A one O Lan
70. to a GIF file the final GIF file is twice the size of the original Why is this There are two things which might cause this to happen JPEG compression doesn t really work well for images which have large areas which are all the same color The reason for this is that JPEG is a lossy compression technique Therefore you are not going to get back exactly the same values for each pixel in an area that was one solid color before being JPEG compressed But GIF compression works much better on areas which are one solid color so when you GIF compress these areas they are quite a bit larger than they were before The solution to this problem is to use HSI JPEG compression which automatically detects large areas of solid colors and does not JPEG compress them The problem with HSI JPEG compression is that it isn t compatible with JPEG or JFIF The other possibility is that the input GIF file didn t have very many different colors When you converted it to a JPEG file the number of colors in the file was lost JPEG gray scale files always use 256 shades and JPEG color files are always true color When the JPEG file was converted back to a GIF file Alchemy assumed you wanted 256 colors in the file and a 256 color GIF file is bigger than a 16 color GIF file To prevent this you can use a c32 or however many colors the original had option in the command line this forces Image Alchemy to use that many colors for the output file Question A
71. to make changes to this format at any time and without notice And while it is unlikely it is possible that future versions of Image Alchemy will not support this format This appendix describes version 4 Raw files This is the version that Image Alchemy has written since March 1991 Before this Alchemy wrote version 2 and 3 raw files version 2 were 8 bit files version 3 were 24 bit files Those raw files can be read by current versions of Image Alchemy but are not otherwise supported If you run across any of these raw files the easiest thing to do is to use a current copy of Alchemy to convert them to a version 4 raw file All values which are not otherwise identified are two byte integers 16 bits This is the native integer size of most IBM PC C compilers but not Macintosh and UNIX C compilers All integers are stored high byte first big endian order This is the native mode for Macintosh s and Sun s but not the native mode for IBM PC s See below for a CPU independent method to read and write 2 byte integers Pixel format Padding Hex File format Magic number Version Width Height Paletted files are stored one byte per pixel True color files are stored as three bytes per pixel in red green blue order Neither the palette information nor the pixel data is padded to anything other than a byte boundary This means that if you store a file which is 13 by 11 pixels it will occupy 429 bytes if stored as
72. to the lpt1 port of an IBM PC alchemy sample jpg lpt1 r7 Gi 1 0 Go 1 8 ds3 Xb17i D600 600 Convert the file tiger ps to a 34 x 44 600 dpi RTL file performing the scaling entirely during the PostScript rendering step a alchemy tiger ps r 7 Zm 2 Zo 34 44 Z Ze 1 Zd 600 600 Gi 1 0 Go 1 8 Do the same thing but render the PostScript file at 8 5 x 11 and use raster scaling for the final conversion to 34 x 44 This uses much less disk space and memory than the previous example and most images the result will be almost the same although PostScript text will lose a small amount of quality alchemy tiger ps r 7 Zm 2 Zo 8 5 11 Z Ze 1 zd 600 600 Gi 1 0 Go 1 8 Xb34i Yb44i Convert the 640 x 480 image sample jpg to a 24 bit RTL image Specify the dpi value such that the image will be plotted at 24 inches x 18 inches The D 27 27 value is calculated by dividing the size of the image in dots by the desired output size in inches to derive the required dots per inch value 640 24 26 6667 Note that because the dots per inch value is required to be an integer this will not produce a plot that is exactly 24 inches x 18 inches but instead will be 23 7 inches x 17 78 inches Also note that the DesignJet 650C uses pixel replication scaling to increase the size of the images this is equivalent to Image Alchemy type a scaling alchemy sample jpg r1i4 D 27 27 The above example has been m
73. used for storing images on the WWW g type delay repeatCount type 0 GIF87A 1 GIF89A 0 non interleaved 10 interleaved 0 disposal method 0 100 disposal method 1 200 disposal method 2 300 disposal method 3 The default is GIF87A non interleaved and disposal method 0 Options are combined by adding see below for examples See the comment section below for an explanation of the different disposal methods delay Specifies the delay between multiple pages in GIF files in hundredths of seconds a delay of 250 is 2 5 seconds The default is O display images with no delay between pages repeatCount Specifies the number of times the images are to be repeated Indicating a repeat count of 0 causes the images to repeat continuously The default is 0 This is a Netscape specific tag Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments gif CompuServe Incorporated CompuServe WWW Everyone Reads 1 through 8 bit GIF87A and GIF89A interleaved and non interleaved files single and multi page Writes 1 through 8 bit GIF87A and GIF89A interleaved and non interleaved files Also writes images with transparency information and multi page GIF images Any text overlays pauses palette changes etc are ignored when reading GIF images When writing a multi page GIF file or one with transparency information the GIF89A type must be used Alchemy will automatically change to writing a GIF89A file
74. when generating a PCL file to print on a laser printer Typically specifying an input gamma of 1 0 and an output gamma of 2 0 produces good results Gi 1 0 Go 2 0 See Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for more information on dot gain When converting a PCL file which contains multiple pages you can specify which page to convert by using the U option followed by the page number see Chapter 6 for more information The expanded margin option adds PCL commands to the output file to reduce the margin when the page is printed The upper left corner of the image will then correspond to the upper left corner of the paper note that HP laser printers cannot print all the way to the edge of the paper so some information will be lost Image Alchemy 153 Examples 154 Image Alchemy To position the image on the page use the offset image option _ or the center image option _ see Chapter 8 for details Convert the image image gif to an HP PCL file using no compression alchemy image gif P Convert the image small gif to a HP PCL file called out pcl with dimensions of 2000 by 2000 at 300 dpi performing gamma correction to compensate for dot gain and using dithering type 3 with a serpentine raster and adding dithering noise alchemy small gif out P X2000 Y2000 D 300 300 Gi 1 0 Go 2 0 ds3 10 Convert the image small gif to a HP PCL file called out2 pcl with dimensions of 2000 by 2000 at 300
75. 16 bits 24 True color output 24 bits 32 True color output 32 bits Convert the GIF file test gif into an uncompressed true color 15 bit Targa file called test tga alchemy test gif a0 15 True Color 16 bits 16 Purpose Syntax Comments Related options Example Force the output image to be true color 16 bits 5 bits each for red and blue 6 for green 16 See the True Color 24 bits section below 8 Paletted output 15 True color output 15 bits 24 True color output 24 bits 32 True color output 32 bits Convert the GIF file test gif into an uncompressed true color 16 bit Targa file called test tga alchemy test gif a0 16 Image Alchemy 315 True Color 24 bits 24 Purpose Syntax Comments Related options 316 Image Alchemy Force the output image to be true color 24 bits 8 bits per component 24 This option is 24 because true color images are typically 24 bits per pixel Some file formats require files to be true color for those formats the 24 option is assumed Some file formats only have a paletted variation in those cases the 24 option will be ignored if specified The file formats which may be either true color or paletted default to true color if the input file is true color Certain file formats may only be paletted if the images are gray scale in those cases Alchemy will automatically switch to true color if the output image is color Conve
76. 185 j 202 k 288 1 103 m 172 186 n 204 p 98 234 q 175 r 174 214 s 156 220 t 313 u 261 v 238 x 215 247 y 287 292 276 3 279 272 a 95 104 b 114 246 c 113 118 d 96 210 e 126 237 f 133 135 g 136 144 h 148 164 i 100 168 240 j 165 177 k 122 130 1111 181 m 124 187 n 225 312 o 191 278 p 116 199 Image Alchemy 427 q 173 209 r 105 158 s 216 221 t 184 211 u 208 235 v 357 361 w 251 280 x 248 340 y 324 342 _ 322 256 15 314 16 315 24 316 32 318 8 302 266 270 a 193 228 b 108 285 c 289 290 d 293 344 346 e 119 295 f 296 299 fontmap 89 90 g 138 297 h 146 258 i 171 284 j 178 k 206 223 1 166 188 list 88 m 101 182 n 218 301 o 190 265 o 149 196 q 180 267 428 Image Alchemy r 167 213 remove 89 s 226 310 scan 89 t 230 239 u 259 319 v 356 359 w 242 245 x 255 335 y 338 yf 326 Z 62 za 45 zb 53 zc 46 zd 64 ze 65 zf 61 zh 304 zi 51 zm 47 zo 55 306 zp 59 305 zr 63 zs 307 zw 308 zx 57 zy 58 z_ 49 _ 329 354 Extensons a 173 220 a8 116 als 100 240 cart 133 asc 164 b 220 b8 116 bif 108 bil 221 bm 246 bmp 101 190 242 c4 176 cal 113 cerf 111 cel 103 181 clp 194 clr 221 cm 208 crf 111 ct 175
77. 27 4 Adobe Type 1 Font Format Version 1 1 Adobe Systems Incorporated Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 57044 0 Michael Abrash s Graphics Programming Black Book Michael Abrash Coriolis Group Books ISBN 1 57610 174 6 Programmer s Guide to the EGA and VGA Cards Second Edition Richard F Ferraro Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 57025 4 Colophon This manual was created using Microsoft Word 5 1a on a bizarre collection of computers consisting of a Macintosh Quadra 840AV Power Macintosh 7100 66 and a PowerBook 5300cs The body text is set in Times Roman and the chapter and section headings are set in Gill Sans The examples and such are set in Courier the Windows references are set in Monaco and the Macintosh references are set in Chicago what else The Microsoft Windows screen shots were captured by using PrintScreen to copy the screen to the clipboard and then converted to TIFF using Image Alchemy The Macintosh screen shots were captured as PICT files moved to the IBM PC and then also converted to TIFF by Image Alchemy Camera ready copy was produced by an HP LaserJet 4MV printer onto Hammermill Laser Plus paper The manual was then printed using standard offset printing techniques Image Alchemy 425 426 Image Alchemy Index Options 327 355 263 254 333 281 328 s2 331 273 332 a 102 107 c 203 e 176 f 132 309 334 g 212 219 1 169
78. 3 Colophon 425 Color 375 422 Image Alchemy 43l Color and Palette Options 283 color banding 378 Color Correction 289 Color cube 375 Color Mode 47 color space 382 ColoRIX 213 Colors 290 Commodore Amiga Corp 171 CompuServe 138 Computer 20 config sys 23 Contrast 292 Conversion Options 91 Convolve Image 326 Core IDC 114 Core Software Technology 114 Courier 89 90 425 Coy Stephen B 240 412 Cristy John 185 413 Crocker Lee 411 CrystalJet 111 Cshow 412 CT 175 215 Cubicomp 116 Cubicomp Corp 116 Cubicomp PictureMaker 116 Custom Applications 135 Customer Support 385 D dash 31 DCX 196 Defense Logistics Agency 113 Deluxe Paint 171 Department of Defense 113 DesignJet 68 158 159 322 329 432 Image Alchemy DesignJet 2000C 162 DesignJet 650C 163 DeskJet 158 322 329 Destination 81 devices 30 Digital Research Inc 136 discrete cosine transform 382 Disk space 42 dispersed 293 Display hardware 349 Display Resolution 352 disposal method 138 141 Dither 293 Dithering 375 378 419 422 DLA 113 DoD 113 DOS Extender 415 DOS 4GW 415 dot gain 153 161 365 dots per inch 64 346 374 Dr Halo CUT 118 Dye Sub 130 E Earth Resource Mapping 124 Eastman Kodak Company 201 EGA Palette 295 Eight bits 302 Electrostatic plotter 111 158 Encad 158 Encapsulated PostScript 41 119 entropy coder 383 Environment variable 28 Environment variables 23 EPS 67 119 322 329 Epson St
79. 4 mode Comments Requires a Tseng 4000 S3 ATI Genoa or Speedstar24 or an appropriate VESA compatible SVGA board with an appropriate DAC and 1 megabyte of memory on the SVGA board Resolutions above 640x480 are only supported by SVGA boards with a VESA driver 640x480 mode is supported for various SVGA boards with sufficient memory and the correct DAC Alchemy automatically picks the highest color resolution which will fit the image you are trying to view For example if your SVGA board supports 800x600x15 bit and 640x480x24 bit Alchemy will use the 640x480x24 bit mode when viewing images which are 640x480 and smaller and the 800x600 mode when viewing larger images You can of course override this by giving Alchemy a resolution parameter after the view command for example v 640 to view in 640x480x24 bit mode You may also set the environment variable alchemy to indicate the highest horizontal resolution you want Alchemy to use when displaying images for example set alchemy 800 will cause Alchemy to use only 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions when displaying images Image Alchemy 361 Limitations Related options Example 362 Image Alchemy If the image being displayed is a 24 bits per pixel true color image and the display mode is 15 or 16 bits per pixel the image will be dithered dithering may be disabled by use of the d option see above This command will scale the image and correct the aspect ratio of the ima
80. 40 Yb480 g Image Alchemy 333 Preserve Palette While Scaling f Purpose Keep the original palette when scaling paletted images Syntax af Conments When using type b or better scaling on paletted images Examples 334 Alchemy has to convert the image to true color as part of the scaling process and then convert the image back to paletted before saving Ordinarily the best results are obtained if Alchemy is allowed to choose the final palette based on the scaled image content However there may be times when you wish to preserve the original palette instead of generating a new one This option does that Scale the gif file flowers gif to 320 x 200 preserving the original palette and aspect ratio alchemy flowers gif new gif g f Xb320 Yb200 Scale all the files ending in gif to 320 x 200 preserving the original palette and aspect ratio placing the new files in the directory new alchemy gif new g f Xb320 Yb200 Image Alchemy Scale Image in Horizontal Direction X Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Scale the horizontal dimension of the image to the specified size X scaleType size units scaleType The type of scaling to use a Nearest Neighbor b Averaging Linear Interpolation c Lanczos2 d Lanczos3 scaleType is optional the default is Nearest Neighbor The higher the scale type the higher the quality and the longer the processing time size The size of the output image in
81. 7 640x400x256 SVGA 18 640x480x256 SVGA 19 800x600x256 SVGA 20 1024x768x2 SVGA 21 1024x768x16 SVGA Image Alchemy 193 Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments 194 Image Alchemy 22 360x480x256 VGA 23 1024x768x256 SVGA These modes are not yet supported if you are interested in support for any of these modes please contact us O packed 100 not packed O new style palette 200 old style palette The default is 640x480x256 SVGA packed new style palette Options are combined by adding see the Example section below for an example pic clp John Bridges PCPAINT GRASP There are variations for most IBM and third party graphics adapter display modes Only the EGA and VGA modes are supported at this time Text modes are not supported Some Pictor files do not contain palettes For those files Alchemy will default to using a standard palette appropriate to the display mode the file was saved in However the image may not use the default palette in that case you can read the palette from another file with the F false color option Examples Convert the file image pcx to a Pictor file called image pic for 800x600x256 SVGA mode alchemy image pcx A19 Do the same thing but write out an old style palette alchemy image pcx A219 Image Alchemy 195 PCX Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations 196 Image Alchemy P PCX files are used extensively by IBM PC com
82. 88 ADEX 95 ADEX Corporation 95 Adobe Acrobat 96 Adobe Photoshop 98 Adobe Systems 120 Adobe Systems Incorporated 96 98 Advanced Visual Systems Inc 107 Advanced Visualizer 241 Agfa Corporation 216 AI 350 alch386 20 alchemy exe 20 Aldus Corp 230 Alias 100 129 240 Alias Pix 100 Aliasing a font 88 alpha channel 93 Alpha Microsystems 101 Alpha Microsystems BMP 101 ALPS 102 Amiga 171 Anonymous FTP 419 ANSI 374 Antialias 45 Apple Computer Inc 182 184 ASCII 394 aspect ratio 62 93 333 344 369 Assigning colors 377 AutoCad 67 Autodesk 103 Autodesk PIC CEL 103 autoexec bat 23 Autologic 104 Autologic Incorporated 104 Available Ports 74 Averaging 324 335 338 AVHRR 105 AVS X 107 B back slashes 30 Bayer 293 Berry Bob 412 BIF 108 387 Binary Information Files 108 387 bitorder 391 Black and White 285 419 Black removal 404 Blackstock Steve 210 blur 326 BMP 190 242 Bogart Rod G 412 border 42 Bridges John 194 409 Brightness 287 Brown Ralf 410 byteorder 391 C CADCore 148 Calcomp 322 329 Calcomp CCRF 111 CALS 113 capture 364 CCIR 601 382 CCITT4 176 CCT 221 CEL 181 Center Image 322 centimeters 49 51 53 55 57 58 322 329 335 338 340 342 Change Image Resolution 324 Chicago 425 Chooser 79 80 ChromaGraph 95 Clark University 169 Clip 46 clustered 293 CMY linear transform 404 CMYK 288 403 CMYK density correction 405 Collage 20
83. 9 Intergraph file by specifying 109 as the compression type r109 Scannable files are Intergraph files which contain additional information their usage is deprecated by the Intergraph documentation but some software requires scannable files Convert page tif to an Intergraph file alchemy page tif r Iris CT Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Examples Q Iris CT is used by Iris printers Q ct Iris Iris printers 32 bit CMYK Convert the file sample jpg to Iris CT format alchemy sample jpg Q Image Alchemy 175 JEDMICS CCITT4 E Syntax Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples 176 Image Alchemy E type type O new format 1997 05 09 draft 1 old format 1991 04 10 spec O no preview image 10 preview image The default type is 0 c4 JEDMICS JEDMICS 1 bit per pixel black and white JEDMICS files contain two images a normal image and a reduced size preview image Alchemy treats the normal image as page 1 and the preview image as page 2 for reading purposes therefore you can use U 2 to read the preview image Convert the file sample jpg into JEDMICS CCITT4 format n alchemy sample jpg E Jovian VI Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Example J Jovian VI files are created by the Jovian Logic video capture boards J vi Jovian Logic Corp Jovian L
84. ALO Desktop Imager 8 bits per pixel Dr Halo CUT images are actually two files You specify the name of the cut file and Alchemy automatically generates the name of the pal file When writing a Dr Halo CUT file Alchemy will overwrite without warning existing pal files Convert the image test pcx to a Dr Halo CUT file alchemy test pcx C Encapsulated PostScript EPS e Parameter EPS files are a subset of PostScript they may be included by other PostScript files without requiring that the importing software be able to interpret the file type type 0 No preview 1 Device independent preview 2 TIFF preview 0 UNIX newlines 10 Mac newlines 20 MS DOS newlines 0 Showpage 100 No showpage 0 RGB 400 CMYK 0 Uncompressed 1000 LZW 2000 CCITT Group 4 fax 3000 JPEG Low Quality 4000 JPEG Medium Quality 5000 JPEG High Quality 0 ASCII 10000 Binary Options are combined by adding The default is an uncompressed EPS file with a TIFF preview UNIX newlines and showpage output type 2 Image Alchemy 119 Extensions epsi eps epi Creator Adobe Systems Inc Used by PostScript printers Variations Black and White Gray scale RGB and CMYK Conments For information about reading EPS files see Chapter 3 If the output is black and white or gray scale and is not compressed it will work with any PostScript device If it s color then the CMYK extensions or a level 2 device is required If you ar
85. CT PCPAINT or a Targa file with a gamma field you don t need to specify the input gamma Likewise if you re writing a file which has a fixed gamma you don t need to specify an output gamma Even if reading or writing a file format which has a known gamma you may override it by using the Gi or Go option Even if both input and output gamma are known based on the input file and the output format you must still enable gamma correction for any correction to take place you can do this with just G if you had specified input output or palette gamma this would be implied This is because there are quite a few images around that have specified or implied gammas that are wrong which would cause Alchemy to make matters worse instead of better if gamma correction was always enabled Typical gamma values are 1 0 for images from Macintoshes and 2 2 for images from PCs y Brightness Adjustment Y Contrast Adjustment To convert the Mac PICT file test pic which has a gamma of 1 0 to a PCX file for use on a PC which should have a gamma of 2 2 use alchemy test pic p Gil 0 Go2 2 To convert the file image tga which has a gamma of 2 2 toa GIF file for use on a Mac matching the palette test pal which was created with a gamma of 1 5 alchemy image tga g Gi2 2 Gol 0 Gp1 5 ftest pal Match Palette Purpose Parameter Comments Limitations Related options Examples f Match the output to a palette read
86. F file using as little memory as possible alchemy giant tga t Convert the image giant tga to a TIFF file using no more than 5 megabytes of memory for temporary image storage alchemy giant tga 5000 t Display Image Stats X Purpose Syntax Parameter Conments Example Display image statistics x option option 0 Traditional image statistics 1 Verbose image statistics English Units 2 Verbose image statistics Metric Units 3 Terse image information 4 Alchemy program information Default is 0 Displays image type size number of colors aspect ratio resolution and compression ratio Option 1 and 2 image stats contains more information than Option 0 and the information is presented in a manner to allow it to be more easily parsed by other software Option 3 image stats produces output in the same format as options 1 and 2 however only the filename and file type is returned The advantage of this option is that PostScript EPS and PDF files are not scanned so there is no delay in returning the file type information This is useful if you are calling Alchemy from other software your software might need to know what file format an image is before calling Alchemy to convert the image Option 4 returns Alchemy s version number and the type of Alchemy i e PS or non PS Find out about the image called image tga alchemy x image tga Image Alchemy 255 Do Not Alter Output Filename Purpose
87. Image Alchemy Image Alchemy PS Version I 11 Handmade Software Inc Notice Trademarks Copyright Handmade Software Inc makes no warranty of any kind either expressed or implied In particular we make no warranty as to merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose In no event shall Handmade Software Inc be liable for any errors contained herein or for incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing performance or use of the Image Alchemy or Image Alchemy PS product or documentation This document contains proprietary information which is protected by copyright No part of this document may be photocopied reproduced or translated without the prior written consent of Handmade Software Inc The information in this document is subject to change without notice Image Alchemy and Image Alchemy PS are trademarks of Handmade Software Inc All other products or services mentioned in this manual are trademarks registered trademarks service marks or registered service marks of their respective companies or organizations Copyright 1990 1998 Handmade Software Inc Fremont California Portions Copyright 1993 Soft Horizons Portions Copyright 1988 1998 Aladdin Enterprises Menlo Park California All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America First Printing April 1998 Image Alchemy was written by Marcos H Woehrmann Allan N Hessenflow David Kettmann
88. JPEG Interchange Format and is ready to be stored in a file Unfortunately the JPEG Interchange Format does not include enough information to actually be able to convert the file back to an image Specifically the color space used and the aspect ratio or resolution of the image are not included Until recently there was no standard way of putting this information in a JPEG file On March 1 1991 representatives of several JPEG hardware and software developers including C Cube Radius NeXT Storm Tech the PD JPEG group Sun and Handmade Software met at C Cube and established the JPEG File Interchange Format JFIF JFIF allows for the standardization of those pieces of information missing from the JPEG Interchange Format and therefore allows various software packages by different vendors to produce compatible JPEG files If you would like more information on the JFIF standard please contact us Image Alchemy 383 384 Image Alchemy Customer Support Why might Alcheny mess up What we need to help you We have made every effort to insure that Image Alchemy can read all files in its supported formats However because of poorly written standards and non adherence to standards there are undoubtedly certain files that Image Alchemy does not read correctly If you come across any files which Image Alchemy has trouble with please contact us with as much of the following information as you have version of Image Alchemy you are
89. MS DOS system This option causes Alchemy to always use no more than 3 letter extensions Convert the file large gif to a TIFF file with a 3 letter extension alchemy large gif t 3 Image Alchemy 279 Warnings Purpose Comments Limitations Example 280 Image Alchemy W Treat missing input files unidentifiable input files and non overwriteable output files as a non fatal errors W When used in conjunction with the Wildcard option see below the Warnings option allows Alchemy to proceed even when certain error conditions occur Specifically any input files which are missing or can t be identified as valid image files and any output files which already exist but are not to be overwritten are skipped and processing continues with the next file At the end of processing Alchemy displays lists of the files which were not found which could not be identified and which already existed but could not be overwritten This option was added at the request of our customers who routinely convert large numbers of files and don t want Alchemy to stop if it finds a file missing or finds that an output file already exists Any errors which occur during the processing of an image file are always fatal This option can only be used with the Wildcard option Convert all the GIF files in the current directory to JPEG files skipping any files which can t be identified or already have existing JPEG files alchemy gi
90. P Lanse te fy Erparmr Type HP armiha fi Where LPTI Lire C Pra tne ris Pant ages __ oa eu Humiee ol epee fi 4 fi CEGEP oce Ce Fia pm ce Jan Ba or lp braz Fiar Fes z ee lri Enter the file name of the PostScript file to be generated This file will be created and may be converted with Alchemy PS 78 Image Alchemy Generating a PostScript file froma Macintosh Generating a PostScript file from a Macintosh varies somewhat with the version of the LaserWriter printer driver you have There are three LaserWriter drivers available version 7 early version 8 0 and late version 8 x LaserWriter 8 x drivers have the advantage that it generates PostScript files that are faster to convert and it allows you to choose which fonts to include in the PostScript document LaserWriter version 7 always includes all fonts making the PostScript file larger than necessary No matter which LaserWriter version you have the first step selecting the LaserWriter from the Chooser menu is always the same Image Alchemy 79 80 Setting up the Macintosh Image Alchemy Bring up the Chooser from the Apple menu QS 3 sm _ Chooser Selecta LaserWriter LaserJet4 ay gt Background Printing 0n OOff Active AppleTalk Inactive 72 Select the LaserWriter printer icon which may have a different icon depending on what version of the Macintos
91. Palette ASL Raw eeaeee a R SR IDRISI ow IFF ILBM Imaging Technology kai Img Software Set 61 Intergraph a Tris CT iiscsssesetsisesdhstoossveven veatdeccess 54 JEDMICS CCITT4 wu 79 Jovian VI PUZZIE espesie 51 OO erra Kine ene Ga hoes 21 QDV 18 QRT Raw 20 RIX 38 RLC 83 Scitex CT 03 SGI Images s vesteteccssisidieceseceas 11 Sharp GPB isinska 78 Spaceward Graphics 76 Spot Image US Patent Image is Utah REE esiscesscesscocseesenesicceessseens Wavefront RLA 7 Windows BitMaP 12 Word Perfect Graphic X BitMap XBM ose 35 X PixMap XPM ose 47 Image Alchemy 263 Comments Example 264 Image Alchemy Rarely will Alchemy misidentify a file the file is usually damaged in some way when this happens If the file is damaged or if you specify an input type that does not correspond to the actual type of the image the results will be unpredictable If you have a file which Alchemy misidentifies but is otherwise undamaged please contact us Convert the file unknown xxx to an OS 2 Bitmap file called output bmp forcing unknown xxx to be treated as a Sun Raster image alchemy unknown xxx output bmp 0 8 Overwrite Purpose Comments Limitations Example Allow Alchemy to overwrite existing files 0 Image Alchemy will not overwrite an existing file unless the o option is specified The input fil
92. Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Example 184 Image Alchemy t MacPaint files are black and white images used by Macintosh computers t macBinary macBinary 0 Do not write a MacBinary file 1 Write a MacBinary file The default is to not write a MacBinary file mac Apple Computer Inc Macintosh computers 1 bit per pixel black and white MacPaint images are always 576x720 pixels If you attempt to write a MacPaint image which is larger Alchemy will report this as an error If you write an image which is smaller Alchemy will pad the image with white space along the right hand side and bottom Adding a MacBinary header to a MacPaint file is useful if transferring the file to a Macintosh computer by modem The MacBinary header will allow the Macintosh to automatically recognize the file as a MacPaint file Convert the file input1 gif to a MacPaint file called input1 mac alchemy inputl gif t MIFF Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Example MIFF files are used by ImageMagick a freely available UNIX image utility 1 compressionType compressionType 0 Uncompressed 1 RunlengthCoded 2 Zip The default is Uncompressed miff mif John Cristy ImageMagick 8 and 24 bit with optional alpha channel JPEG compressed files cannot be read nor written ImageMagick is available on the Internet See http www wiz
93. Paul H Yoshimune Handmade Software Inc 48860 Milmont Drive Suite 106 Fremont CA 94538 1 800 252 0101 1510 252 0101 1510 252 0909 fax http www handmade com Contents Chapter 0 MntroGUCtiOMs 4 s6555 aaa a A e ee eth 15 About This Manual cccccccccccececccccccccccesseseeseseseseseeaeaes 16 Document Conventions cccccccccccccceseseseseeeeccccsseseeseeeeeee 17 Chapter Installation OVERVIEW siedeis cosh cata N A ES 19 IBM PC Required Equipment 0 eee eseeseecseceseceseeeseeeeeenaeens 20 Optional Equipment eee ceeceeeeeneeereeeneeeeeeeeees 21 Packing LeiSt icas ising het c ttn ek i aaa aia 21 Floppy Disk Installation Instructions eeeeeeees 22 CD ROM Installation Instructions 2 0 0 cee eeeeeeeeeee 23 Environment Variables and config sys seeeeeeees 23 UNIX Required Equipment 0 eee cseeseeceeceseceseeeseeeeeenaeens 27 Packing List vite vecveteicetelecshes ee E T OE 27 Floppy Disk and Tape Installation Instructions 27 CD ROM Installation Instructions 2 0 0 cee eeeeeeereee 29 Environment Variables 0 0 0 0 eseeceeeceeeceeeeeneeeeeeeaeens 29 Differences between UNIX and MS DOS ee 30 Chapter 2 Introduction TCO GU CHI OR K AEAT TTE cash oe A A 31 Limitations on Filename ccccccccccseeeeeeeccccceesesseseeeee 34 Using Response Files eee eeceeeceeeceeeeeeeeseecaeceseeeeeees 35 Using Output Filename Re
94. Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Examples 306 Image Alchemy Sort the colors in the palette produced by Alchemy zo sortT ype sortType 0 None 1 Popularity 2 Luminance lightest to darkest 3 RGB 4 Luminance darkest to lightest The default is None This option only affects palettes that are generated by Image Alchemy To sort an existing palette you can save the image as a true color file such as HSI Raw by using the 24 r options and then convert that back to a paletted file specifying the desired sort type In most cases this will not change the image other than the palette order however if the palette had entries representing colors that are nearly identical then the image may be slightly modified See the Example section below for an example Convert the image sample jpg to a GIF file sorting the palette by Luminance lightest colors first alchemy sample jpg g Zo 2 Sort the colors by Luminance darkest colors first in the paletted image test1 gif alchemy testl gif r 24 alchemy testl raw testl gif g zo 4 o Palette Selection Palette Swapping ZS Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Example Force certain colors to be in certain places when generating a palette zs swapType swapType 0 None 1 IBM color 0 is black 7 is white 2 Macintosh color 0 is white 255 is black 3 Sun color 0 is white 1 is black The default is based on the file type being written out Mac
95. S DOS or Windows 95 If you are running Windows NT these values do not need to be set There are several changes you may wish to make to your autoexec bat file These consist primarily of set commands which are used to configure Image Alchemy You must either add c alchemy to your path copy the exe files to a directory which is already in your path or be in the c alchemy directory when executing Alchemy The fonts that ship with Image Alchemy PS are normally found inthe c alchemy ps directory but this can vary depending on where you installed Alchemy Image Alchemy 23 Virtual memory Temporary disk files 24 Image Alchemy Alchemy can find the c alchemy ps directory if the c alchemy directory is in your path if it is the current directory or if the alchemy exe program is explicitly executed from the c alchemy directory Alternatively you can set the alchemyps environment variable to point to this directory for example set alchemyps c alchemy ps Alchemy can require a lot of memory when converting some images If you will be converting large images and using alch386 exe you may run out of physical memory in this case Alchemy will automatically create a virtual memory file on your hard disk This file will be created in the directory indicated by the TMP environment variable see below for more information If you are using alchlong exe to convert large images Windows 95 Windows NT will manage virtual memor
96. The following hardware is optional A supported SVGA 8514 A or XGA board if you wish to view images Supported SVGA boards include those with a VESA driver or with the Paradise Everex Trident Video 7 ATI Ahead NCR or Tseng Labs chipsets Supported 8514 A boards include IBM and those with the Western Digital chipset Supported XGA boards include those from IBM A math co processor will increase the speed of converting a PostScript file and raster scaling types c and d The enclosed diskettes contain the following files SETUP EXE The Image Alchemy installation program Image Alchemy 2I Hoppy disk installation instructions 22 Image Alchemy D iCHEMY EXE D D LCH386 EXE iCHLONG E D ALCHPS EXE LCHFONT E ALCHE Y PDF SAMPLE PS EB TXT The Alchemy software The 32 bit version of Alchemy only included with Alchemy 386 and Alchemy PS The long filename version of Alchemy A tool for installing PostScript fonts for use by Alchemy PS only included with Alchemy PS The PostScript rendering overlay used by Alchemy only included with Alchemy PS This document in Adobe Acrobat PDF form A text document describing any last minute revisions A directory containing sample data files and images See the README2 TXT file in this directory for further information
97. XPM file types Options are combined by adding see below for an example xpm pm MIT The X Windowing system 8 bits per pixel Because xpm files are actually C source code files there can be many variations of xpm files Since adding a C preprocessor to Alchemy to handle all the theoretically allowable xpm files is impractical we have instead designed Alchemy to interchange xpm files with the PBM utilities and the X supplied utilities and to read the sample xpm files from IBM If you run across any xpm files which Alchemy cannot read please contact us Comments Some XPM files contain color names instead of color values for some of the colors The conversion information to convert these names into values is in a file supplied with the X Windowing system called rgb t xt When needed Alchemy will look for this table in the following directories the current directory usr lib X11 SOPENWINHOME and usr openwin 1lib If your system has the rgb txt file in a different location you may have to copy it to the current directory its location is system dependent ask you system administrator if you need help finding it The different type XPM files can be identified as follows Type 0 XBM similar style define typeO_format 1 static char typeO_colors Tawy W 000000 O 0000 Type 1 XPM3 style XPM static char typel 32 20 gt 412 1 a c 000000
98. Yb480 g Scale the input image big tga using fast scaling to an image which is 320 pixels across and the same aspect ratio as the input image calling the output file out tga alchemy big tga out X320 a Scale the input image oddsize gif using the highest quality scaling to an image which is no larger than 640x480 but has the same aspect ratio as the original image calling the output image new gif alchemy oddsize gif new gif Yqd480 xd640 Do the same thing as the previous example but retain the same palette alchemy oddsize gif new gif Yd480 xXd640 g f oddsize gif Scale the input image test gif to 2 5 times its original size in both dimensions using good quality scaling calling the output file test2 gif alchemy test gif test2 Xb2 5x Yb2 5x g Scale the input image silly tga to 1 3 its original size in the X dimension and 1 4 the original size in the Y dimension using low quality scaling in the X dimension and very high quality scaling in the Y dimension calling the output file test tga alchemy silly tga test a Xa 33x Yd0 25x Scale using type b scaling the input image test jpg to 3 x 4 5 inches writing a 300 dpi HP PCL file alchemy test jpg P Xb3i Yb4 5i D300 300 Print all JPEG images in the current directory to an HP LaserJet at 300 dpi using dither type 22 scaling the images to fill the page and preserving aspect ratio we use 8 16 x 10 66 inches as the printable area
99. a large set of programs to convert various other image formats to and from PBM and a set of image manipulation tools k pnm pbm pgm ppm Jef Poskanzer Portable BitMap Package Various workstation graphic programs 1 8 and 24 bit RAWBITS binary images 1 8 and 24 bit ASCII images input only When writing a PBM file Alchemy always uses the pnm extension the extension should be changed based on the type of file being written To write a PBM file use b c2 To write a PGM file use b c256 To write a PPM file use 24 Examples By convention the extension of a PBM file changes depending on the type of image data which it is storing based on the following table pnm Portable aNyMap Any of those below pbm Portable BitMap Black and white pgm Portable GrayMap Gray scale ppm Portable PixelMap True color Alchemy does not make use of this convention when writing images always writing files with the extension pnm The PBM package is a set of image manipulation tools which run on various workstations The software is available free of charge via anonymous ftp ftp expo lcs mit edu contrib pbmplus tar Z or ftp ftp ee lbl gov pbmplus tar Z Convert the file sun im32 to a PBM file alchemy sun im32 k b c2 Convert the file sun im32 to a PGM file overwriting any existing sun pnm file alchemy sun im32 k b c256 o Convert the file sun im32 to a PPM file called image77 alchemy sun
100. a true color file not including the header or 143 bytes if stored as a paletted file not including the header and palette data Numbers including a 0x prefix are hex all other numbers are decimal The header for a paletted file is 32 bytes plus the size of the palette The header for a true color file is exactly 32 bytes a true color file contains no palette Six bytes used to identify the file as an HSI Raw file Ox6d 0x68 0x77 0x61 Oxbe 0x68 An integer used to identify the HSI Raw file version if you are reading a file and the version is later than this you won t be able to read the file because we ve made changes to the header information in this case contact us for a detailed description of the HSI Raw file format 0x0004 An integer indicating the width of the image in pixels An integer indicating the height of the image in pixels Image Alchemy 399 400 Palette size Horizontal DPI Vertical DPI Gamma Compression Alpha Channel Reserved Palette Image data Image Alchemy An integer indicating the number of entries in the palette Range is 2 to 256 A 0 or 24 indicates a true color image which has no palette data An integer indicating the horizontal resolution of the image in dots per inch A zero indicates that the resolution is unknown A negative number is used if only the aspect ratio is known An integer indicating the vertical resolution of the image in dots per inch A zer
101. able xbm files is impractical we have instead designed Alchemy to interchange xbm files with the PBM utilities and the X supplied utilities and to read the sample xbm files from Sun Microsystems If you run across any xbm files which Alchemy cannot read please contact us The hotspot field is ignored when reading xbm files Most of the X supplied utilities bitmap for example are designed to edit small xbm images Convert the file picture im32 to an XBM file using high quality scaling and preserving the aspect ratio alchemy picture im32 b Xb64 XIM Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Example X XIM is yet another file format used by the X Windowing System X xim MIT The X Windowing System 8 bit paletted 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit RGB images Convert the file screen xwd to an XIM file alchemy screen xwd Xx Image Alchemy 247 Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations 248 Image Alchemy X XPM files are used by the X Windowing System XPM files are C source code files which can be read and written by various X utilities and are designed to be included in C source code for use as icons and other bit mapped graphic images X type type 0 XBM similar style 1 XPM3 style 2 XPM2 style 0 24 bit colors 10 48 bit colors The default is XBM similar style 24 bit colors see the Comments section below for a discussion of the different
102. ables this last step is only used if the image is going to be dithered output on a 1 bit per pixel per component device Image Alchemy 403 File format Black removal tables 404 CMY linear transform Image Alchemy The first 256 non comment lines contain undercolor removal values corresponding to computed black values of 0 white to 255 black Each of these lines has two numbers the first indicates how much black to use in place of the computed black value corresponding to the line and the second indicates how much black to subtract from the cyan magenta and yellow components this value must not be greater than the corresponding computed black value After the black removal block the remaining blocks may appear in any order If there is a line which says only HSI CMY matrix then the next 3 non comment lines contain a matrix representing a linear transform which is applied to the cyan magenta and yellow components after black removal and before applying the density map The entries are normalized around 256 The first row and column represent cyan the second magenta and the third yellow The rows are multiplied by the input cyan magenta and yellow values to create the corrected values A matrix of 256 0 0 0 256 0 0 0 256 is equivalent to omitting the matrix and causes no correction to take place In this case it would be preferable to omit the matrix as the conversion will run slightly faster without it
103. ace For example either c128 or c 128 is acceptable The options themselves are documented in Chapters 5 through 9 Image Alchemy 31 32 InputFileName OutputFileName OutputExtension Image Alchemy Note that options can appear anywhere in the command line and usually they can be in any order certain options take parameters in those cases the parameters must follow the option The case of the options is significant For example d and D mean different things The inputFileName is the file name of the existing image file that you are converting from and must be specified The inputFileName may include an optional drive and or path The outputFileName is the name of the file you are converting the image to The outputFileName is optional if it is not specified Alchemy generates one by substituting an appropriate extension to the input file name If you specify an outputFileName and it does not include an extension one will be added The outputFileName may include an optional drive and or path If you do not supply a path the current directory will be used as the destination directory The inputFileName and the outputFileName cannot be the same unless you are writing the output file to a different directory If you specify an output extension it will be used instead of the extension normally used by the output file format See below for an example Specifying an outputExtension is useful when using the wildcar
104. ack and white data such as fonts into grayscale data Antialiasing will not improve the quality of output black and white devices like laser printers or 4 bit CMYK devices like color raster plotters unless you are performing raster scaling on the image as part of the conversion process The antialiasing factor is the number of rendered PostScript pixels that are averaged to produce each output pixel Antialiasing causes the memory requirements and processing times to increase the more so the higher the antialias factor Convert the file periodic eps to a grayscale TIFF file called periodic tif to be used on a 640x480 display using antialiasing alchemy periodic eps t Zo640p 480p Z Za2 Image Alchemy 45 Clip Parameter Comments Example 46 Image Alchemy Zc Specify whether or not to trim any white space around the edges of the image Zc mode mode 0 Don t clip 1 Clip The default is Don t clip This can reduce the size of the output file although it does not reduce the memory requirements as Alchemy still has to render a full page before it can determine where the edges are This option is most useful when converting EPS clip art or other files for importing into other software In this case you may also want to use the Use Bounding Box Ze option see below for more information Note that clipping occurs after the image is scaled to the final size for example if you specify an output image si
105. ade simpler by newer Alchemy commands that perform the calculation for you X and Y alchemy sample jpg r14 X 24 YL Image Alchemy 163 HP 48sx Graphic Object GROB H Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Example 164 Image Alchemy Graphic Object files are used by HP 48sx calculators H type type 0 Binary 1 ASCII The default is Binary grb asc Hewlett Packard Company HP 48sx calculators Black and white 1 bit per pixel Since GROB files are always black and white Alchemy assumes the use of the b 8 and c2 options when writing GROB files Convert the image madonna gif to a ASCII HP 48sx GROB file alchemy madonna gif H 1 HSI JPEG Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Example The HSI JPEG format is a variation of the JPEG format that was designed by Handmade Software to better compress paletted images j Jpg Handmade Software Inc Image Alchemy GIF2JPG another Handmade Software product 8 bit paletted Paletted images often have large areas where the image consists of 1 or 2 colors JPEG compression does a poor job on these sections when compared to LZW compression HSI JPEG files are a combination of JPEG and LZW compression HSI JPEG files are not compatible with JPEG or JFIF files If you intend to transfer files to other systems do not use this format use the standard JPEG format instead using the j optio
106. ages 59 Painter James 412 PaintJet 158 322 329 PAL files 166 407 palette 296 299 302 Palette Selection Heckbert Tuning 304 Palette Selection 305 Palette Sorting 306 Palette Swapping 307 Palette Weighting 308 paletted 290 375 420 Paper Size 76 Paper Source 76 parameters 31 436 Image Alchemy path 23 28 Pathnames 30 PBM 206 PBMPLUS 412 PCL 149 371 PCPAINT 193 194 PCX 67 196 370 PDF 41 96 424 PDS 199 perturbation 293 PGM 207 PhotoCD 201 PhotoSmart 156 PIC 202 PicLab 411 PICT 182 370 PICT2 182 Pictor Page Format 193 Picture Maker 168 PictureMaker 116 Pixar PIC 202 Pixel Power 203 pixels 49 51 53 55 57 58 322 329 335 338 plotter 68 PNG 204 Portable BitMap 206 412 Portable Document Format 96 424 Poskanzer Jef 206 412 PostScript 41 71 119 424 PostScript Fonts 87 PPM 207 Pre load Fonts 61 Preserve Aspect Ratio 62 333 Preserve Palette While Scaling 309 334 Primera 130 Print 77 prn 102 Program Information 266 Progress 43 PS Printer 80 Publisher s Paintbrush 196 PUT 144 Puzzle 208 Q QO 209 QDV 210 QEMM 25 QMS ColorScript 100 71 QMS ColorScript 100 Model 30 77 QRT 211 quantization 382 Quiet 267 R Raster Graphics 212 Raveling Paul 173 413 Reading PostScript EPS and PDF Files 41 References 421 remove fonts 87 Removing fonts 89 resolution 41 93 352 response file 353 response files 35 37 38 268 Response
107. ages that were marked This file can then be used with Alchemy as a response file For example to view all of the GIF files in the current directory redirecting the resulting list of any files that are marked to a file called list alchemy gif v gt list If you then what to convert all of the marked files to TIFF files alchemy list t See Chapter 2 for more information on response files You can disable these keystrokes by setting the Alchemy environment variable to k e g set alchemy k at the DOS prompt Image Alchemy 353 Offset View Purpose Parameter Examples 354 Image Alchemy The offset view option changes the position of the image on the screen during viewing _ xOffset yOffset underscore xOffset Number of pixels to shift the image horizontally yOffset Number of pixels to shift the image vertically View moving the image up 100 pixels alchemy madonna gif v _ 0 100 View moving the image to the right 200 pixels and down 50 pixels alchemy madonna gif v _ 200 50 Slide Show Purpose Parameters Comments Examples Automatically change from one image to the next when displaying images delay delay Delay between images in seconds for example 0 5 is 1 2 second Negative numbers indicate that the slideshow repeats The default is 0 no delay between images The slide show mode command does not reset the SVGA card between images this has been found to wor
108. ains input filename except that it contains the output filenames You can then pass this option to Alchemy with the operator For example you want to convert the following list of files to JPEG files testl gif image tga scanl tif scan2 tif scan3 tif You want the output files to have the following names imagel jpg image2 jpg image3 jpg Image Alchemy 37 Using paired filename response files Using sequential filenames 38 Image Alchemy image4 jpg image5 jpg Assuming the first list is called files and the second list is called outnames the following command can be used alchemy files outnames j If instead of two lists you have one list containing a pair of filenames the operator can be used For example you want to do the same thing as the previous example but instead of two lists the filenames are in one file like this testl gif imagel jpg image tga image2 jpg scanl tif image3 jpg scan2 tif image4 jpg scan3 tif image5 jpg Assuming the list is called pairs the following command can be used alchemy pairs j Alchemy can process files that contain a sequence number in various ways For example Alchemy can read files with the names image001 gif image002 gif image003 gif and write files with the names file 001 file 002 file 003 For information about this see the Sequential Filenames option in Chapter 6 Using multiple runs of Alchemy Sometimes you may
109. alchemy gif f final pal new Image Alchemy 189 OS 2 Bitmap BMP O Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples 190 Image Alchemy OS 2 BMP files are used by IBM OS 2 2 0 O compressionType Uppercase letter o compressionType 0 None 1 RLE 2 OS 2 1 1 format The default is none bmp IBM Corp OS 2 2 0 1 4 8 and 24 bit RGB raw RLE4 and RLES files OS 2 1 1 files are older version files which are supported because some OS 2 software cannot read current OS 2 bitmaps OS 2 1 1 files seem to be identical to Windows 2 0 bitmap files and Alchemy identifies them as such when reading them Convert the image test jpg to a OS 2 BMP file alchemy test jpg O OS Icon Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples OS 2 Icon files are used by IBM OS 2 O outputType Uppercase letter o outputType 0 OS 2 2 0 and Warp 1 0S 2 1 2 The default is OS 2 2 0 and Warp ICO IBM Corp OS 2 1 4 8 and 24 bit RGB files OS 2 1 2 Icon files are older version files which are supported because some OS 2 software cannot read current OS 2 Icons OS 2 Icons can contain multiple parts and multiple resolutions The default for Image Alchemy is to read the first part of the first resolution You can specify which portion and which resolution to read by use of the Z option see below for an example One of the parts of an OS 2 icon is often the m
110. ameter to be treated as a scale factor e g X 2 5x scales the image by a factor of 2 5 in the X direction This is particularly useful when using the Bound Box command and you want to increase or decrease the size of the generated image Convert an image which was originally rendered to 8 5 x 11 page to a Targa file which is no larger than 640 pixels x 480 pixels at the same time preserving the aspect ratio alchemy imagel ps a Zo 640p 480p Z Output Page Width Zx Parameter Comments Example Specify output image width Zx xSize units xSize Width of the image The default is the same width as the input width units The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters x factor units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter This command can be used instead of the Zo command if you only want to specify the output image width and not the height Convert an image which was originally rendered to 8 5 x 11 page to a Targa file which is no larger than 640 pixels wide at the same time preserving the aspect ratio alchemy imagel ps a Zx 640p Z Image Alchemy 57 Output Page Height Zy Parameter Comments Example 58 Image Alchemy Specify output image height Zy xSize units ySize Height of the image The default is the same height as the input height units The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inc
111. an imq extension for the output filename alchemy phoenix goe imq p 200 Image Alchemy PhotoCD Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Examples read only PhotoCD files are multi resolution images produced by Kodak pcd Eastman Kodak Company Eastman Kodak Company Reads single channel and three channel images Read only PhotoCD files contain multi resolution image data You may specify which resolution image you want Alchemy to read by using the Z option followed by the resolution value Available resolutions are 2 192x 128 3 384x 256 4 768x 512 5 1536x 1024 6 3072x 2084 The default is 3 384x256 If you specify a b as part of the command line Alchemy will read a grayscale version of the image Convert the first PhotoCD image to a TIFF file using the default resolution of 384x256 alchemy L photo_cd images img0001 pcd t Do the same thing this time read the 768x512 copy of the image alchemy L photo_cd images img0001 pcd t Z 4 Image Alchemy 201 Pixar PIC Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Example 202 Image Alchemy j Pixar PIC files are used by Pixar software j pic Pixar Pixar 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit RGB uncompressed with optional alpha channel 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit RGB compressed with optional alpha channel input only Compressed files cannot be written Tiled file
112. annel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file test tga to a Lumena CEL file alchemy test tga L Image Alchemy 181 Macintosh PICT PICT2 M Parameters Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments 182 Image Alchemy PICT files were created by Apple Computer as a common format for Macintosh applications to use Virtually every Macintosh application can use PICT files m macBinary macBinary 0 Do not write a MacBinary file 1 Write a MacBinary file The default is to not write a MacBinary file pict pic Apple Computer Inc Macintosh computers 1 2 4 8 and 32 bit PICT and PICT2 images 16 bit PICT2 images input only Alchemy only pays attention to pixMaps in the image attempts to skip everything else Due to the enormous number of options allowed in PICT files reading PICTs may not always work See Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for more information Adding a MacBinary header to a PICT file is useful if transferring the file to a Macintosh computer by modem The MacBinary header will allow the Macintosh to automatically recognize the file as a PICT file Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Example Convert the file input1 gif to a Mac PICT file called input1 pic alchemy inputl gif m Image Alchemy 183 MacPaint
113. ansfer Language 158 322 329 HP RTL 158 159 161 162 322 329 HP 48sx 164 HP 48sx Graphic Object 164 HP7600 158 322 329 HSI JPEG 165 HSI Palette 166 HSI Raw 167 HSI Raw Files 397 Huffman 178 Huffman coding 383 I IBM Corp 168 190 191 IBM Picture Maker 168 identify 42 Identifying image files 92 IDIDAS 105 IDRISI 169 IEC 374 IFF 171 369 IGS 148 ILBM 171 Image Alchemy PS 415 Image Alchemy 15 108 165 166 167 188 434 Image Alchemy Image Offset 49 image resolution 64 346 Image Scaling 423 image Statistics 255 ImageMagick 413 Imaging Technology 172 Img Software Set 173 413 IMGMAP 105 inches 49 51 53 55 57 58 322 329 335 338 340 342 Ink jet Plotter 111 input gamma 297 Input Options 93 Input Page Size 51 InputFileName 32 Installing 19 Intergraph 174 Intergraph Corp 174 Internet 386 Iris CT 175 ISO 374 J Jarvis Judice amp Ninke 293 JEDMICS 176 JFIF 178 179 371 382 383 Joint Photographic Experts Group 178 381 Jovian Logic Corp 177 Jovian VI 177 JPEG 178 365 368 371 372 374 381 424 JPEG Interchange Format 383 K Khoral Research 238 Khoros 238 Kodak 201 Korn Steve 211 L Lanczos2 324 335 338 Lanczos3 324 335 338 large images 43 LaserJet 66 150 322 329 LaserWriter 79 80 81 82 84 Leffler Sam 409 libtiff 409 limiting resolution 352 Linear Interpolation 324 335 338 linearization 310 list fonts 87 88
114. ards dupont com cristy ImageMagick html for more information Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file picture gif to an uncompressed MIFF file alchemy picture gif i Image Alchemy 185 Mimaki MRL I Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Example 186 Image Alchemy M Mimaki MRL 1 files are used by Mimaki plotters m mrl Mimaki Mimaki plotters 4 bit CMYK Mimaki plotters are only capable of printing at a few resolutions which resolutions vary between model Be sure to specify a valid resolution using the D option see Chapter 8 for more information To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the file flower tif to a Mimaki MRL 1 file using gamma correction of 1 8 alchemy flower tif m Gil 0 Gol1 8 MTV Ray Tracer Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Example M MTV files are used by the MTV RayTracer a public domain ray tracer for Suns and other workstations M mtv Mark T VandeWettering MTV Raytracer 24 bit true color MTV is a public domain ray tracer available free of charge via anonymous ftp from drizzle cs uoregon edu Convert the file spheres img to a MTV file alchemy spheres im
115. arning existing bil and clr files When reading a CCT CD ROM format image specify the complete path and name of the image file For example on an MS DOS system alchemy 1 scene04 imag_04 dat g will convert the scene 4 image to a GIF file Convert the Erdas file phoenix lan to a SPOT Image file alchemy phoenix lan S Stork Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments K Stork files are CMYK images used by Stork s color proofing machines K compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Run length coded The default is none idx Header information _pre Image data tab Color lookup table Stork Colorproofing B V Stork Colorproofing machines 32 KCMY 32 KCMY RLC 16 CLU and 16 CLU RLC images type 100 101 300 and 301 respectively Alchemy can t write paletted files with more than 256 colors When reading paletted files with more than 256 colors they are treated as true color Stork images are stored in two or three files depending on whether or not there s a color lookup table associated with the image The filename given to Alchemy should be the name of the data file normally with a suffix of pre Alchemy will generate the names of the other files by stripping the extension and appending idx for the index file and tab for the color lookup table if any Image Alchemy 223 Example 224 Image Alchemy Alchemy will overwrite existing idx and tab
116. ask used by OS 2 to change the appearance of the icon when it is selected The mask is often a black rectangle so if the image resulting from an OS 2 Icon conversion is a black rectangle you are probably reading the mask portion Convert the image icon bmp to an OS 2 Icon file called program ico alchemy icon bmp program ico O Image Alchemy 191 Convert the OS 2 Icon program ico to a Windows BMP file reading part 1 of the first icon alchemy program ico w Do the same thing but read part 2 of the first icon alchemy program ico w Z 2 Do the same thing but read part 1 of the second icon alchemy program ico w Z 1 2 Do the same thing but read part 2 of the second icon alchemy program ico w Z 2 2 192 Image Alchemy PCPAINT Pictor Page Format A Parameter The Pictor format was designed by John Bridges It is optimized so that an image can be loaded into various IBM PC graphics adapters very quickly it does this by almost exactly duplicating the organization of the graphics adapter memory This makes the format hardware dependent A type type 0 320x200x4 CGA 1 320x200x16 PCjr Tandy 2 640x200x2 CGA 3 640x200x16 EGA 4 640x350x2 EGA 5 640x350x4 EGA 6 640x350x16 EGA 7 720x348x2 Hercules 8 640x350x16 VGA 9 320x200x16 EGA 10 640x400x2 AT amp T Toshiba 11 320x200x256 VGA MCGA 12 640x480x16 VGA 13 720x348x16 Hercules InColor 14 640x480x2 VGA MCGA 15 800x600x2 EGA VGA 16 800x600x16 EGA VGA 1
117. ations of options are not allowed because the results would not be what you expect For example using the spiff option S in combination with the false color option F would spiff the image first and then false color it which would give the same results as just using the false color option Since this is not the result you would most likely want Alchemy will generate an error if you specify both of those options at the same time In this case you could false color the image first generating a temporary image and then spiff that image Reading PostScript EPS and PDF Files Converting PostScript files If you are using Image Alchemy PS you can read PostScript EPS and PDF files This chapter describes options which effect how these files are read Image Alchemy PS automatically identifies PostScript Encapsulated PostScript and PDF files and converts them as other formats However unlike the other image file formats Alchemy reads many of the of the characteristics of the input file can be altered depending on what you will be doing with the resulting file For example a PostScript file needs to be interpreted differently if it is going to be displayed on a color CRT versus printed on a 1200 dpi black and white typesetter Since Alchemy does not know which device will eventually be using the image various parameters have to be specified at the conversion time These parameters include e The resolution of the output
118. available from Stephen Coy 15205 NE 13th PI 2904 Bellevue WA 98007 or from us This is the same format as used by Alias see Alias above Convert the file spheres qrt to a Vivid file alchemy spheres qrt I Wavefront RLA RLB read only Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Examples RLA and RLB files were developed by Wavefront tla rlb Wavefront Wavefront Advanced Visualizer 24 bit true color with alpha channels read only There seem to be many variations of RLA RLB files We have documentation for 3 different variations and the sample files we have seem to be different from any of those if we cannot read the RLA RLB files that you have please contact us we d like to add support for as many variations as possible If you have Wavefront files which Alchemy cannot read please contact us Similarly if you are interested in having Alchemy write Wavefront files please contact us Alpha channel data can be read by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the sequence of Wavefront RLA files frame 000 through frame 499 to TIFF files with the names 0 tif through 499 tif including the Alpha channel data alchemy frame seats b0 42 0 499 Image Alchemy 241 Windows BitMap BMP W Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments 242 Image Alchemy Windows BMP files are used by Microsof
119. button This will generate a PostScript file which Alchemy PS can read Image Alchemy 8l 82 Image Alchemy If you are using the older LaserWriter 8 0 driver things will look slightly different After choosing Print from the File menu in your application the print dialog box looks like this Printer LaserJet 4 f Copies 1_ Pages All From H ancel Paper Source All First from Remaining from You select File from the Destination choice If you wish to generate a grayscale or color PostScript file that choice is now found in the Options dialog box Printer LaserJet 4 a peee Print Options Cover Page None Before After Document Print Black and White w h PostScript Errors No Special Reporting v After selecting the Save button you will be presented with the Save Disk File dialog E Document Disk Y E Document D D firepiug BiZ D meaual ar picture fos R registretian card D EPE HPS EESODLODSB ERS Create File PostScript Format PostScript Jobw ASCII Level 1 Compatible Binary Level 2 Only Font inclusion All But Standard w To include the fonts used in the document select All under the Font Inclusion menu This will include all of the fonts To reduce the size of the PostScript file select the All But Standard 13 this includes all fonts except for the
120. cale TIFF file which you do by adding a c256 to the b and t options This file still has a uniform gray palette but that palette now contains every color 0 1 2 3 255 Therefore Alchemy can map for example the colors 128 and 192 to their exact match This does have the disadvantage of making the resulting 256 color TIFF file twice as large as the 16 color TIFF file but this is the only way to guarantee that Alchemy can find an exact match for all the shades of gray in the input file Image Alchemy 373 374 Question Answer Question Answer Image Alchemy How do I get a copy of the JPEG standard The JPEG standard is an ISO IEC standard and you should contact your local ISO IEC office to get a copy The document number is ISO IS 10918 1 In the United States you can contact ANSI at ANSI 11 West 42nd St New York NY 10036 212 642 4900 Do you give multiple copy discounts Do you have site licenses Are you interested in licensing the source code Yes Yes Yes Contact us for more information Color and Dithering Paletted vs true color Color cube Color images are usually stored in one of two ways as an array of direct color values usually red green and blue referred to as a true color file in this document or as an array of indices into a color map which contains red green and blue color values referred to as a paletted file in this document Paletted images exist because they
121. can be read Limitations Comments Alchemy can read files with any component sub sampling up to 4x4 it always writes 2h 1v 1h 1v 1h 1v Alchemy JPEG files comply with the industry standard JFIF interchange format JPEG files are always lossy which means that the compressed image is not identical to the original image At high quality factors 32 and above this loss is generally so slight as to be barely noticeable There is no quality factor which is guaranteed to be lossless By default Image Alchemy uses a fixed set of Huffman tables to compress an image If the j is immediately followed by an h Alchemy will generate a set of custom tables optimized for the image and quality factor This usually produces 5 20 better compression depending on the image content and quality factor but requires an additional pass over the image data so it takes longer to compress there s no effect on the time it takes to decompress the image Quality may vary between 1 and 100 the default is 32 The higher the number the higher the quality of the image and the lower the compression ratio Quality factors below 10 will produce images with significant loss of quality JPEG files are based on the Joint Photographic Experts Group JPEG CD 10918 1 draft standard Since JPEG compression was designed for use with continuous tone images such as those produced by a scanner or digitizer poor results can be expected when compressing line dra
122. ce and Ninke dithering a serpentine raster and a little noise alchemy sample gif P b c2 ds3 20 EGA Palette Purpose Comments Limitations Related options Example Optimize the image quality for display on an EGA board and monitor E If you are converting images to display on an EGA board and monitor this option will optimize the image quality This option reduces the palette resolution to two bits and automatically specifies the following 8 c16 z0 2 0 The number of colors in an EGA palette must be less than or equal to 16 the number of colors defaults to 16 but can be reduced by using the c option C specify number of colors Convert the image dave1 tga into dave1 pcx a PCX file with a palette optimized for EGA use alchemy davel tga E p Image Alchemy 295 False Color Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Limitations Related options Example 296 Image Alchemy F False color an image using the palette from a file The input image will be changed to use the palette found in the specified filename but no attempt at picking the best match will be done F filename filename Any valid image file which contains a palette This feature can be used to add false color to monochrome images The output file is not dithered False color may only be used with paletted input files Cannot be combined with the spiff S or match palette f options f match palette
123. chroupe a Pape puei sumcaskecd Tee majl H oiimi aa fa bate Aeckire sii C J e J e ThePaper Si ze selection is best left at 8 5 x 11 in since that is the default size that Alchemy PS expects for PostScript files ThePaper Source selection is not used by Alchemy PS Printing to a PostScript file Click onthe Unpriintable Area button to bring up the unprintable area dialog ia a a Fha Bhe PO rater w E 4 btm fo A These can all be set to zero since Alchemy PS does not have any unimageable area near the edges If you will routinely be sending files that you convert with Alchemy PS to a hard copy output device such as a PCL printer you can set the margins appropriately for that device Windows will then warn you if you are printing too close to the edge Now click on the various OK buttons to close the dialog boxes and accept the choices you have made This completes the setup You are now ready to print a PostScript file To print to a file select P r i nt from the Fi e menu This will bring up a dialog box similar to the one shown different programs have different dialogs this example is from the Paint program distributed with Windows 95 Select the printer QMS ColorScript 100 Model 3 0 as the printer to print to and click OK If you setup this device as the default printer you can skip this step You can also change the Or i ent ati on choice at this point Image Alchemy 77 fare H
124. cifying an alternate fontmap Missing fonts This can also be useful when converting a PostScript document which contains fonts you don t have you can substitute a similar font using an alias Alchemy ordinarily substitutes Courier for fonts it cannot find For example alchfont Melior Times will cause Alchemy PS to substitute the font Times for the font Melior alchfont scan Scan for fonts in the default directories and add them to the fontmap The default directories are the alchemy ps directory the psfonts directory and the directories defined by the alchemyps environment variable alchfont remove fontname Remove specified fonts from the fontmap This does not delete the actual font from the disk alchfont fontmap name Use specified fontmap the default is the file named fontmap found in the path specified by the alchemyps environment variable or the file alchemy ps Fontmap if no alchemyps environment is set Alchemy PS will substitute Courier for any unknown fonts as well as fonts that are in the fontmap but not found on your disk Alchemy will display warning messages when it does this If Courier is not present Alchemy will abort with an error message to that effect Image Alchemy 89 Multiple fontmaps 90 Image Alchemy If Alchemy cannot find fonts which are used in the PostScript file you are converting and you do not want Alchemy to substitute Courier you can either substitute another font b
125. color Alchemy assumes the use of the 24 option when writing a QO file Convert the file dogcow gif to a QO file alchemy dogcow gif q Image Alchemy 209 QDV D The QDV format is used by Giffer a Macintosh program which displays and converts image files Syntax D Extension qdv Creator Steve Blackstock Used by Giffer Variations 8 bits per pixel Comments Giffer is a great shareware Beerware actually program for the Macintosh that converts between various image file formats and allows viewing of graphics files Example Convert the file input tga to a qdv file alchemy input tga D 210 Image Alchemy QRT Raw Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Example T QRT files are generated by the QRT Ray Tracer a public domain ray tracer for Amiga Macintosh and IBM PC computers T Taw Steve Korn QRT Ray Tracer 24 bits per pixel Convert the file spheres gif to a QRT file called spheres raw alchemy spheres gif T Image Alchemy 211 Raster Graphics g The Raster Graphics format was created by Raster Graphics and is used by Raster Graphics printers Syntax g Extensions rg Creator Raster Graphics Used by Raster Graphics printers Variations 1 bit black and white and 4 bit CMYK Comments The result will be either 1 bit black and white if the source image is grayscale or b is specified otherwise it will be 4 bit CMYK Examples Convert the file sample
126. colors in the output image and the dithering techniques used Image Alchemy 283 Alpha Channel Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Examples 284 Image Alchemy Control the Alpha Channel when converting a file I alphaOption capital i alphaOption 1 preserve the alpha channel 2 always write an alpha channel 3 do not write an alpha channel The default is 1 to preserve the alpha channel Some file formats include alpha channel information The alpha channel is often used to store information such as transparency By default Image Alchemy writes out an alpha channel if the input image includes one and the output file format supports alpha channels If you are reading a file which does not have an alpha channel using the I 2 option will create an empty alpha channel in the output file If you are writing a file format which does not support alpha channel data the I option will be ignored Convert the image giant tga to a TIFF file preserving the alpha channel information alchemy giant tga t Do the same thing removing the alpha channel alchemy giant tga t I 3 Do the same thing but force an alpha channel to be written alchemy giant tga t I 2 Black and White b Purpose Convert the image to black and white or gray scale Syntax b Comments The b option causes an image to be converted to either black and white or gray scale If the c2 option is specified the output image will be black and white Any
127. cript files to raster files The Freedom of Press format is one of the file types it can create f fop Custom Applications 1 bit black and white and 4 bit CMYK Freedom of Press images are actually two files a data file and an info file You specify the name of the data file and Alchemy automatically generates the name of the info file The output file is normally output 001 output 002 etc Alchemy will strip the first part of the name and replace it with info so if you specified an output filename of output 005 there will be another file created called info 005 If you don t specify an extension Alchemy will use fop so you ll get two files named filename fop and info fop Alchemy will overwrite info files without warning To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 Convert the file image tga to a Freedom of Press image called output 003 and info 003 controlling the undercolor removal process using sample ucr scaling the image to 2500 pixels across and scaling proportionately vertically using nearest neighbor scaling and conserving memory alchemy f Csample ucr X2500 image tga output 003 Image Alchemy 135 GEM VDI Image File g Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Examples 136 Image Alchemy VDI files are files that were developed by
128. d option to convert multiple files see the wildcard command in chapter 6 for more information If you are not using the wildcard option the outputExtension is usually specified on the command line as part of the outputFileName Examples OutputPathName Examples Convert the file test gif in the directory images to a TIFF file called temp tif in the current directory alchemy images test gif temp tif t Do the same thing calling the new file temp out alchemy images test gif temp out t Convert all of the GIF files in the directory images to TIFF files giving them all the extension out alchemy images gif out t The outputPathName is the location where you want to put the output file that Alchemy will create The outputPathName is optional if it is not specified Alchemy places the output in the current directory or in the directory specified as part of the outputFileName Specifying an outputPathName is useful when using the wildcard option to convert multiple files see the wildcard command in chapter 6 for more information If you are not using the wildcard option the outputPathName is usually specified on the command line as part of the outputFileName Convert the file test gif in the directory images to a TIFF file called temp tif in the current directory alchemy images test gif temp tif t Do the same thing placing the output in the directory new alchemy images test gif new temp tif t I
129. d from the upper left corner for Calcomp HP PCL and HP RTL files and from the lower left corner for EPS files Can be used in conjunction with center image to offset the image from the center of the page Only works for those output options that support an offset These are Fargo Epson Spaceward Sharp GPB Imaging Technology Pixel Power Collage Mimaki Raster Graphics Alps Calcomp EPS Fargo HP PCL and HP RTL If you specify the offset in inches or centimeters you must also specify a dots per inch value _ Center image Image Alchemy 329 Example Convert the image temp gif to an HP PCL file at 300 dpi positioning it on the page 1 inch from the top and 200 pixels from the left alchemy temp gif P _ 200 1i D300 300 330 Image Alchemy Only Scale If Too Large Purpose Causes Alchemy to only scale images down Syntax Comments This command can be useful if you have a variety of images and want to scale them all to be no larger than a certain size If this command is not used all of the images that are smaller will be scaled up Example Scale all the GIF files in the current directory to be no larger than 640 x 480 preserving aspect ratio and placing the output files in the directory called new alchemy gif new Xb640 Yb480 g Image Alchemy 331 Only Scale If Too Small Purpose Syntax Comments Example 332 Image Alchemy Causes Alchemy to only scale images up
130. d graphics also called rasters Alchemy can only convert the raster areas in PCL files Unfortunately there isn t any general way to preserve the rest of the data with Alchemy If you are using Windows and printing using TrueType fonts you can select the Print TrueType As Graphics check box in the printer setup dialog box under the Options choice This will cause Windows to print all information as graphics which Alchemy can then successfully convert Image Alchemy 371 372 Question Answer Image Alchemy When I convert a 32 bit Targa file to a GIF file and then to a JPEG file it doesn t look nearly as good as if I convert the Targa File directly to the JPEG file What can I do to maintain high quality in JPEG compressed files When the Targa file was converted to the GIF file Image Alchemy had to reduce the number of colors in the file the original Targa File had up to 16 million colors GIF files are limited to 256 colors This step is known as color quantization Image Alchemy uses the Heckbert Median Cut method for quantization see Appendix B Color and Dithering for more information The difficulty with color quantization is that it leaves artifacts known as color banding To reduce this phenomenon Image Alchemy dithers the image you can see the effect of color banding by turning off dithering by using the d0 option Unfortunately a dithered image does not JPEG compress very well dithering adds a lot of high frequency
131. digital halftone this will produce the most accurate grays on a laser printer but the image won t be as sharp as one produced by the error diffusion dithers Type 21 is a dispersed dot ordered dither it s only advantage over the error diffusion algorithms is speed Type 20 is an additional halftone pattern It s similar to type 22 but with a coarser screen The d option only has an effect if the number of colors is being reduced or the image is being re mapped to a new palette Specifying a perturbation adds noise to the image which can help break up visible patterns introduced by dithering The parameter specifies the magnitude of the noise Perturbation has no effect on dither types 20 21 and 22 Using a serpentine raster can also help to reduce visible patterns introduced by dithering Using a serpentine raster has no effect on dither types 20 21 and 22 In general we use d1 when converting 24 bit images to 8 bit paletted and ds3 when converting color images to black and white and 1 bit CMYK for sending to a laser printer or plotter Convert the 256 color file image gif to a 16 color PCX file using a uniform palette and no dithering alchemy image gif p c16 q0 u Convert the true color image sample jpg into a 256 color GIF file called sample gif using Stucki dithering alchemy sample jpg g q2 Convert the 256 color image sample gif into a one bit black and white PCL file called sample pcl using Jarvis Judi
132. e Input Filename for Output oe ee eee ereeeneeeee 278 Use 3 Letter Extensions srecetina EE 279 Wearing sir cod tet aiatees Redotithiseasbedity dedviosl Sete A 280 WildCard i ssccivissatielsiteevsnceseesattocensselesbetaceedbestageeis E Eiee 281 Chapter 7 Color and Palette Options TRO AUCHION a ssscsscescssscsccecetetecvontveesedaeutestiretanscotindseions ievuete 283 Alpha Channel caine ia ea ies 284 Black and WHE vc cccccsccevavavarevseeseoanshsesochacecasssastessseens secs 285 Brightness nosni iere tek bee eel nesta 287 CMY Karn tele e th vpon tide vn E oli 288 Color Correction sorrienni pr cshevsecegeess sa a a Siei 289 LI LoT K EEE EEEE EA 290 Contrastes rne r T E ssh Nestea sess 292 Dither eenia e a OAR hte E EEEE 293 EGA Palette cies csideesSidoivsshloivesedeysessdueve N E aaia 295 False Col Bissiisscsccsissagesvasancvavteaces e eE e aaee Ea eide 295 Gamma Correction ccccccceesessscsscccssececececececececeseeeeees 297 Match Palette s33053 c35 ccdecteectis an a an iai doe 299 IN CB ALC sanee oee EEEE NE A O EEE stelees 301 PANO tte ENE EEE AE E E E E EEA 302 Palette Selection Heckbert Tuning 304 Palette Selection Palette Selection ccccccceesseeeeeeees 305 Palette Selection Palette Sorting 00 eee eeeeeeeeeeeees 306 Palette Selection Palette Swapping 0 0 00 cece eeeeeeeeeees 307 Palette Selection Palette Weighting eee eeeeeeeee 308 Preserve Palette While Scaling 0 cece
133. e Set Q Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Example The Img Software Set is a collection of tools for manipulating graphic images freely available for various UNIX workstations Paul Raveling Img Software Set 8 bit paletted and 24 bit images Alchemy does not read nor write compressed Z images Use the UNIX supplied uncompress program to decompress those images before reading with Alchemy The Img Software Set is available via anonymous ftp from ftp expo lcs mit edu contrib img_1 3 tar Z or ftp venera isi edu pub img_1 3 tar Z Convert the Sun Raster file test ras to an Img Software Set file alchemy test ras Q Image Alchemy 173 Intergraph Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Example 174 Image Alchemy F The Intergraph file format was developed by Intergraph Corp and is used by them r compressionType compressionType 9 Run Length Compressed black and white 24 Group 4 compressed black and white 27 Run Length Compressed RGB The default is 24 gb Intergraph Corp Intergraph Corp 1 bit black and white and 24 bit RGB images input and output 8 bit grayscale tiled and untiled input only If you need to read or write other type Intergraph files please contact us we are happy to add support for any of the Intergraph formats for which documentation is available You can write a scannable type
134. e a combination of drawing commands such as lines rectangles and circles and raster areas called pixMaps Alchemy can only read the raster portions of the files Programs such as MacDraw and MacDraft write out files with drawing commands programs such as MacPaint write out files which are entirely raster areas pixMaps and some programs such as SuperPaint can write out files which are either or a combination of both If you are using such a program check the documentation on how to write out files in paint mode Question Answer Question Answer Why can t Image Alchemy read in JPEG files produced by Kodak s ColorSqueeze or Sun s VFCtool Some software packages support an obsolete version of JPEG Image Alchemy supports the JFIF format and should work with any other JPEG software which also claims JFIF compatibility If other software you are using claims to support the JFIF format and you are having trouble please contact us If the other software does not support JFIF contact the manufacturer and tell them they should send you an update which does you can tell them to contact us if they need a copy of the JFIF standard I ve converted an HP PCL file to a GIF file but the GIF file is missing some or all of the information that was in the PCL file What happened to it PCL files have the same problem as PICT files see above they are a combination of text fonts drawing commands such as lines and rectangles an
135. e are options which Alchemy uses they need to be escaped to prevent the wildcard substitution This is done by using a back slash before the character so becomes Several of the examples show output being sent directly to a device for example prn UNIX users cannot send output directly to a device using Image Alchemy and should substitute a file name for the output device name The UNIX command line version of Image Alchemy does not support image viewing at this time We have Motif versions of Image Alchemy for various UNIX workstations Please contact us for information if you are interested in upgrading to one of these versions Introduction Introduction Basic instructions Options Image Alchemy is a command line driven program It is run from a MS DOS prompt Windows 95 or Windows NT console prompt or UNIX terminal window The basic Image Alchemy usage instructions are alchemy inputFileName outputFileName outputExtension outputPathName options Options are the commands that you give Alchemy so that it knows what you want it to do So that Alchemy can distinguish between options and file names on the command line options are preceded by a dash The only option that is required is the output file format Image Alchemy will make reasonable decisions for all of the other options Some options take parameters The parameters may immediately follow the option or be separated by a sp
136. e can read true color Targa files but cannot read paletted or gray scale files Image Alchemy can be forced to write out a true color file by using the 24 option Image Alchemy 363 364 Question Answer Question Answer Image Alchemy I keep getting Out of Memory trying to messages Help Image Alchemy is running out of memory If you are running on an IBM PC you can use alch386 or alchlong instead of alchemy to do the conversion if you were running alch386 or alchlong when you received this error please contact us If you are running one of the UNIX versions of Alchemy this message indicates that you are running out of swap space Contact your system administrator to find out how you can increase the size of your swap space How do I capture screens when running Microsoft Windows or MacOS To capture the current screen when running Microsoft Windows press PRINT SCREEN This copies a bitmap of the entire screen onto the clipboard Then open the Paintbrush program which comes with Windows and select Paste to copy the image from the clipboard The image may now be saved as a BMP file which Alchemy can convert Under MacOS press Command Shift 3 This will create a file on your hard disk called Picture n where n is a number which starts at 1 and increases by 1 every time you capture another screen This file can be converted by Alchemy Question Answer Question Answer When I view a JPEG compressed
137. e from an image but Heckbert s algorithm is generally regarded as the best tradeoff between speed and quality Image Alchemy 377 Mapping the image to the palette 378 No dithering Advantages of dithering Error diffusion dithering Serpentine raster Noise Image Alchemy The next step is to map the image to the new palette this is where dithering becomes important The simplest approach is to map every color in the original image to the palette entry which is closest to it this is what Image Alchemy does if you specify no dithering However since the palette entries generally represent several different colors in the original image this results in color banding where areas of smooth color changes in the original become areas of one solid color in the paletted version This can be alleviated by dithering the image data such that any given pixel might not be mapped to its closest palette entry but the average over some area of the image will be closer to the correct color than it would otherwise be Image Alchemy uses a class of algorithms called error diffusion to do dithering These algorithms work by using the closest palette entry to a color and then distributing the error the difference between the desired color and the chosen palette entry to the nearby pixels This process is repeated for every pixel in the image using the color values which have been modified due to the error from previous pixels T
138. e lightest color the transparency color you can override this by using the t option see below for an example Multi page GIF files are used by certain Web browsers most notably Netscape Navigator 2 x See the U command below for more information on writing multi page files When writing a multi page GIF file you may specify the delay in hundredths of seconds between images If you do not specify a delay it defaults to 0 which will display the images as quickly as possible You may also specify a repeat count This field is a Netscape specific tag that indicates how many times to display the sequence The default is 0 indicating that the sequence is to repeat indefinitely Alchemy will write a multi page GIF file with a global palette if you use either the match to palette f or false color F option otherwise Alchemy will write local palettes If you have a series of images which contain identical palettes you can force Alchemy to write a global palette by using the F option and give the name of the first file see below for an example If you have a series of images which do not contain identical palettes but you still want to write a global palette you can use Alchemy to generate a multi image palette file and then match each of the images to that palette using the f option see below for an example The different disposal methods cause software which is displaying a multi page GIF to perform different operations bet
139. e name and the output file name cannot be the same see the o option to replace the input file with the output file Convert the file input tga to a GIF file called output gif overwriting the existing file called output gif alchemy input tga output gif g o Image Alchemy 265 ow Program Information Purpose Give you information on how to get support for Image Alchemy or inquire about update information Syntax Zo Comments UNIX users have to escape the question mark with a back slash instead of use This is because the UNIX shell will attempt to perform wildcard expansion on the question mark Limitations The information option cannot be combined with any other options Example Get support information alchemy 266 Image Alchemy Quiet Purpose Comments Limitations Example Suppress all status messages but not error messages Q This is useful when running Alchemy in the background on UNIX systems or in batch files on MS DOS systems and you don t want the output of Alchemy scrolling important messages off of the screen There is no way to suppress error messages Convert the file dummy gif to a PCX file but don t report any status messages alchemy dummy gif Q p Image Alchemy 267 Response Files Purpose Parameters Comments Limitations Examples 268 Image Alchemy Response files allow you to place commonly used commands or lists of input filenames into a
140. e only does pixel replication scaling when increasing the size of an image this corresponds to type a scaling in Alchemy and pixel averaging when reducing the size of an image corresponding to Alchemy b scaling Note that Alchemy pays attention to the aspect ratio or dots per inch information specified as part of the command line or present in the original image when converting to a Scodl scalable image Therefore you should ensure that this information is correct when writing a Scodl scalable image When writing Non scalable Scodl files the image should be scaled up to either 2000x1366 or 4000x2732 to fill the slide There are some limitations with the MVP software driver supplied by Agfa Matrix 24 bit Scodl files are not correctly interpreted by the MVP driver version 4 1 and earlier 8 bit images are correctly interpreted When sending very large images to the background MVP driver you must be using version 4 0 or later and have lots of EMS memory 4 megabytes is recommended When using the foreground MVP program turning on disk caching is necessary Examples Convert the file pict 1m32 to a Scodl file using high quality scaling and preserving the aspect ratio alchemy pict im32 s Xc2000 Yc1366 Do the same thing but generate a scalable Scod file alchemy pict im32 s1 Image Alchemy 217 SGI Image Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples 218 Image Alchemy N
141. e to write a single multi page file based on multiple single page files a single multi page file or multiple multi page files and it is also possible to write multiple multi page files based on multiple multi page input files there are four permutations to consider When writing a single multi page output file and reading multiple files the output filename must appear immediately after the U option Only certain image file formats allow multiple images in a single file Adobe PDF PCX the DCX variant GIF TIFF MIFF US Patent and PCL Convert all the pages in the TIFF file doc tif to a multi page PDF file note that in this case the U option is needed to cause Alchemy to read all the pages in the doc tif file without it only the first page would be read alchemy doc tif U U d Image Alchemy 261 262 Image Alchemy Convert the TIFF files pagel tif page2 tif and page3 tif to a multi page PDF file called output pdf the option is required to tell Alchemy that there are multiple files being read and the filename after the U option is required to specify the output file name alchemy pagel tif page2 tif page3 tif U output pdf d Convert the multi page TIFF files doc1 tif doc2 tif and doc3 tif each to their own multi page PDF files this assumes that each TIFF file is a multi page file The U option is required to tell Alchemy to treat the input files as multi page documents In this case th
142. e used by HP LaserJets and compatible printers Syntax P type paperSize inputTray Parameter type 0 Uncompressed 1 RLE compressed 2 TIFF compressed 3 Delta Row compressed 0 Portrait 10 Landscape 0 Standard Margins 50 Expanded Margins 0 PCL3 100 PCL5 200 PCL XL 300 Lexmark PCL 0 Reset printer at start of data 1000 Do not reset printer at start of data O Include position information 4000 Do not include position information See the comments section below for more information Options are combined by adding see below for an example The default is 0 Uncompressed Portrait Standard Margins PCL3 Reset printer and include position information Image Alchemy 149 Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations 150 Image Alchemy paperSize 0 Printer default setting 1 US Letter 2 US Legal 3 US Ledger 11 A4 13 A3 The default is 0 inputTray 0 Printer default tray 1 through 99 Tray varies with printer model The default is 0 pcl Hewlett Packard Company HP LaserJet printers HP compatible laser printers 1 bit per pixel black and white for PCL3 PCLS and Lexmark PCL Writes 1 bit 4 bit and 8 bit grayscale and RGB paletted for PCL XL Reads and writes uncompressed RLE compressed TIFF compressed and Delta Row Compressed PCL3 and PCLS files Reads and writes portrait and landscape files In addition to raster images PCL files can include text and vector graphics informati
143. e would want to compress an image using a lossy technique Compression ratios for lossy compression are much better than for lossless compression and the loss is generally very small And in fact every operation of converting an image is lossy the original photographic or electronic process which captured the image was lossy scanning or digitizing the image was lossy displaying the image on a monitor is lossy and printing the image is lossy Image Alchemy 381 Details 382 Step Step 2 Step 3 Image Alchemy JPEG compression involves the following steps The image is converted to a color space with separate luminance and chrominance channels This is done because the human eye is far more sensitive to the luminance information Y than it is to the chrominance information Cb and Cr by separating them it s possible to compress the chrominance information more than the luminance before the perceived image quality suffers This step isn t specified in the JPEG standard it doesn t discuss color space at all but is standard practice Image Alchemy uses CCIR 601 YCbCr which is the color space specified by the JFIF standard The luminance and chrominance information are separately transformed to the frequency domain using a discrete cosine transform acting on 8x8 pixel blocks To reduce the amount of data which needs to be compressed the chrominance information may be sub sampled first Alchemy uses 2h 1v 1h 1v 1h 1v
144. e writing an EPS file which you intend to send directly to a PostScript output device such as a printer you will want to write a file with no preview and include the showpage command EPS files are normally written using the UNIX newline convention To write an EPS file with Macintosh newlines add 10 to the preview type To write an EPS file with MS DOS newlines add 20 to the preview type See below for an example To omit the showpage command from the end of the EPS file add 100 to the preview type Some software which imports EPS files does not correctly handle EPS files which contain the showpage command To improve the quality of output may want to use a color correction file when converting to the CMYK variation of this format See the C option in Chapter 8 for more information 120 Image Alchemy Examples Convert the file input gif to an uncompressed color EPS file called input eps with no preview alchemy input gif e 0 24 Do the same thing but write out MS DOS newlines alchemy input gif e 20 24 Do the same thing but use LZW compression alchemy input gif e 1020 24 Convert the file input gif to a gray scale EPS file called gray eps with a device independent preview alchemy input gif gray eps e 1 b Convert the file test gif to a black and white EPS file called test eps with no preview and MS DOS newlines alchemy test gif e 20 b c2 Image Alchemy 121 Epson Stylus K Epson Stylus files are u
145. ead selected bands out of the image Convert the first band in the image to a grayscale Sun Raster file alchemy Landsat_TM_year_199l ers Z 1 s Convert the fifth band in the image to a grayscale Sun Raster file alchemy Landsat_TM_year_199l ers Z 5 s Convert the image to a 24 bit color Sun Raster file using band 2 as the red channel band 7 as the green channel and band 3 as the blue channel alchemy Landsat_TM_year_199l ers Z 2 7 3 S Image Alchemy 125 Erdas LAN GIS IMG e Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations 126 Image Alchemy Erdas files are used by Erdas image processing software e lan gis img Erdas Inc Erdas remote sensing software 1 and 3 band files Reads 4 8 and 16 bit files LAN GIS and IMG Writes 8 bit LAN and GIS files When writing Erdas files Alchemy does not change the extension depending on the number of bands in the image according to the specification gray scale files should have the extension gis and true color files should have the extension lan Alchemy always uses lan Alchemy cannot read 2 channel or 4 or more channel images without using the Z option see the comments section below for more information Because of a shortage of test files this feature has not been extensively tested if you have Erdas IMG files which Image Alchemy cannot correctly read please contact us We will be adding Erdas IMG output if you are interested
146. eceeceeeeeeeececeneeeeeeeeeeenaeenees 126 Explore TDI nnee eri ENN eTA 129 Fargo Primerane enre eaea e he denotes 130 FBM de auo ane ooe ere e A Aa Gennes 132 First Publisher AR Torce a 133 T E O E E E A E E ESET 134 Freedomi Of Presse iscsscttesecdl en shinsseststaceonsbescesczasenies 135 GEM VDI Image File saeeeeeeeeereerereererresrerress 136 GEk ea leg exh e e e a e ea 138 vii viii HistO Stam sents aaa eee ened 146 Hitachi Raster Format ceccceeceesseeeseeceeneeeeeeeeees 148 HP Printer Command Language PCL eee 149 HIP PhotoS martes sce setessevisehecthiededeetacnesbisiacesusseettsaleavets 156 HP Raster Transfer Language RTL 00 0 ee eee 158 HP 48sx Graphic Object GROB sesers 164 HSLJPEG cecep mieso heeds tievies inesei isos oleae eeaaa eed 165 HS Palette ieii iiien ae 166 FAS RAW sch ea e a e aa a loea aT E R eoi 167 IBM Picture Maker ssseeseseessessessssssessssesssesssessses 168 IDRIS ss eee e R E E creck 169 IEFALBM ae a en e eet 171 Imaging Technology eeeeseeeeeeesereeresrssreerrsrssresresrees 172 Img Software Set sesscnisersiirrerisiressirirosseserersssisssres 173 Intergraph eienen een eta sdectea tte er n tel E 174 TRS CTiccters sshdveessedetins Seton edocs castes ioe these eats eee 175 JEDMICS CCIT TA kerstreces aeeaiei 176 Jovian Vi emoe nr re te eE E sete 177 JPEG JEIE S aere arie cates a R EEA 178 Lume na CED sii men ope geaen VE E E T aR SS 181 Macintosh PICT PICT2
147. ed TIFF file with the bit order reversed alchemy cover bmp t 203 Convert page 3 of the TIFF file contract tif to a PCX file alchemy contract tif Z 3 p Convert all of the pages in the file to PCX files the output files will be called contract 001 contract 002 alchemy contract tif U p Image Alchemy 233 US Patent Image P Used by the US Patent and Trademark Office to store and distribute patent data Syntax P compressionType Parameter compressionType 0 Group 3 compressed 1 Group 4 compressed The default is Group 4 compressed Extensions pat Creator US Patent and Trademark Office Used by US Patent and Trademark Office Variations 1 bit black and white images Comments Alchemy can write multi page US Patent files when used with the U option see below for an example Examples Convert the TIFF file page1 tif to a US Patent file alchemy pagel tif P Convert all the pages in the TIFF file pages tif to a multi page US Patent file alchemy pages tif P U U 234 Image Alchemy Utah Raster Toolkit RLE U Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments The Utah Raster Toolkit is a set of public domain utilities for manipulating and converting images for various workstations U tle The University of Utah The University of Michigan Utah RLE toolkit 1 and 3 channel 8 bits per pixel files with an optional alpha channel While reading fi
148. ed by Variations Limitations 144 Image Alchemy GOES files are used for satellite image data G type type 0 GARS format 1 McIDAS format The default is 0 GARS format goe The University of Wisconsin National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA National Environmental Satellite Data Information Service NESDIS Various satellite image processing software including the McIDAS system 8 bits per pixel 16 and 32 bits per pixel read only When reading 16 and 32 bit images Alchemy discards all but the top 8 bits of data Alchemy discards any calibration data and level maps when reading images Because of difficulty in getting a sufficient number of test images in the GOES format especially the PUT format reading GOES images has not been thoroughly tested If you have any GOES images which Alchemy does not read correctly please contact us Comments Examples The GARS format is a 7680 bytes per block Motorola byte order EBCDIC format the McIDAS format is a continuous data Intel byte order ASCII format Since GOES images are always grayscale Alchemy assumes the use of the b and 8 options when writing a GOES file GOES images contain a lot of information which is not part of the image data This information includes the time and date the image was captured the satellite which captured the image the type of instrumentation used etc When reading a GOES image this information is disca
149. ee tein elesad teen se ee eh ie 87 Usage Instructions serierna ia 88 Missing Ponts nen nyna cai aed eileen eae cle eee 89 Multiple Fontmaps 00 eee ceeeseceeeceseceeeeeeeseeeecneeeeeeeees 90 Chapter 5 Conversion Options Tntrodu ction sii n she eee eoeeaeesaeieen sven E aT 91 Identifying Image Files 0 0 eee eseceneceneceteeeeeeeeeeenees 92 Input Opuons ca cers ined eal aan 93 IMAC BM any reenen ae ie EET RT ae 93 Other Informatii siisi A a 93 File Formats iesieta eeens eneee aien aa Reet 93 Image File Formats ADEX anepi onea a aati 95 Adobe Acrobat PDF eessesesssesssesssesseessressresereserseseseee 96 Adobe Photoshop issis 98 ANAS PIR cies eceseutit zs ccushuaceualssobustecatvidlagestolueestet T 100 Alpha Microsystems BMP 101 VERS o cdg chee eae coy EI E tenes destes doen s E ieee atest 102 Autodesk PICCE pininana erts 103 AUtOlO SIC e eie ee T A E dita eatin E 104 AVHRR ea aer eeen a e EEan pi eieiei 105 AVS X apsu krers hun e a E ede nas 107 Binary Information File BIF eeeeeeeesseessessesseeeses 108 Calcomp CORF nenese nner iie e aa e 111 CALS reepa e e E A ee Eia 113 Core IDC amirini venii i a Eod Shea eens 114 Cubicomp PictureMaker eeeeeeeereeeereeresreereereee 116 Dr Halo CUT iene nmn e a bes ice 118 Encapsulated PostScript ce eeeeeseesecssecseceeeeeeeeees 119 Epson Stylusssic cannaiiiiiddina eau wade 122 ER Mapper Raster oc ceeeeessceesseeeeeeeeneeeaes 124 Erdas LAN GIS IMG 00 ee
150. eeeeeeeneeeeeeens 237 MIBF sere asl sie bie eee ened Gen kee 238 WALT Oia ese vededsoesdicane treats suse cbse E EN ES 239 NVIVIG lh ed ites i inte eMedia E E el 240 Wavefront RLA RLB nnuccenti 241 Windows Bitmap cee ceeceeeeeseeereeesecnseceseceeeeeneeenees 242 WordPerfect Graphic File ceeeeeeeeeeeseeeneeenees 245 XBM varerne retr re A aa anand 246 XIM e ra Miele ticle de e tes ie ate ea 247 XPM o e cide tive ciett viens cod E a N 248 DATA D E E E E EE 251 Chapter 6 General Options Introduction er aie derna en a eee roaa re ects 253 Control Memory Usage 0 eee ceeceeeceseeereeeneeeseceaeenseees 254 Display Image Stats innisettar ei 255 Do Not Alter Output Filename eee eeeeceeeeeeeeees 256 Help isc csstieiid eine ete Aeon anette 258 Multi Page Input 1s csc ennea i 259 Multi Page Output neie ea 261 Override Input Type cee eeeeseeseeeseetseceeceseeeeeeeeeeenees 263 OVerW E hon eiee arne emit ole Leah dian teeta 265 Program Information eeeecssecsseceeceeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeenaeens 266 QUICE EET EE E E deelia einen ses 267 Response Files isisccttsfessesteccauts cacebietscdstbegees lotatelahiessietea cd 268 Response Output Filenames 0 0 0 0 eeeeesecsseceseceeeeeeeeees 270 Response Paired Filenames cs seeeeeceseeeeeeeeeeneeenees 272 Sequential Filenames iecerei niiin 273 Use Input Directories for Output s ssseseeeseeeereereeseereree 276 Use Input File Format for Output 00 eee eee eee eeeeees 277 Us
151. ent Graphics modes 2 black white and 4 gray scale Only the High Speed Interface inline format is supported When reading images must be preceded by a Graphics Parameter Block Convert the file input tif to a GM4 file called output gm4 alchemy input tif output gm4 a b Convert the file input tif to a GM2 file called output gm2 alchemy input tif output gm2 a b c2 AVHRR Parameter Extension Creators Used by Variations Limitations AVHRR files are used for satellite image data R outputType outputType 1 IDIDAS Uncompressed 2 IDIDAS Compressed type 1 The default is 1 ADIDAS Uncompressed Sst National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA National Environmental Satellite Data Information Service NESDIS IDIDAS SSTMAP IMGMAP Reads 8 and 11 bits per pixel IDIDAS AVHRR files Writes 11 bits per pixel IDIDAS AVHRR files Level 1B AVHRR files will be supported at a later date please contact us for more information Alchemy discards all but the top 8 bits when reading 11 bit AVHRR files When writing the bottom 3 bits are set to 0 Any graphics information is discarded when reading the file Since AVHRR images are always grayscale Alchemy assumes the use of the b and 8 options when writing an AVHRR file Image Alchemy 105 Comments Example 106 Image Alchemy AVHRR images contain a lot of information which is not part of the image data This information includes the time a
152. environment variable TMPDIR to a directory on a different partition For example to set the temporary file directory to the directory home images use setenv TMPDIR home images Contact your system administrator if you have problems with Alchemy running out of disk space while converting images When performing a long conversion Alchemy will automatically display an estimate of the time needed to complete the operation To disable the display of this information set the environment variable alchemy to p type setenv alchemy p at the prompt Image Alchemy 29 Differences between UNIX and MS DOS Pathnames Unintentional wildcard expansion 30 Sending output directly to devices Viewing images Image Alchemy Note that during PostScript conversions a completion time estimate is not displayed This is because the speed of various PostScript operations varies widely and any time estimate would be inaccurate The UNIX and MS DOS versions of Image Alchemy are very similar However there are several important differences between the two versions Because the MS DOS and UNIX operating systems use different conventions for path names users of UNIX will have to substitute forward slashes for the back slashes found in the examples in this manual UNIX users should also be aware that the UNIX shell they are using may be performing wildcard expansion on certain characters generally and Since thes
153. ere is no filename specified after the U because a single multi page output file is not being written alchemy docl tif doc2 tif doc3 tif U U d Convert the multi page TIFF files doc1 tif doc2 tif and doc3 tif into a single multi page PDF file this assumes that each TIFF file is a multi page file In this case there is a filename specified after the U because a single multi page output file is being written alchemy docl tif doc2 tif doc3 tif U U docs pdf d Override Input Type Purpose Force Alchemy to treat the input file as the specified file type Syntax inputType Parameter inputTypes ADEX eia a a ieee 24 Lumena CEL ianei ns 62 Adobe PDF 65 Macintosh PICT 10 Adobe Photoshop 74 MacPaint 49 Alias PIX Vivid IMG 16 MIFF 88 Alpha Microsystems BMP 42 MTV 17 Autodesk FLC ow eee 81 OS 2 BitMaP 0 eee 55 Autodesk PIC CEL cee 99 OSD Tens eniin 58 Autologic 0 0 28 PCPaint Pictor 29 AVHRR Calcomp Cubicomp PictureMaker a Dt Hal CU Trinnene 45 Enc PostSeript siese 14 ER Mapper Raster Erdas LAN GIS IMG 19 Explore TDI 93 Fargo Primera 69 FBM jiscecstszscveevceee 90 First Publisher Art 00 0 0 eee 46 Freedom of Press seseceeeeeee 25 Gem VDI Image edd GIB ss iis sited E GOES Hitachi Raster AR PCL iieii HP 48sx Graphic Object HSI JPE Gien eueiinaroirea HSI
154. esolution for fax images alchemy page2 tif p1 D 200 100 Convert the image flower tif to a PCJ file alchemy flower tif p2 Convert page 3 of the DCX file fax dcx to a TIFF file alchemy fax dcx Z 3 t Convert all of the pages in the file to TIFF files the output files will be called fax 001 fax 002 alchemy fax dcx U t PDS Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Examples PDS labeled images are used by NASA for planetary images P bg mq NASA NASA distributes collections of planetary images on CD ROM in PDS format 8 bit gray scale uncompressed PDS files 1 4 and 8 bit uncompressed and 8 bit first difference Huffman compressed files input only PDS images must begin with either an SFDU_LABEL or a FILE_TYPE record for Alchemy to be able to identify it Occasionally a PDS labeled image has a palette There doesn t seem to be any standard format for the palette Image Alchemy handles the palettes we ve encountered Any portions of the PDS labels not required to extract the image such as longitude and latitude are ignored Some PDS images actually consist of two files a label file and a data file To read that type image you should use the name of the label file and Alchemy will find the data file Convert the GOES file phoenix goe into a PDS labeled image alchemy phoenix goe p Image Alchemy 199 Do the same thing but name use
155. etted and 24 bit RGB with an optional alpha channel uncompressed 1 bit black and white 8 bit grayscale 8 bit paletted and 24 bit RGB with an optional alpha channel compressed read only Writing compressed files is not yet supported There doesn t seem to be any method for storing an 8 bit grayscale or paletted image with an alpha channel when writing such an image Alchemy will automatically convert the image to 24 bit RGB VIFF files may be in either byte order low byte first or high byte first Alchemy will read either byte order and always write VIFF files with high byte first byte order Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file image rgb to a VIFF file alchemy image rgb v ViTec Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Example T ViTec files are used by VITec image processing software T vit VITec VITec ELT 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit color files untiled 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit color files tiled input only Convert the file map erm to a VITec file alchemy map erm T Image Alchemy 239 Vivid Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Example 240 Image Alchemy Vivid is a shareware ray tracer for MS DOS computers I upper case i img als Stephen B Coy Vivid Ray Tracer Alias 24 bit RGB The Vivid Ray Tracer is a shareware program for PCs and is
156. f j W Wildcard Purpose Comments Limitations Allow the conversion of multiple files with a single execution of Alchemy dash dash The wildcard option allows you to specify multiple file names and file names which include wild card characters Alchemy will perform the same conversion for each input file name that it finds On MS DOS systems the use of the wildcard option is not required if the first file name specified includes a wildcard character or however to reduce confusion it is still recommended If you are using the wildcard option you may not specify an output file name the file names are automatically generated by substituting an appropriate extension to the input file names If you do specify an output file name it will be misinterpreted as another input file An output path name may specified and all output files will be stored there see the Examples section below for an example of this Any error will terminate the execution of Alchemy any images which appear in the filename list after the one causing the error will not be processed This includes attempting to overwrite an already existing file without specifying the o option If you use the W option in conjunction with wildcards certain errors will be treated as warnings and not cause Alchemy to terminate These errors are missing input files input files which could not be identified and output files which already existed but could n
157. from a file The input image will be re mapped to use the palette found in the specified file f filename filename Any valid image file which contains a palette Using the f option will cause the output image to be dithered unless you specify no dithering by using the d0 option The f option can be useful if you are combining several images into a collage or want to match an image to a pre existing palette You can also create a custom palette from scratch by using a text editor and creating a PAL file Cannot be combined with the spiff option S or the false color option F The number of colors in the final image will be equal to the number of colors in the palette being read in The specified file must contain a palette i e cannot be true color l Generate palette file F False color d Dither Convert the image bigimage tif to a pcx file using the palette from the file standard pal alchemy bigimage tif p f standard pal Image Alchemy 299 Convert the image color gif to a gif file called color2 gif using the palette from the file newpal gif alchemy color gif color2 fnewpal gif g 300 Image Alchemy Negate Purpose Comments Example Changes the image to a negative N This option is equivalent to a photographic negative When used on black and white images black is changed to white and white is changed to black On color images each of the Red Green and Blue channels are inverted se
158. g M Image Alchemy 187 Multi Image Palette L Syntax Parameters Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Related options 188 Image Alchemy This option will generate an optimum palette for a number of images This is useful for finding a common palette where multiple images are used animations for instance L filename filename name of the output file to contain the optimized palette pal Handmade Software Inc Image Alchemy HSI PAL files are always ASCII files PAL files contain only a palette The format of PAL files is described in Appendix H This output option is unique in that it will cause Alchemy to generate only one output file independent of how many input files are specified the other output options generate one output file per input file Also the file name of the output file must be specified immediately after the L option ordinarily the output file name can appear anywhere on the command line f Match image to specified palette F False color with specified palette l Generate a palette file for a single image Examples Generate an optimum palette called final pal for all GIF files in the current directory alchemy gif L final pal Now map all the GIF files to that palette putting the results in a sub directory call new the files cannot be placed in the current directory because the file names would conflict with the original image file names
159. g with red as the transparent color alchemy logo pcx g1 t 255 0 0 Write out a multi image GIF file called output gif using the files image00 gif through image99 gif this example will write out a local palette for each image alchemy image gif gl U output gif Do the same thing but force Alchemy to write out a global palette this assumes that all of the input gif images contain an identical palette alchemy image gif g1 U output gif F image00O gif If the images contained different palettes but you still wanted a single global palette you could use two runs of Image Alchemy to do this First you would use the Multi Image Palette output option to generate a pal file and then run Alchemy again matching each of the images to that palette alchemy image gif L temp pal c256 alchemy image gif g1 U output gif f temp pal Write out a multi image GIF file called output gif using the files image00 gif through image99 gif this example will write out a local palette for each image specifying a delay of 1 second between images the loop will repeat indefinitely alchemy image gif gl 100 U output gif Do the same thing but specify that the loop is to be displayed exactly twice alchemy image gif g1 100 2 U output gif Do the same thing but use disposal method 2 alchemy image gif g201 100 2 U output gif Image Alchemy 143 GOES Parameter Extension Creators Us
160. ge by removing rows and or columns from the image Note that this option can also be useful for displaying images which are not larger than the screen but which have an aspect ratio different than the display The same limitations as for scaled 8 bit viewing apply see above D Specify image resolution v View image in True color mode View big jpg in true color 640x480 mode reducing the image to fit on the screen alchemy big jpg V 640 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions Question Answer Question Answer How do I perform Scale to Gray Scale to Gray is used when the incoming image is black and white and it is being scaled to a lower resolution By converting the black and white data to grayscale while scaling the resulting image will maintain readability For example if you are displaying a received fax document full size on a monitor To perform scale to gray use the following options b c256 in addition to the scaling options which must use type b or better scaling For example alchemy fax tif b c256 xb800 Yb600 g will convert the fax tif file into a grayscale GIF file You might also want to use alchemy tif b c256 yb 72 72 g this will convert the tif files in the current directory to grayscale GIF files at 72 dpi Why can t my paint package read the Targa file I wrote with Image Alchemy Some software which reads Targa files cannot handle compressed files In addition some softwar
161. ge will be converted If you specify two parameters all pages between those two numbers will be converted inclusive e g U 2 3 will convert pages 2 and 3 If you specify three parameters the third will be used to indicate the step between pages i e U 2 8 2 will convert pages 2 4 6 and 8 Image Alchemy reads multi page TIFF DCX PCX PCL US Patent FLC HRF JEDMICS Collage MIFF and GIF Image Alchemy PS has multi page reading support for these file formats plus PostScript and PDF Convert all the pages in the PCL file doc pcl to TIFF files alchemy doc pcl U t Convert all the pages of all the TIFF files to PCX files placing the output files into the directory images output alchemy tif U p images output Do the same thing but write a single multi page DCX variant PCX file called doc pcx alchemy tif U p1 U doc pcx Do the same thing but only convert the even pages starting at page 4 9999 is used as the ending page count since we don t know how many pages the TIFF files contain alchemy tif U 4 9999 2 p1 U doc pcx Multi Page Output U Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Limitations Examples Allow the output of image files which contain multiple pages U filename filename Specifies the output filename when writing a single multi page file The multi page output option allows you to write multiple images or pages to a single image file Because it is possibl
162. h operating system you are using and which LaserWriter driver you have If the LaserWriter does not appear as one of the choices you will have to install it off of your system disks If you have installed the PS Printer driver from Adobe choose that instead of the LaserWriter driver Note that you don t actually need to have a LaserWriter since you will only be using the driver to generate a PostScript file If you are changing from a different printer you will be told to choose Page Setup in all open applications Printing to a PostScript file To generate a PostScript file with LaserWriter version 7 choose Print from the File menu in your application Then choose PostScript File as the Destination from the print dialog box LaserWriter LaserJet 4 712 Copies 1 Pages OAI From To Cancel Cover Page No First Page Last Page Paper Source Paper Cassette Manual Feed Print Black amp White Color Grayscale Destination Printer PostScript File h You may also enable Color Grayscale to select printing a color or grayscale file After selecting the Save button you will be presented with the Save Disk File dialog E Document Disk Y E Document D meaguali act picture fas registratian card D BPE A 2S E39 LEDSB ERS Save Disk File As Postscript Either accept the default filename of PostScript or enter a new filename and click the Save
163. h this If you are using a UCR file you can also compensate for dot gain by using a UCR file with a gamma of 2 0 Image Alchemy 365 366 Question Answer Image Alchemy It is not as necessary to compensate for dot gain when printing at a resolution less than the printer s maximum resolution This is because the output device automatically groups individual pixels together to make the output pixel which reduces the amount of extra toner or ink being deposited on the page as in this example of printing a 150 dpi pixel on a 300 dpi device The same is true if you are using dithering types 20 and 22 since those dithering types cluster the dots Why can t my favorite desktop publishing package read the TIFF file I wrote with Image Alchemy TIFF is an extremely versatile standard it can handle anything from 1 bit images to full color images with an alpha channel Also TIFF allows many different types of compression Unfortunately this versatility means that it s difficult for a single piece of software to be able to read in every valid TIFF file If the software specifies the classes of TIFF it can read you can force Alchemy to write out a specific TIFF class by using the following options class B 8 b c2 t2 class G 8 b t1 class P 8 t1 class R 24 t1 Class B is black and white Class G is gray scale Class P is paletted and Class R is true color If the supported classes are not specified experiment with
164. he Targa file wrong tga to another Targa file called right tga swapping the red and blue channels alchemy wrong tga right tga a n 312 Image Alchemy Transparency Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Examples eat Specify which color in the output image is considered to be transparent Note that transparency is only supported by certain file formats t red green blue red green blue Specifies the color to use for the transparent color 0 0 0 is black 255 255 255 is white The default is 255 255 255 white Only supported by GIF89A and PNG See those file formats for more information If the source file has a transparent color it is now preserved during conversion unless a new transparent value is defined Convert the image logo tif to a GIF file specifying white as the transparent color alchemy logo tif g1 t Convert the image logo tif to a GIF file specifying black as the transparent color alchemy logo tif g1 t 0 0 0 Do the same thing this time using red as the transparent color alchemy logo tif g1 t 255 0 0 Check to see if logo gif has a transparent color alchemy logo gif x1 Image Alchemy 313 True Color 15 bits 15 Purpose Syntax Comments Related options Example 314 Image Alchemy Force the output image to be true color 15 bits 5 bits per component 15 See the True Color 24 bits section below 8 Paletted output 16 True color output
165. he different dithering algorithms spread the error over a different area or use a different weighting within the same area Error diffusion can be done as a normal raster left to right top to bottom or as a serpentine raster alternating left to right and right to left top to bottom A serpentine raster tends to break up visible patterns introduced by dithering Random noise can also be added to help break up visible patterns in the resulting image Further For more information on Heckbert s median cut and dithering see information the appropriate reference listed in the References section below Image Alchemy 379 380 Image Alchemy What is JPEG Compression Who are those JPEG guys Overview Is lossy compression bad JPEG stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group This is a group of experts who defined a standard compression scheme for still images commonly called JPEG Compression The JPEG compression standard is an ISO standard JPEG Compression consists of a series of complex mathematical operations including color space conversion discrete cosine transforms quantization and entropy coding After these steps you end up with an image which takes fewer bits to store than you started out with However when you decompress a JPEG compressed image you end up with an image that is not quite the same as the original which is why JPEG Compression is referred to as lossy You might well ask why anyon
166. he effect of negating the image while applying the contrast adjustment a contrast value of 1 0 has the same effect as using the N option y Brightness Adjustment G Gamma Correction To convert the Mac PICT file test pic to a PCX file while slightly decreasing the contrast of the image alchemy test pic p Y 0 90 Dither Purpose Parameters Comments Specifies the type of dithering to apply to the image d s ditherType perturbation If the d is immediately followed by an s then a serpentine raster is used ditherType 0 None 1 Floyd Steinberg 2 Stucki 3 Jarvis Judice amp Ninke 4 Stevenson and Arce 5 Sierra Lite 20 Halftone clustered dot 21 Bayer dispersed dot 22 Halftone 2 clustered dot The default is Floyd Steinberg perturbation O through 127 The default is 0 Dithering reduces the color banding in an image caused by the palette not having a perfect match for every color in the image Types 1 through 5 are all error diffusion dithers Types 1 and 5 are the fastest of the diffusion dithers and they usually look the best on low resolution devices like CRTs Types 2 3 and 4 all tend to cause an image to appear more grainy on low resolution output devices such as CRTs However they produce better results than types 1 or 5 on high resolution low color output devices such as laser printers or 1 bit CMYK plotters Image Alchemy 293 Examples 294 Image Alchemy Type 22 is a
167. he same except for one field in the header Targa files allow a footer containing additional information such as aspect ratio However some software is unable to read Targa files which have a footer so Alchemy allows all valid combinations to be written The most common variant for software to be able to read is 24 bit uncompressed specify a0 and 24 Examples Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file input tif to an uncompressed 24 bit Targa file alchemy input tif a 24 Convert the file input tif to an uncompressed 15 bit Targa file called output tga with no footer alchemy input tif output tga al0 15 Image Alchemy 229 TIFF Tagged Interchange File Format t TIFF is designed to be a universal raster image format It s very popular with desktop publishing packages Syntax t compressionType Parameter compressionType 0 None 1 LZW 2 PackBits 3 Group III Fax 4 Group IV Fax 5 CCITT RLE 7 LZW with Prediction 0 Multi strip 100 One strip 0 Not bit reversed applies to fax compressed 200 Bit reversed applies to fax compressed 0 RGB 400 CMYK The default is LZW Compression multi strip not bit reversed and RGB See the comments section below for more information Options are combined by adding see below for an example Extensions tiff if Creator Aldus Corp Microsoft Corp 230 Image Alchemy Used by Variat
168. hemy 415 416 DOS4GVM Options Image Alchemy Image Alchemy automatically uses virtual memory if you do not have enough physical memory available However there may be cases where you wish to change the behavior of virtual memory This is done through the DOS4GVM environment variable To set the DOS4GVM environment variable use set DOS4GVM option value A is used with options that take values instead of since Wow the DOS command shell does not allow to appear in environment variables DeleteSwapFile On Off Default On By default the swap file is deleted when Alchemy exits Program startup is quicker if the file is not deleted PhysMin n KIM bytes Default 1024K The minimum amount of RAM managed by VMM PhysMax n KIM bytes Default 65M The maximum amount of RAM managed by VMM SwapFileName path filename The default name is DOS4GVM SWP The default path is the executable directory SwapInc n KIM bytes Default 4096K The size by which the swap file grows SwapMin n KIM bytes Default 0 The minimum or initial size of the swap file VirtualSize n KIM bytes Default 16M The size of the virtual memory space Changing the To change the default values set the DOS4GVM environment Defaults variable For example set DOS4GVM VirtualSize 64M PhysMax 16M Sets up a swap file up to 64 megabytes in size after using up to 16 megabytes of RAM Image Alchemy 417 418 Image Alchemy
169. hemy uses are the most common Some versions of the PBM toolkit read and write Sun Raster files which have the wrong RGB order causing the red and blue channels to be swapped You can correct for this problem by using the swap RGB option see Chapter 7 for more information Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Examples Convert the SGI file sgiout to a sun raster file called sun im8 alchemy sgiout sun im8 s Do the same thing writing out a compressed sun raster file alchemy sgiout sun im8 s1 Do the same thing preserving the alpha channel information alchemy sgiout sun im8 s1 I Convert the Sun Raster file lena im24 to an uncompressed TIFF file correcting for a wrong RGB order in the Sun Raster alchemy lena im24 n t0 Image Alchemy 227 Targa Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments 228 Image Alchemy a Targa files were created to support the line of Targa graphics cards The Targa format is popular with scanners and high end paint packages a outputType outputT ype 0 Uncompressed 1 Run Length Coded O Include footer 10 No footer The default is 0 Uncompressed include footer Options are combined by adding see below for an example tga Truevision Inc Various scanning and paint software 8 15 16 24 and 32 bit images 32 bit images include an alpha channel 15 and 16 bit output are actually t
170. hes c centimeters x factor units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter This command can be used instead of the Zo command if you only want to specify the output image height and not the width Convert an image which was originally rendered to 8 5 x 11 page to a Targa file which is no larger than 600 pixel high at the same time preserving the aspect ratio alchemy imagel ps a Zy 600p Z Parameter Comments Specify which page s to render Zp Zp page Zp startPage endPage page Specify page number The default is page 1 startPage Specify beginning page number endPage Specify ending page number If the Zp option is used without a following parameter all pages in the input file s will be converted If you specify a single parameter after the Zp option only that page will be converted If you specify two parameters all pages between those two numbers will be converted inclusive e g Zp 2 3 will convert pages 2 and 3 When converting multiple pages either multiple files will be written each containing a single page or a single multi page file will be written depending on the use of the U option See the U option in Chapter 6 for more information and the examples section below for an example Image Alchemy 59 Examples 60 Image Alchemy Convert page 2 of the file test ps to a GIF file called test gif alchemy test ps
171. ill be indistinguishable from rendering the PostScript file directly to the final size See the examples section below for information about the syntax required for these operations While interpreting a PostScript file Alchemy will display progress information It is normal for the rate at which progress is indicated to vary considerably while interpreting a file This is because PostScript is a programming language and interpreting some commands can take far longer than others Image Alchemy 43 44 Level 2 Support Threading Image Alchemy Image Alchemy PS can convert all Level 1 and Level 2 PostScript files If you have a PostScript file that Alchemy does not read correctly please contact us Image Alchemy PS is threaded except for the version of Image Alchemy PS for MS DOS This allows the PostScript data to be RIPed and immediately passed to the rest of Alchemy as opposed to RIPing the entire image and then converting it Also if you are using a computer with multiple CPUs Alchemy PS will use two of them during conversion Antialias Parameter Comments Example Specify amount of antialiasing to perform Za mode mode 0 No antialias 1 Antialias factor 2 25 2 Antialias factor 4 3 Antialias factor 9 4 Antialias factor 16 The default is No antialias Antialiasing can vastly improve the quality of an image rendered for use on grayscale or color devices by averaging a number of pixels together to convert bl
172. im32 image77 k 24 Image Alchemy 207 Puzzle Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Example 208 Image Alchemy U The Puzzle format is used by the UNIX supplied Puzzle program U pzl puzzle cm Unknown The puzzle program 8 bits per pixel Since puzzle files are always paletted Alchemy assumes the use of the 8 option when writing a puzzle file Convert the file einstein im8 to a Puzzle file alchemy einstein im8 U Q0 Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Example q The QO format is apparently commonly used by various Japanese scanning painting and viewing software to store 24 bit images Handmade Software has no information other than a basic description of the format and some sample images if you have further information on the QO format please contact us q q0 For pixel data gb For pixel data fal For image header information Unknown Various Japanese image processing software 24 bits per pixel QO files are actually two files one with the extension rgb or q0 and the other with the extension fal The rgb or q0 file contains the actual image data and the fal file contains the header information You specify the name of the rgb or q0 file and Alchemy automatically generates the name of the fal file When writing a QO file Alchemy will overwrite without warning existing fal files Since QO files are always true
173. image depth in number of bits per pixel or number of colors and the palette if the image has a palette Some file formats include quite a bit of additional data in the header such as the name of the image or the date and time the image was created Some file formats store information which is usually found in the header in a separate file A technique for reducing the number of colors needed by an image typically used to convert a true color image to a paletted image Named after Paul Heckbert who originally described the technique in Color Image Quantization for Frame Buffer Display SIGGRAPH 82 Proceedings p 297 A number or sequence of numbers that is found at or near the start of an image file so that software may determine what type of format the file is Most formats have a well defined magic number some formats do not in which case Alchemy examines various parameters in the header of the file and guesses what format the image is An image which isn t true color Each pixel in the image is an index into a table of values typically red green and blue which describe the color of that pixel Most paletted images are limited to 8 bits of information which allows 256 unique colors Most display adapters only allow the display of paletted images Alchemy can display true color images on those display adapters by using a uniform palette An image which does not contain a palette Each pixel in the image is represented by at
174. image on my VGA board it looks much worse than when I first convert it to a GIF file and then view it Why is this To save time Alchemy automatically uses a uniform palette when you are just viewing a true color image When converting to a different file format Alchemy uses Heckbert quantization to generate a palette The difference in image quality is the difference between using a uniform palette and an optimum palette See Appendix B Color and Dithering for more information on palette generation I m using Alchemy to print an image The print out is much darker than the original image Why is this Many hard copy output devices including laser printers ink jet printers and ink jet plotters have a property known as dot gain Dot gain causes more toner or ink to be placed on the paper than is expected This is caused by the fact that the individual pixels being output are round and in order to completely fill in a square grid with round pixels the round pixels have to be larger than the square in fact the circle has 7 2 times as much area as the square In this example of a single pixel the black area represents the extra toner or ink that is being printed You can compensate for dot gain by adjusting the gamma of the image during the conversion process The exact gamma value will depend on the output device but in general specifying an output gamma of 2 0 produces good results Gi 1 0 Go 2 0 on the command line will accomplis
175. ing ps p zd 200 200 Use Bounding Box Ze Parameter Comments Example Specify whether or not to use the bounding box from EPS files Ze mode mode 0 Don t use bounding box 1 Use bounding box The default is Don t use bounding box The command causes Alchemy PS to look for a bounding box or a HiRes bounding box in the header of a PostScript or EPS file and if present use the image offset and input page size data from it Using this command is equivalent to manually setting those parameters using the Z_ and Zi options The values from the bounding box will take precedence over any offset or input size specified This option is useful for reading EPS files which don t have the origin at 0 0 The bounding box values are generated by the application writing the EPS file As such there may be extra white space around the edge of the image or portions of the image cut off the bounding box Alchemy PS uses is equivalent to the boundaries that an importing application displays when reading an EPS file which does not have a preview Convert the file sah eps to an RTL file for an HP DesignJet 650C using the bounding box from the file alchemy sah eps r7 Zel Image Alchemy 65 Complex Examples Printing a PostScript file on an HP LaserJet printer 66 Image Alchemy These examples show how to accomplish various common tasks with Alchemy PS See Chapters 5 through 8 for more information on the other com
176. intosh for Mac PICT Sun for Sun Raster and None for all others This option forces black and white to be located in certain places in the palette This is primarily useful when displaying images on certain hardware which uses black and white to display menus and other information Generate a GIF file which has black at color 1 and white at color 0 alchemy sample jpg g zs 3 Image Alchemy 307 Palette Selection Palette Weighting ZW Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Examples 308 Image Alchemy To select between different types of palette weighting zw weightingType weightingType O NTSC 1 Equal The default is NTSC weighting NTSC palette weighting places the highest importance on green and the lowest importance on blue when mapping images to a palette Equal palette weighting places equal importance on red green and blue when mapping images to a palette Convert sample jpg into GIF format using equal palette weighting alchemy sample jpg zw1 Preserve Palette While Scaling f Purpose Syntax Comments Examples Keep the original palette when scaling paletted images f When using type b or better scaling on paletted images Alchemy has to convert the image to true color as part of the scaling process and then convert the image back to paletted before saving Ordinarily the best results are obtained if Alchemy is allowed to choose the final palette based on the scaled image content H
177. ion see Appendix I Acknowledgments Specifying a one strip TIFF output option causes Alchemy to generate a TIFF file which contains the image data in one long strip ordinarily you do not want the entire image data be in one strip since this increases the memory requirements of software reading the image if you do not specify one strip TIFF output Alchemy will generate a TIFF file which has 8k strips This option is useful because some software primarily fax software cannot handle multi strip TIFF files Some Fax decoding software requires the bit order to be backwards when reading a Fax compressed TIFF file You can write such a file by adding 200 to the appropriate output type when writing a TIFF file When converting a TIFF file which contains multiple pages you can specify which page to convert by using the Z option followed by the page number You can also convert all of the pages in the file by using the Multi Page option U see the examples section below Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the file input gif to an uncompressed gray scale TIFF file called output tif alchemy input gif output tif t 0 b Convert the file cover bmp to a Group III Fax compress
178. ions Limitations Conments Various desktop publishing and scanning software Reads TIFF class B G R and most class P files Reads 1 through 8 12 24 and 32 bit images Input compression types supported are raw LZW PackBits Group III fax Group IV fax CCITT RLE byte and word aligned NeXT Thunderscan PICIO and SGI RLE Writes class B G P and R files depending on the input file and options specified Writes 1 4 8 24 and 32 bit images Output compression types supported are raw LZW PackBits Group III fax Group IV fax and CCITT RLE CMYK images are always 8 bits per component Class P TIFF files can only be read if they have 1 4 or 8 bits per pixel TIFF files are often written out incorrectly Alchemy attempts to figure out what is wrong and make intelligent decisions If you have TIFF files which Alchemy cannot read please contact us 1 4 and 8 bit output files are paletted unless the palette is all gray in which case the output is a gray scale file When writing TIFF files using any of the fax compression types Group III Group IV and CCITT RLE Alchemy uses a photometric interpretation of minIsWhite See Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for more information on writing TIFF files which conform to the various TIFF classes Image Alchemy 231 Examples 232 Image Alchemy LZW compression is patented by Unisys Corporation and used under license for more informat
179. ions 24 bits per pixel RGB Comments This is a really great printer buy one and a copy of Image Alchemy PS to use with it The printer is always at 300 dpi if you want the output to be at the expected size specify D300 300 as one of the options 156 Image Alchemy The Reserve Side paper types are used if you are printing on the reverse side of the paper Example Convert the image sample jpg to a HP PhotoSmart file 5 inches wide alchemy sample jpg D300 300 S Xb5i 4 Image Alchemy 157 HP Raster Transfer Language RTL r RTL files are used by HP color raster printers and plotters Syntax r outputType Parameter outputType 0 PaintJet DeskJet and Color LaserJet uncompressed 1 DesignJet and HP7600 uncompressed 2 DesignJet and HP7600 TIFF compressed 3 HP7600 planar uncompressed 4 HP7600 planar TIFF compressed 5 HP7600 planar Group III compressed 6 DesignJet on the fly uncompressed 7 DesignJet on the fly TIFF compressed 9 PaintJet DeskJet and Color LaserJet TIFF compressed 10 Encad NovaJet TIFF compressed 11 DesignJet compressed 4 channel 12 DesignJet on the fly compressed 4 channel 13 DesignJet compressed 24 bit 14 DesignJet on the fly compressed 24 bit 15 DesignJet compressed 24 bit old dithering 16 DesignJet on the fly compressed 24 bit old dithering The default is Type 2 See the comments section below for information on output types 11 through 16 Extension rtl Creator Hewlett Packard C
180. is in the image being converted It then proceeds to subdivide this histogram cube by dividing boxes in half until it has created as many boxes as there are palette entries The default Heckbert method bases this decision as to where to divide a box is based on the distribution of colors within the box This will create boxes which have approximately equal popularity in the image Using the zh 1 option changes the algorithm to instead divide the boxes in half creating boxes which are therefore equal in size Palette entries are then assigned to represent each box using one of several different methods You can change the method used to select a color to represent each box by using the zs option see chapter 6 for more information The default method is to use the mean of all the colors in the box However for some images slightly better results can be obtained by using the center of the box without regard to where the pixels are in the box For images being reduced to a very small number of colors less than 16 better results can be obtained by using a corner of the box the boxes tend to be large when reducing an image to a small number of colors therefore picking colors near the centers of the boxes will give you muddy colors while using corners of the boxes will give you saturated colors And having saturated colors allows the dithering algorithms to generate better looking images There are other methods of generating a palett
181. ith an optional alpha channel 8 bit paletted PictureMaker files are unsupported This format is not the same as IBM Picture Maker The option for adjusting the image size to 512 x 488 is useful because Cubicomp PictureMaker does not work with images which are not of this exact size If either the X or Y dimension is larger than 512 or 488 respectively that dimension will be truncated If either dimension is smaller than 512 or 488 the image will be padded on the right hand side or bottom as necessary with black Example PictureMaker images have either three or four separate files per image a red file a green file a blue file and an optional alpha channel file When reading or writing a PictureMaker file specify the name of the r8 file Alchemy automatically generates the name of the g8 b8 and a8 files When writing a PictureMaker file Alchemy will overwrite without warning existing g8 b8 and a8 files To preserve the alpha channel information when converting to or from Cubicomp PictureMaker files use the I option Convert the 24 bit JPEG image stones jpg to PictureMaker files alchemy stones jpg P Image Alchemy 117 Dr Halo CUT Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples 118 Image Alchemy C Dr Halo CUT files are used by various MS DOS based paint programs C pal Palette and header data cut Pixel data Media Cybernetics Dr HALO III Paint Package H
182. its per channel for a total of 32x32x32 different colors 32 768 This is the same color resolution as a Targa 15 file A paletted display or image file has the same color resolution limit as a true color display or image file but in addition there is a limit on how many points inside the cube can be used at the same time An 8 bit file format such as GIF allows 256 different colors out of 16 million A non true color SVGA board also only allows 256 different colors at one time So converting a true color file to a paletted file involves reducing the number of occupied points in the color cube There are several ways this can be done Image Alchemy supports two methods of generating a palette The simplest and fastest method is to use a palette containing colors which are uniformly distributed in the RGB cube this is referred to as a uniform palette This has the advantage that it s fast and the same palette can be used for any image the primary disadvantage is that most images don t contain colors from everywhere in the RGB cube so palette entries are wasted representing colors that aren t needed for the particular image being converted Optimal palettes Assigning colors To generate a palette which is better for representing a particular image Image Alchemy supports Heckbert s median cut algorithm This algorithm first builds a three dimensional table a histogram cube indicating how popular any given color in the RGB cube
183. k on most SVGA cards Use to force a reset between images robust slide show mode Robust slide show mode causes some monitors to have to resync between images Display the images flower gif puppy gif and kitten gif in a slideshow repeating the loop and pausing 5 seconds between images alchemy flower gif puppy gif kitten gif y oe 510 Do the same thing but use robust slide show mode alchemy flower gif puppy gif kitten gif aye 54 0 Do the same thing but with no screen clear alchemy flower gif puppy gif kitten gif Image Alchemy 355 View Image Purpose Parameter Comments Related options Example 356 Image Alchemy View file v horizontalResolution horizontalResolution 320 Use 320x200 mode 360 Use 360x480 mode 640 Use 640x480 mode 800 Use 800x600 mode 1024 Use 1024x768 mode 1280 Use 1280x1024 mode If displaying on a Western Digital chipset 8514 A or VESA compatible VGA board an optional parameter may follow the v command This parameter specifies horizontal resolution and may be 320 360 640 800 1024 or 1280 The default is to use the lowest resolution which can fit the entire image You may set the environment variable alchemy to indicate the highest horizontal resolution you want Alchemy to use when displaying images for example set alchemy 800 to will cause Alchemy to use only 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions when displaying images If the image is true color a uniform
184. know what you want to accomplish but not how to specify the correct combination of options For example you may wish to resize a true color Targa file that you have scanned and convert it to a 16 color GIF file Let s say that the input file name is file tga and you want to generate a file with the name file gif In this case you could use alchemy file tga Xb640 Yb480 c16 g However there would be no penalty in quality if you did things in two steps alchemy file tga temp raw Xb640 Yb480 r alchemy temp raw file gif cl6 g In this case you are telling Alchemy to use a temporary raw file called temp raw Except for having to delete the file temp raw this would give you identical results to doing things in one step However the order of steps is important in many cases For example reversing the order of the two operations in the previous example alchemy file tga temp raw c16 g alchemy temp raw file gif Xb640 Yb480 g would give different results This is because the scaling operation has to temporarily convert the image to true color but the GIF file you are generating has to be paletted so the second operation would re dither the image lowering the quality Image Alchemy 39 Illegal combinations 40 of options Image Alchemy Sometimes you will have to perform operations using multiple steps because there are some combinations of options that Alchemy explicitly does not allow These combin
185. lation and usually doesn t produce significantly better results If the dpi information in the input file is missing or incorrect you can supply a dpi value using the D option X Scale in horizontal dimension Y Scale in vertical dimension D Specify image resolution Convert a TIFF file that was scanned at 400 dpi to a 300 dpi PCL file preserving the size of the image alchemy image tif P y 300 300 Convert a GIF file which was designed to be viewed on a 72 dpi monitor to a GIF file which will look the same size on a 100 dpi monitor using medium quality scaling we use the D 72 72 option because the original GIF file does not contain that information alchemy orig gif new gif g D 72 72 yb 100 100 Image Alchemy 325 Convolve Image Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Examples 326 Image Alchemy yf Applies any one of a number of convolutions to an image such as sharpen or blur yf filename filename The name of the file which contains the convolution information The various convolutions that ship with Image Alchemy are found in the samples directory Additional convolutions are available from our server at http www handmade com conv Convert the TIFF file image tif to a TIFF file called new tif sharpening it in the process alchemy image tif new tif t yf samples sharpen Convert the TIFF file image tif to an HP RTL file for the NovaJet scaling it to 2500x2550 and blurring it
186. le but will generate a slightly higher quality plot alchemy fish ps prn r 7 Zm 2 Zo 17i 221i Z Xb34i Yb44i gt Zd 600 600 You may of course also want to combine any of the above examples with a different dithering type for example d22 to use dithering type 22 alchemy fish ps prn r 7 Zm 2 Xb34i Yb44i d 22 Zd 600 600 Or use a Alchemy Color Correction file C d3j2500a acc to use the ACC file dj2500a acc alchemy fish ps prn r 7 Zm 2 Xb34i Yb44i C dj2500a acc Zd 600 600 Image Alchemy 69 70 Preparing a PostScript file for imaging on a Scodl slide recorder Image Alchemy Render the image to be full size on the slide which is assumed to be 36mm x 24mm This assumes the Scodl file will be imaged at 2000 by 1366 and that the file was printed in landscape mode if the file were in portrait mode it wouldn t fill much of the slide We make the image size reasonably large with the PostScript interpreter then after the image is clipped to the active image area we scale it using raster scaling to fill the slide Note that the preserve aspect ratio option is required for both the PostScript rendering step the z option and the raster scaling step the option alchemy slide ps slide scd s0 Zm 2 Zi 11 8 5 Zo 2000p 1366p 2t Xb2000 YpT366 Zc l Do the same thing but this time also rotating the image 90 degrees alchemy slide ps slide scd sO Zm 2 Zi 11 8 5
187. les j Note the use of the option to indicate to Alchemy that more than one filename will be specified For MS DOS users it is also possible to place wildcards in response files For example if you want to convert all of the gif tif and tga files to JPEG files you can create a text file which looks like this called wild BOLE eae Bega And then use this command line to convert those files to JPEG files alchemy wild j UNIX users can accomplish the same task by using 1s and redirecting output to a file ls gif tif tga gt wild Comments Using output filename response files And then use this command line to convert those files to JPEG files note the use of the option to indicate to Alchemy that you are giving it more than one file to convert alchemy wild j If you wanted to scale the images at the same time using the scale text file created earlier you would add that response file to the command line For example alchemy files scale j A line in a response file which begins with a is treated as a comment and ignored Response files may contain commands and filenames on multiple lines and may also contain blank lines Sometimes you may need to convert a list of filenames but have the output filenames have unrelated names With Alchemy you can do that in one of two ways You can give Alchemy a list of output filenames this list is similar to a response file that cont
188. les which are 1 channel and have either no color map or a single channel color map are assumed to be gray scale images The color map if present will be used as a gamma correction table Files which are 1 channel and have a 3 channel color map are assumed to be paletted color files Files which are 3 channel are assumed to be true color When writing RLE files Alchemy will generate a 1 channel file with a 3 channel color map for paletted images and a 3 channel file with no color map for true color images The Utah Raster Toolkit is available free of charge via anonymous ftp ftp cs utah edu pub urt_3 0 tar Z Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Image Alchemy 235 Example Convert the PBM file image ppm to a Utah RLE file alchemy image ppm u 236 Image Alchemy Verity Image Format VIF E Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Example VIF is used by the Topic text retrieval software E vif Verity Corp Topic 1 bit black and white Convert the file fax tif to a VIF file alchemy fax tif E Image Alchemy 237 VIFF Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Example 238 Image Alchemy V VIFF files are used by Khoros a visual programming environment for the X Windowing System V XV Khoral Research Khoros 1 bit black and white 8 bit grayscale 8 bit pal
189. letted with 16 colors or less a 4 bit file is generated If the output image is paletted with more than 16 colors an 8 bit file is generated And if the output image is true color a 24 bit file is generated You can explicitly force any of these file types by using other Alchemy options For example if you wanted a 1 bit Windows Bitmap file you would specify c2 b w To force a 4 bit file use c16 w To force an 8 bit file use c256 w And to force a true color file use 24 w Image Alchemy identifies the type of file being read by checking various magic numbers and other information that varies from format to format Unfortunately some formats do not have a magic number in those cases Alchemy uses other information to guess as to the image type It is possible for Image Alchemy to incorrectly identify an image if this happens you can use the option to force Alchemy to recognize the file as a particular format see Chapter 6 for more information on the option Input Options MacBinary Other information File Formats Some input file formats have optional parameters which affect how the input file is read These parameters can specify such things as the page to read for multi page formats such as PCL which bands to read for multi band formats such as Core IDC or which resolution to read for multi resolution formats such as PhotoCD The option used to specify input options is Z This is followed by one or mo
190. long exe program is a Windows 95 Windows NT console application It is also a 32 bit version of Image Alchemy In addition to supporting larger files than alchemy exe it has the ability to read and write files which have long filenames which are supported by Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 0 If you need to use alch386 exe or alchlong exe simply substitute it for alchemy exe in the examples shown in the manual At a minimum you must have the following hardware and software to run Image Alchemy An MS DOS computer equipped with an 80386 80486 Pentium or other 32 bit Intel processor Many of the conversions that Alchemy does are CPU intensive so a faster computer is definitely an advantage At least 4 megabytes of memory Hard drive Operating system Optional equipment Display Math co processor Packing list A hard drive with as much free space possible Converting very high resolution images can require large amounts of disk space for example a 8 5 x 11 color PostScript file converted at 300 dpi will require up to 50 megabytes of disk space Windows 95 Windows NT or MS DOS 3 x or greater because of the additional free memory available use of MS DOS 5 0 or higher is recommended Note that the setup exe program used by Image Alchemy is a Windows 32 bit application If you need to install Image Alchemy on a computer which is running Windows 3 1 or MS DOS contact us for an alternate set of install disks
191. lossy compression 381 Lumena 181 LZW 410 M MacBinary 93 182 184 Macintosh 79 182 184 MacOS 364 MacPaint 184 Magic Number 420 Margins 53 Match Palette 299 Matrix Instruments 216 Mauldin Michael 412 maximum display resolution 26 McIDAS 144 Media Cybernetics 118 Memory 254 364 Michael L Mauldin 132 Micro Dry printers 102 Microsoft 72 Microsoft Corp 230 242 Microsoft Windows 71 242 364 MIFF 185 Mimaki MRL 1 186 Mirror Image 328 Missing fonts 89 missing input 280 MIT 246 247 248 251 Monaco 425 MRL 1 186 MTV Ray Tracer 187 Multi Image Palette 188 Multi Page Input 259 Multi Page Output 261 multiple files 281 Multiple fontmaps 90 multiple pages 259 261 Mutoh 160 N NASA 199 Nearest Neighbor 324 335 338 NEC Colormate PS 71 Negate 301 NESDIS 105 144 Netscape 319 network boards 25 NOAA 105 144 noise 294 378 non overwriteable 280 Nothing Real 129 Novajet 43 158 159 322 329 number of colors 290 O Offset Image 329 Offset View 354 Only Scale If Too Large 331 Image Alchemy 435 Only Scale If Too Small 332 Operating system 21 Optimal palettes 377 Options 31 OS 2 Bitmap 190 OS 2 Icon 191 Out of Memory 364 Output Filename 256 272 output files 270 output gamma 297 Output Page Height 58 Output Page Size 55 Output Page Width 57 OutputExtension 32 OutputFileName 32 OutputPathName 33 Override Input Type 263 Overwrite 265 P Packed 394 page s 42 P
192. mage All of the scale types other than nearest neighbor give much better results than nearest neighbor scaling but they are slower and require a new palette to be generated for paletted output files you can force Alchemy to use the original palette by using the f option and specifying the original file name or using the f option X Scale in horizontal dimension Preserve aspect ratio D Specify image resolution See the X option Scale Image in Horizontal Direction above for examples Image Alchemy 339 Set Horizontal DPI X Purpose Parameters Comments Related options Examples 340 Image Alchemy Change the horizontal dpi of an image to a value based on the specified final image size e g if you have an image which is 100 pixels across and you specify 5 inches this command sets the horizontal dpi to 20 X size units size The size of the output image in the horizontal dimension units The units the size parameter is in i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter This command is similar to the D command except that the dpi value is set based on the size specified and the number of pixels in the image To set the vertical dpi use the Y command described below If you want to preserve the aspect ratio in the image use the command Using both the Y and commands will cause the dimensions given
193. mage Alchemy 33 Limitations on filenames 34 Example Image Alchemy Convert all of the GIF files in the directory images to TIFF files placing the TIFF files in the new directory alchemy images gif new t Since Alchemy lets you optionally enter a space between an option and its parameter it is possible to confuse Alchemy if a filenames starts with a number In particular if you use an option which has an optional parameter you choose not to supply the parameter and you follow that option immediately with a filename which starts with a number Alchemy doesn t realize that the filename is not the parameter While it sounds unlikely that this would ever be a problem it actually happens quite often If you wanted to convert the file 12 gif to a Targa file with the name output tga you would have to be careful of the order in which you specified things If you say alchemy a 12 gif output tga Alchemy would misinterpret that as alchemy a12 gif output tga and would generate an error The easiest way around this problem is to always put the filenames first such as alchemy 12 gif output tga a Using response files Alchemy can read command line parameters from text files called response files Using response files is equivalent to typing the options and or file names on the command line Response files are useful when you have commonly used commands or when you have long commands which would be hard t
194. mand line options used in these examples Some of these examples use too many options to be used directly with MS DOS In these cases you can create a text file which contains the commands and use the response file command with Alchemy PS see Using Response Files in Chapter 2 Also depending on your system configuration you may run out of memory using the standard version of Alchemy PS and may need to substitute alch386 exe for alchemy exe in some of the examples Send a PostScript file to an HP LaserJet printer the original image size is 8 5 x 11 and that is the size of paper the image will be printed on this example is directly usable on IBM PC computers only UNIX users will have to generate a file and then send that to their laser printer alchemy drawing ps prn P 0 If you have an HP LaserJet 4 and would like to print the file at 600 dpi instead alchemy drawing ps prn P 100 zd 600 600 You may also want to specify the Expanded Margin option as part of the PCL output option P 50 or P 150 instead of P 0 or P 100 in the above examples this is especially true if the PostScript file was originally generated to be output on a device which prints all the way to the edge of the paper and the margins built into the LaserJet are causing portions of your image to be clipped Preparing an EPS image for inclusion in a word processor Preparing a PostScript file for sending via a fax modem Convert an EPS file to a
195. mand will scale the image and correct the aspect ratio of the image by removing rows and or columns from the image Note that this option can also be useful for displaying images which are not larger than the screen but which have an aspect ratio different than the display Alchemy assumes that the aspect ratio of a display pixel is 1 1 when in 640x480 800x600 1024x768 and 1280x1024 modes 5 6 when in 640x400 mode and 320x200 modes and 16 9 in 360x480 mode Image Alchemy 359 Related options Example 360 Image Alchemy If not otherwise specified by using the D option or in the file Alchemy assumes that the aspect ratio of pixels in 640x400 images and 320x200 images is 5 6 and the aspect ratio of pixels in 640x350 images is 35 48 You can override any of these assumptions with the D option Don t worry if this is confusing in practice Alchemy deals with everything automatically if you use the V option However there is a problem with displaying 320x400 IFF files see Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for more information D Specify image resolution V View image View madonna gif alchemy madonna gif V View Scaled Image in True Color Mode V Purpose View image in 15 bit mode while scaling image to fit on monitor and correcting aspect ratio Syntax V horizontalResolution Parameter horizontalResolution 640 Use 640x480 mode 800 Use 800x600 mode 1024 Use 1024x768 mode 1280 Use 1280x102
196. ment select All under the Font Inclusion menu This will include all of the fonts To reduce the size of the PostScript file select the All But Standard 13 this includes all fonts except for the standard 13 fonts these fonts are included as part of Alchemy PS You may also choose None if you have copies of all the fonts used in the document installed for use with Alchemy PS After selecting the Save button you will be presented with the Save Disk File dialog f Desktop Y Macintosh HD Macintosh HD eject BH BBBE apples Heskioa EUU alyper 2 8 aes if cusiomer is Create File document ps Enter a valid file name to generate and click the Save button This will generate a PostScript file which Alchemy PS can read Image Alchemy 85 86 Image Alchemy PostScript Fonts alchfont The program alchfont is used to add PostScript Type 1 fonts to the fontmap used by Image Alchemy PS Alchemy PS comes with the standard PostScript fonts licensed from Soft Horizons installed and ready to use These fonts are versions of Bookman Courier Helvetica NewCentury Schoolbook Palatino Symbol Times Zapf Chancery and Zapf Dingbats in normal bold italic and bold italic versions where applicable You can use alchfont to add fonts to those available to Alchemy PS remove fonts list the installed fonts and add font aliases The first step in adding new fonts to Alchemy PS is to copy the fonts to
197. mes Roman 425 TMP 24 TMPDIR 29 Topic 237 Transparency 313 True Color 314 315 316 318 375 420 Truevision 228 438 Image Alchemy Tutorial and Examples 362 Twenty four bits 316 Type 1 fonts 87 JCR 403 Jndercolor Removal Files 403 nidentifiable input 280 Jniform Palette 319 365 Jniform palettes 376 nisys 410 nits 55 57 58 Jniversity of Michigan 235 niversity of Utah 235 pside down 327 JRT 412 S Patent Image 234 se 3 Letter Extensions 279 se Bounding Box 65 se Input Directories for Output 276 se Input File Format for Output 277 se Input Filename for Output 278 Jtah Raster 412 tah Raster Toolkit 235 Ga cs eee c CO 4 4 4 4 cccocococco lt VandeWettering Mark T 187 Verity Corp 237 Verity Image Format VIF 237 VESA 21 26 351 VGA 350 351 VGA display 409 VGA Programming 424 VI177 View Image 356 View Image in True Color Mode 357 View Scaled Image 359 View Scaled Image in True Color Mode 361 Viewing 30 68 Viewing Options 349 VIF 237 VIFF 238 Virtual memory 24 415 ViTec 239 Vivid 240 Vivid Ray Tracer 100 240 W Warnings 280 warranty ii Wavefront 129 241 Wavefront RLA RLB 241 Western Digital 8514 A 350 Wildcard 281 wildcard expansion 30 Windows 72 364 Windows 95 71 Windows BitMap 242 WordPerfect Corp 245 WordPerfect Graphic File 245 WWW 204 X X Windowing system 246 247 248 251 XBM 246 XGA 21 350 XIM 247
198. mple Adjust the brightness of an image y brightnessValue brightnessValue 1 0 to 1 0 default is 0 Changes the brightness of an image by adding or subtracting a constant value from each pixel A brightness value of 1 0 will add 100 to each pixel making the entire image white A brightness value of 1 0 will subtract 100 from each pixel making the entire image black Y Contrast Adjustment G Gamma Correction To convert the Mac PICT file test pic to a PCX file while slightly increasing the brightness of the image alchemy test pic p y 0 10 Image Alchemy 287 CMYK K Purpose Convert the image to CMYK Conments The K option causes an image to be converted to CMYK data This option can only be used by those file formats which support CMYK data Example Convert the file sample jpg in to an uncompressed CMYK TIFF file alchemy sample jpg K t0 288 Image Alchemy Color Correction C Purpose Parameter Comments Examples Apply an Alchemy Color Correction ACC file while performing a conversion This helps maintain image quality when converting from RGB to CMYK or CMYK to RGB for example from JPEG to RTL or from CMYK EPS to GIF C filename filename The name of the color correction file More information and various ACC files can be found on our web site in the acc directory http www handmade com acc Alchemy continues to support UnderColor Removal UCR files The unde
199. mple You may want to adjust the output gamma to compensate for dot gain when generating a HP RTL file Typically specifying an input gamma of 1 0 and an output gamma of 1 8 produces good results Gi 1 0 Go 1 8 See Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for more information on dot gain Convert the black and white image test wpg to an HP RTL file for a PaintJet called test rtl not using a UCR file and with dithering off alchemy test wpg r0 d0 Image Alchemy 161 162 Image Alchemy Convert the file image tga to an RTL file for a PaintJet called image rtl using the undercolor removal file sample ucr alchemy image tga r0 Csample ucr Do the same thing but use gamma correction instead of the undercolor removal file alchemy image tga r0 Gil 0 Gol 8 Convert the file image tga to a planar RTL file called image rtl using TIFF compression controlling the undercolor removal process using sample ucr scaling the image to 3000 pixels across using good quality scaling preserving the aspect ratio by proportionately scaling the image vertically and conserving memory alchemy image tga r4 Csample ucr Xb3000 Convert the file sample jpg to an RTL file for a DesignJet 2000C sending the image directly to the plotter with gamma correction dithering type 3 with a serpentine raster and scaling the image to be 17 inches wide at 600 dpi while preserving the aspect ratio the plotter is attached
200. mple raw Handmade Software Inc Image Alchemy 8 bit paletted 24 bit true color 4 bit CMYK and 32 bit CMYK This format is used internally as temporary files by Alchemy when doing certain image conversions it can also be explicitly read and written This format is described in Appendix F Convert the file test lbm to a raw file alchemy test lbm r Image Alchemy 167 IBM Picture Maker i Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Example 168 Image Alchemy IBM Picture Maker files are used by IBM presentation software i pic IBM Corp IBM Storyboard Live 256 color paletted 16 color Picture Maker files are not supported Picture Maker images cannot be larger than 640x480 This is not the same format as Cubicomp PictureMaker Picture Maker files may be either 320x200 or 640x480 Image Alchemy will write the smallest variation that will fit the image with the image centered and the borders filled with color 0 If you attempt to write a Picture Maker file which is larger than 640x480 an error is generated Convert the PCX file giraffe pcx into an IBM Picture Maker file alchemy giraffe pcx i IDRISI Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments The IDRISI project is a not for profit project from the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University The IDRISI file format is used by their Windows software I type capital
201. n If you are interested in adding support for HSI JPEG files to your software please contact us for information on the format Convert the file madonna gif to an HSI JPEG file alchemy madonna gif j Image Alchemy 165 HSI Palette Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comnents Related options Examples 166 Image Alchemy l HSI PAL files are palettes which are ASCII files that can be edited with a text editor lower case L pal Handmade Software Inc Image Alchemy HSI PAL files are always ASCII files PAL files contain only a palette The format of PAL files is described in Appendix H f Match image to specified palette F False color with specified palette L Output Multi Image Palette Extract the palette from the GIF file madonna gif alchemy madonna gif 1 Convert the file image tga to a GIF file matching the palette found in standard pal alchemy image tga g f standard pal HSI Raw Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Examples r HSI Raw files are used internally by Image Alchemy when converting between certain combinations of image formats If you are interested in converting custom format images to be used with Image Alchemy we suggest using HSI Raw Files r compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Packbits 0 RGB 200 4 bit CMYK 400 32 bit CMYK The default is 0 None RGB Options are combined by adding see below for an exa
202. nce type a spiffing would treat these as part of the image data and not perform any spiffing Histogram linearization can produce significantly better results than histogram stretching for some images Generally you will want to try both types to see which gives better results Limitations Related options Examples The S option cannot be used at the same time as the b option when converting from a true color image A work around is to do the operation in two steps converting it to black and white first and then spiffing the resulting image Using the spiff option at the same time as the match palette f or false color F options is not allowed This is because the spiff option would be performed before the palette is changed which would nullify the effects A work around is to do the matching or false coloring first and then spiff the resultant image b Black and White f Match palette F False color image H Histogram output option Convert the file gloomy pcx into a PCX file called better pcx alchemy gloomy pcx better pcx S p Do the same thing using histogram linearization instead of histogram stretching alchemy gloomy pcx better pcx Sb p Image Alchemy 311 Swap RGB N Purpose Swap the red channel with the blue channel Syntax n Conments This option is usually only needed if you have an incorrectly written file or are writing a file which will be read by a broken file reader Example Convert t
203. nd date the image was captured the satellite which captured the image the type of instrumentation used etc When reading AVHRR images this information is discarded when writing AVHRR images 0 is written for all values for which data is unavailable Convert the GOES file florida goe to an uncompressed IDIDAS AVHRR file alchemy florida goe R1 AVS X A AVS X files are image files used by AVS Application Visual System Syntax A Extensions xX Creator Advanced Visual Systems Inc Used by AVS Software systems Variations 24 bit true color with alpha channels Comments Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Example Convert the file picture im32 to an AVS file preserving the alpha channel alchemy picture im32 A I Image Alchemy 107 Binary Information Files BIF B Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations 108 Image Alchemy There are quite a few programs which produce image files which contain just pixel data These image files do not have a header and hence do not include enough information to allow Alchemy to read them Using a BIF file Alchemy can read these images However since required information such as the height and width of the image is not present in these files it must be supplied by the user BIF files can also be created by Image Alchemy for software which expects images to be just pixels See Appendix E
204. ng of the palette The menu colors will then not interfere with the image The first indices are set to black unless 16 is specified in which case they are set to the standard VGA color palette Specifying the number of colors only has an effect if you are writing a paletted file using the 8 option or if the output file type is always paletted Converting an image with a large number of colors to a small number of colors less than 8 will usually give poor results Related options Examples The reserved colors will be set to black unless 16 colors are reserved In that case they will be set to the standard VGA colors 8 Convert to paletted image d Specify dither type u Use uniform palette Convert the image colors gif into a 16 color PCX file called color16 pcx alchemy colors gif colorl6 pcx p c16 Convert the image colors tga into a 256 color GIF file called output gif reserving the first 16 colors alchemy colors tga output gif g c256 16 Image Alchemy 291 Contrast Purpose Parameter Comments Related options Example 292 Image Alchemy Y Adjust the contrast of an image Y contrastValue contrastValue 0 1 to 10 0 default is 1 0 Changes the contrast of an image by multiplying each pixel by a constant A contrast value of 2 0 will double the value of each pixel making the image quite a bit more contrasty It is actually possible to specify a negative contrast value this has t
205. ng quality alchemy drawing ps v Zm 2 Zo 640p 480p Z If you have a higher resolution monitor you could change the viewing command and the PostScript rendering parameters This example assumes a 1024x768 viewing mode is available alchemy drawing ps v1024 Zm 2 Zo 1024p 768p Z If you are viewing a PostScript file which contains black and white data fonts for example you can improve the quality of the image by using the antialias option in this example we use an antialias factor of 4 alchemy drawing ps v Za 2 Zo 640p 480p Z This example series converts and plots a color PostScript image on an HP DesignJet 2000C plotter This example scales the image to the final 34 x 44 size entirely during the PostScript rendering step and therefore may require ridiculous amounts of disk space up to 900 megabytes alchemy fish ps prn r 7 Zm 2 Zo 34 44 Z zd 600 600 Render the image at 8 5 x 11 and use raster scaling to scale image to the final size of 34 x 44 This example will require much less disk space than the previous example 50 megabytes For most images the result will be almost the same as the previous example although PostScript text will lose a small amount of quality alchemy fish ps prn r 7 Zm 2 Xb34i Yb44i zd 600 600 Render the image at 17 x 22 and use raster scaling to scale the image to the final size of 34 x 44 This will require more disk space than the previous examp
206. ns are combined by adding png The PNG development group WWW 1 bit black and white 2 4 and 8 bit grayscale 2 4 and 8 bit paletted 16 bit and 24 bit and 48 bit color images With and without alpha channels Transparency information output only Non image chunks such as copyright information are discarded when reading Comments Examples When writing a PNG file with transparency there are several different modes that are used depending on whether the file is paletted grayscale or true color In the case of true color images specifying the transparent color using the t option see below causes that value to be treated as transparent When writing a paletted or grayscale file the nearest match to the color specified is made transparent Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the JPEG file sample jpg to a PNG file alchemy sample jpg n Convert the JPEG file sample jpg to a PNG file using red as the transparent color alchemy sample jpg n t 255 0 0 Image Alchemy 205 Portable BitMap PBM k Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments 206 Image Alchemy The Portable BitMap format was developed by Jef Poskanzer to allow the transferring of black and white image files between different workstations The PBM format has grown to include black and white gray scale and true color images
207. nswer I am using Alchemy to display a 320x400 IFF image created by an Amiga When I use just the v option the image comes out tall and skinny When I use the V option which is supposed to correct the aspect ratio things get worse instead of better the image is even skinnier What s going on AS near as we can tell some Amiga software has a different idea of what aspect ratio is than the rest of the world For displays aspect ratio is defined as the ratio of the width of a single pixel to the height of a single pixel So if you have square pixels which you do on a standard monitor in 640x480 mode the aspect ratio is 1 to 1 commonly written as 1 1 When you change display modes the height and width of the total display area does not change what is changing is the width and height of each pixel which means that the aspect ratio changes For example a 640x400 display has an aspect ratio of 1 1 2 that means each pixel is 1 2 times as tall as it is wide which makes sense since 480 400 equals 1 2 A 640x200 display has an aspect ratio of 1 2 4 Now this is where it gets interesting in terms of IFF files The aspect ratio number stored in Amiga IFF files for 320x400 images is 1 1 1 meaning pixels are 1 1 times as tall as they are wide so therefore the actual image should be the equivalent size of a 320x440 image with square pixels And this is what Alchemy will attempt to display when you use the V option Alchemy never makes any
208. nt variables to determine its behavior Among these are controlling where the PostScript fonts are stored and where to place temporary files You must either add SHOME alchemy to your path copy the files alchemy alchps and alchfont to a directory which is already in your path or be in the SHOME alchemy directory when executing Alchemy PS in which case must be in your path PostScript fonts Temporary disk files Disabling time estimation information The fonts that ship with Image Alchemy PS are normally found in the SHOME alchemy ps directory but this may vary depending on where you installed Alchemy PS Alchemy PS can find the HOME alchemy ps directory if the alchemy directory is in your path if it is the current directory or if Alchemy PS is explicitly executed from the alchemy directory Alternatively you can set the ALCHEMYPS environment variable to the directory for example setenv ALCHEMYPS SHOME alchemy ps Alchemy uses the environment variable TMPDIR to determine where to put its temporary files This is usually set to usr tmp or tmp but if you are converting very large or high resolution images there may not be enough space available in the partition those directories are on for example rendering a 8 5 x 11 PostScript file at 300 dpi in full color will create up to 50 megabytes of temporary files If there is not enough space in the usual TMPDIR directory you will need to set the
209. ntact us for a free copy The MS DOS version of Image Alchemy s 640x400 SVGA display routines are based on VGAKIT written by John Bridges VGAKIT is available free of charge from a variety of bulletin boards If you cannot find VGAKIT locally please contact us for a free copy Image Alchemy 409 LZVW Compression The LZW compression method is the subject of United States patent number 4 558 302 and corresponding foreign patents owned by Unisys Corporation and the use of it for TIFF LZW compression is licensed from them Further information on licensing this patent can be obtained from Unisys Corporation Welch Licensing Department Office of the General Counsel M S C1SW19 Blue Bell PA 19424 410 Image Alchemy Other Useful Software Summary IBM PC PicLab There are several image processing packages available for free or as shareware Please be aware that we mention these software packages only as a service to Image Alchemy users We are not endorsing or recommending any particular package Some of the packages are no longer supported by their authors If you have trouble finding any of the listed software please send us a blank tape or diskette and we will send you a copy free of charge please be aware that the software may be quite large contact us first if you have any questions If you know of any other software which would be appropriate to add to this list please let us know If you are the author of an
210. nvert the file house ps to an HP PCL file remove 1 6 from each of the edges to conform to the non printable area of HP LaserJet printers alchemy house ps P Zb 0 1661 0 1661 0 1661 0 166i A simpler way to achieve the same results is to not use the PostScript conversion margin command but instead use the reduce margin command on the HP PCL output alchemy house ps P50 Output Page Size Zo Parameter Comments Specify output image size Zo xSize units ySize units xSize ySize Size of the image The default is the same size as the input size units The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters x factor units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter This option is necessary if you want the PostScript file to be a size other than the size the PostScript image was originally rendered to Alchemy PS needs this information along with the input page size and the output dots per inch value to correctly scale the image to the final size If a units parameter is used it must immediately follow the size parameter If you only specify the X dimension Alchemy PS will automatically generate the Y dimension to preserve the aspect ratio of the image This is useful on plotters that take roll paper and therefore have a very long Y dimension Image Alchemy 55 Example 56 Image Alchemy Specifying a units value of x causes the size par
211. nvironment variable alchemy to indicate the highest horizontal resolution you want Alchemy to use when displaying images for example set alchemy 800 to will cause Alchemy to use only 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions when displaying images Image Alchemy 357 Example 358 Image Alchemy If the image being displayed is a 24 bits per pixel true color image and the display mode is 15 or 16 bits per pixel the image will be dithered dithering may be disabled by use of the d option see above View madonna tga alchemy madonna tga v View Scaled Image V Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Limitations View image while scaling image to fit on monitor and correcting aspect ratio V horizontalResolution horizontalResolution 320 Use 320x200 mode 360 Use 360x480 mode 640 Use 640x480 mode 800 Use 800x600 mode 1024 Use 1024x768 mode 1280 Use 1280x1024 mode If displaying on a Western Digital chipset 8514 A or VESA compatible VGA board an optional parameter may follow the v command This parameter specifies horizontal resolution and may be 320 360 640 800 1024 or 1280 The default is to use the lowest resolution which can fit the entire image You may set the environment variable alchemy to indicate the highest horizontal resolution you want Alchemy to use when displaying images for example set alchemy 800 to will cause Alchemy to use only 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions when displaying images This com
212. o 8 51 111i Z 62 Image Alchemy Rotate Image Parameter Limitations Conments Example Specify the angle to rotate the image in degrees Zr angle angle Specify rotation angle The default is 0 Alchemy PS can only rotate images in 90 degree increments The rotation angle is measured the counterclockwise direction so specifying a 270 degree rotation achieves a 90 degree clockwise rotation If a 90 or 270 degree rotation is specified and the input page size isn t specified the input size will be changed to 11 x8 5 instead of 8 5 x11 Convert the landscape file test ps to a portrait PCL file called test pcl alchemy test ps P Zr90 Image Alchemy 63 Specify Image Resolution Zd Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Example 64 Image Alchemy Specify image resolution in dots per inch for the output image Zd dotsPerInchxX dotsPerInchY dotsPerInchX The horizontal resolution of the image in dots per inch dotsPerInchY The vertical resolution of the image in dots per inch You must specify both dotsPerInchX and dotsPerInchY even if they are the same This command when reading PostScript files is identical to the standard Alchemy D command see Chapter 9 If both are specified the Zd parameters have precedence Convert an AutoCad drawing saved as a PostScript file to a PCX file for sending with a fax modem The resolution of fax machines in fine mode is 200 dpi x 200 dpi alchemy draw
213. o indicates that the resolution is unknown A negative number is used if only the aspect ratio is known An integer indicating the gamma of the image scaled by 100 a gamma of 2 2 is stored as 220 A zero indicates that the gamma is not known An integer indicating the compression mode used to write the file This appendix only describes compression mode 0 so you should check this value when reading a HSI Raw to make sure it isn t compressed If you need to be able to read or write compressed HSI Raw files please contact us An integer indicating whether or not the file contains an alpha channel This appendix only describes files without an alpha channel if you need to be able to read or write HSI Raw files with alpha channels please contact us Eight bytes reserved for future use Should be set to zero when writing The palette data is stored as 3 bytes per palette entry The bytes are in red green blue order 0 is black Oxff is full intensity True color raw files have no palette The image data Example files 8 bit paletted 320 x 200 24 bit true color 320 x 200 Reading a two byte integer Writing a two byte integer 6D 00 49 B6 B6 6D 00 49 24 24 int getWord int int putWord int 68 00 24 B6 FF 68 00 24 24 49 77 00 24 92 FF 77 00 24 49 24 61 00 24 49 FF 61 00 49 24 24 6E 00 00 49 B6 6E 00 24 24 49 68 00 00 FF 6D 68 00 24
214. o remember or exceed the command line limits of your operating system To use a response file you create a text file containing the options and or file names that you would ordinarily pass to Alchemy on the command line You create this text file using a text editor This file can have any name or extension you wish To specify this file to Alchemy use the operator followed immediately by the name of the text file For example if you frequently need to scale images to be no larger than 640x480 using b quality scaling and preserving aspect ratio you can make a text file which looks like this called scale for purposes of this example Xb640 Yb480 You would then use this text file with Alchemy by passing its name along with any other options including the output file type option and the file names For example alchemy test gif new gif g scale would convert the GIF file test gif to a GIF file called new gif while performing the desired scaling operation Image Alchemy 35 36 Image Alchemy It is also possible to place filenames of images to convert and other response files in response files For example if you want to convert the files test1 gif image tga scan1 tif scan2 tif and scan3 tif to JPEG files you can create a text which looks like this called files testl gif image tga scanl tif scan2 tif scan3 tif And then use this command line to convert those files to JPEG files alchemy fi
215. of a r g and b a alpha The defaults are g ga rgb and rgba depending on the number of planes The type of interleaving of the pixel data 0 Byte interleave RGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGB 1 Line interleave RRR GGG BBB RRR GGG BBB 2 Plane interleave RRRRRR GGGGGG BBBBBB The default is 0 Byte interleave The presence of this tag indicates that the data in the file is recorded from the bottom of the screen up to the top of the screen The format of the data ascii read ASCII data group3 use Group III Fax decompression group4 use Group IV Fax decompression ASCII data files can be decimal or hex Ox before each value is used for hex See below for an example of reading ASCII data and an example of reading a Group IV compressed data Image Alchemy 389 390 faxoptions bitspersample Image Alchemy Options which affect decompressing fax compressed data bitreversal most significant bit first This tag allows you to specify various fax options when reading Group IV Fax compressed data Currently the only faxoptions tag supported is bitreversal other options will be added in future versions of Alchemy The size of the data in bits per sample 1 1 bit per sample 8 pixels per byte 8 8 bits one byte per sample 16 16 bits two bytes per sample The default is 8 bits per sample In the case of 1 bit per sample it indicates that data is packed 8 pixels being stored per byte in which
216. ogic 8 bit gray scale images 4 and 8 bit paletted images and 16 and 24 bit true color images input and output 1 4 6 bit gray scale input only Reads files with 6 and 8 bit palettes always writes 6 bit palettes Gray scale files are always written 8 bit When writing a VI file the palette always starts at 0 but color 0 will not necessarily be black this is the way that Jovian VI files are written by Jovian software Convert the GIF file test gif to a 16 color VI file alchemy test gif J c16 Image Alchemy 177 JPEG JAF Parameters Extension Creator Used by Variations 178 Image Alchemy J JPEG is an image file format that uses a lossy compression technique to achieve high compression ratios See Appendix C JPEG Compression for more information on the JPEG file format j coding quality passes coding none default Huffman coding h optimum Huffman coding The default is default Huffman coding quality 1 through 100 larger is higher quality The default quality is 32 passes 1 write one pass JPEG files 2 through 10 write n pass JPEG files The default number of passes is 1 jpg Joint Photographic Experts Group JPEG WWW Everyone else storing photographic images Baseline JPEG with CCIR 601 YCbCr color space interleaved components Huffman coded Gray scale images are saved as single channel JPEG files color images are saved as three channel JPEG files CMYK JPEG files
217. ompany Used by HP raster plotters and printers including PaintJet DeskJet DesignJet and HP 7600 Series printers and plotters NovaJet Plotters 158 Image Alchemy Variations Limitations Conments 4 bit CMYK Black and white 24 bit RGB Output only HP RTL files can be used to produce output which can be printed on HP color printers and raster plotters The file can be printed by sending the file to the plotter To improve the quality of output may want to use a color correction file when converting to the CMYK variation of this format See the C option in Chapter 8 for more information Compression type 7 is the best to use on DesignJets The files are generally smaller than type 6 files and the on the fly mode allows the plotter to start plotting before the entire file is received decreasing the total plot time Compression types 6 and 7 are equivalent to types 1 and 2 except they tell the plotter it may plot the data as received instead of waiting for the entire image This is useful on the DesignJet plotters which have small buffers compared to the imageable area The NovaJet option causes Alchemy to create RTL files which are compatible with NovaJet plotters Type 7 RTL files are compatible with various Mutoh plotters These include Falcon CAD RJ 800 Falcon Graphics RJ 4000 HJ 800 RJ 1300 and RJ 1800 These plotters operate at either 180 300 360 or 720 dpi Specify the appropriate dpi value using the
218. on When reading Alchemy only pays attention to raster images in the file and attempts to skip everything else See Appendix A Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for a further discussion of this Comments The only resolutions allowed in PCL files are 75 dpi 100 dpi 150 dpi and 300 dpi and in the case of PCLS type files 200 dpi and 600 dpi and in the case of Lexmark PCL files 1200 dpi and the X and Y resolution must be the same If you specify a non allowable resolution Alchemy automatically uses the next higher resolution For example if you specify 250 dpi Alchemy will write a 300 dpi PCL file If no resolution is specified either on the command line or in the input file Alchemy automatically chooses the smallest resolution which will allow the entire image to fit on an 8 5 x 11 page or whatever page size is selected PCL XL files are always written as uncompressed so specifying P200 and P201 will result in the same file being written PCL XL files cannot be read To write a color file for the HP Color LaserJet use the HP RTL output option r 9 see below PCL3 files are supported by LaserJet 3 and earlier printers PCL5 is supported by LaserJet 4 and newer printers PCL XL is supported by LaserJet 6 and newer printers Lexmark PCL is supported by Lexmark printers which are 1200 dpi capable The paperSize option will cause the LaserJet to automatically switch to whatever tray contains the correct size paper
219. on are further documented under the comments section below The extensions commonly used for this image format When multiple extensions are listed Alchemy writes files using the first one but will check for files using all extensions in the order listed Some formats use more than one file per image in that case the extension for each portion of the image is listed Four letter extensions are skipped on MS DOS systems The company or individual who created this image format Please contact them for more information on the format Programs or types of software that use this image format A list of the variations supported by Image Alchemy Any known limitations that Image Alchemy has when reading or writing this image format Miscellaneous things of which you should be aware Other Alchemy options that affect the reading or writing of this image format Note that 8 24 and for some formats 15 16 and 32 c and b options have an effect for most image formats and are not listed explicitly Sample conversions involving this image format Parameter Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Example A ADEX files are used by the ADEX Corporation ChromaGraph series of graphics cards A compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Run Length Coded The default is None img tle ADEX Corporation ADEX ChromaGraph cards 4 bit and 8 bit images Some ADEX files don t contain a palette in
220. on shifts the image within the page Positive numbers will shift the page right and down or the image left and up This can be useful for PostScript files that have an origin that isn t 0 0 If a units parameter is used it must immediately follow the offset parameter Image Alchemy 49 Example Convert the file contract eps which has an origin of 72 144 in units of 1 72 inch to a PCL file at 300 dpi with the image origin at the lower left corner of the output file alchemy contract eps P Z_li 2i 50 Image Alchemy Input Page Size Parameter Comments Examples Zi Specify input image size Zi xSize xUnits ySize yUnits xSize ySize Size of the image The default is 8 5 x 11 xUnits yUnits The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter Using the Use Bounding Box option Ze described below will often automatically accomplish the same thing as using this option Many modern PostScript files contain a bounding box which includes the input page size This option is necessary if the PostScript file being read was not created for a 8 5 x 11 device Alchemy PS needs this information along with the output page size and the output dots per inch value to correctly scale the image to the final size If a units parameter is used it must immediately follow the size paramete
221. or 6 6 6 palette The default is 1 Instead of using the Heckbert median cut algorithm to generate a custom palette for the image use a palette with entries which are evenly distributed in the RGB color cube The advantage of using a uniform palette is that it s faster than generating a custom palette However this is at the expense of image quality since the palette isn t generated based on image content Using the Netscape palette will optimize the display of images on the WWW both for quality and speed When just viewing a true color image on a paletted display a uniform palette is used The c option can be used in conjunction with u to specify the size of the uniform palette in that case Alchemy will generate a palette with not more than the specified number of colors but not less than 8 The palette size will not necessarily match the specified size for type 0 uniform palettes as the actual size must be the product of three integers Alchemy picks integers that roughly correspond to the sensitivity of the human eye to red green and blue 30 59 and 11 Image Alchemy 319 Related options Examples 320 Image Alchemy c Specify number of colors d Dither type Convert the file many tga to a gif file using a 256 color uniform palette alchemy many tga g u Convert the file many tga to a gif file with up to 128 colors in a uniform palette alchemy many tga g u c128 Convert the file many tga
222. ot be overwritten because the o option was not specified Image Alchemy 281 Examples 282 Image Alchemy Alchemy does not intelligently retain information between files For example if you are matching a group of files to an existing palette the inverse palette generation step only needs to be performed once but it is in fact done for each file This only affects the speed of conversions not the quality Convert all the GIF files in the current directory to JPEG files alchemy gif j Convert all the TIFF files in the directory tiff to PCX files in the directory images output alchemy tiff tif p images output Convert all the GIF files in the current directory in the directory images and in the directory more to GIF files scaling them to be no larger than 640x480 and write them to the directory small alchemy gif images gif more gif g Xb640 Yb480 small Convert the files madonna gif bay4 gif everest tga and basil tif to JPEG files overwriting any existing files alchemy madonna gif bay4 gif everest tga basil tif o j Convert the files test1 tif test2 tif and new gif to ILBM files matching them to the palette from the file output pal alchemy testl tif test2 tif new gif f output pal i Color and Palette Options Introduction Color and Palette options are options which affect the appearance of the output image They control such things as the number of
223. others to read and write HSI Raw files HSI Raw files are very simple image data files they have the advantage that they are very easy to read and write and the location of any pixel in the image may be found by simple calculations If you need to convert custom files to a format that Alchemy can read we recommend using a Raw file it is the simplest format to write and the fastest for Alchemy to read This document only describes uncompressed RGB HSI Raw files without Alpha channels if you need to read or write compressed and or CMYK files or files which include an Alpha channel please contact us for a more complete description of the HSI Raw file format There are two types of HSI Raw Files paletted and true color Paletted images are stored one byte per pixel with a palette at the beginning of the file True color files are stored three bytes per pixel Image Alchemy 397 Gray scale Black and white Warning Old version files Details 398 Word size Byte order Image Alchemy Gray scale files are stored as paletted files with a palette that contains all gray values Alchemy automatically recognizes such files during reading and will treat them appropriately Black and White files are stored as paletted files with a palette that contains two values black and white Alchemy automatically recognizes such files during reading and will treat them appropriately Note that Handmade Software Inc reserves the right
224. ow you to convert larger images it will just increase the speed of conversions If you need to convert very large images use alch386 exe which is the 386 Enhanced version of Image Alchemy Alchemy will normally check to determine if there is an 8514 A board installed in the computer when viewing images However this can interfere with some network boards as they use the same I O addresses that 8514 A boards use To disable 8514 A checking set the environment variable alchemy to 8 type set alchemy 8 at the DOS prompt Note that this can be combined with other options for example to disable both 8514 A checking and extended expanded memory usage use set alchemy 8x Image Alchemy 25 26 Limiting maximum display resolution Disabling time estimation information Image Alchemy Alchemy will automatically choose the lowest resolution which will fit the entire image when viewing images without specifying a display resolution with a VESA compatible VGA board However depending on the monitor and VGA board combination you have this can be bad since the monitor may not support the particular resolution the SVGA board is trying to switch to To avoid this problem the environment variable alchemy may be set to indicate the maximum display resolution which Alchemy should use Set the alchemy variable to the highest horizontal resolution which your monitor is capable of Valid values are 1280 1024 800 and 640 For example type
225. owever there may be times when you wish to preserve the original palette instead of generating a new one This option does that Scale the gif file flowers gif to 320 x 200 preserving the original palette and aspect ratio alchemy flowers gif new gif g f Xb320 Yb200 Scale all the files ending in gif to 320 x 200 preserving the original palette and aspect ratio placing the new files in the directory new alchemy gif new g f Xb320 Yb200 Image Alchemy 309 Spiff Purpose Parameter Comments 310 Image Alchemy S Enhance the image contrast by stretching the pixel color values to the full 0 to 255 range S spifffype spiffType a Histogram stretching b Histogram linearization c Histogram stretching with black and white ignored The default is Histogram stretching This command can be used if the image you are converting is shifted in brightness or squished in contrast This can happen if you scan or digitize a very dark or very bright image The default type histogram stretching simply insures that the image has pixels which are distributed over the entire output range 0 to 255 Histogram linearization insures that the distribution of pixels over the output range is linear Type c spiffing is identical to type a spiffing except that the colors absolute black and absolute white are ignored in the image This is useful when you have images which have black borders or white captions si
226. paper with Windows 3 1 alchemy test gif c256 8 w Convert the image test gif to an icon file for use with Windows 3 1 alchemy test gif Xb32 Yb32 w 10 f leaves bmp Convert the image test gif to an identity palette BMP file alchemy test gif w c 246 10 WordPerfect Graphic File W Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Conments Example WordPerfect files are images which can be imported into WordPerfect and various other word processors and desktop publishing programs W Wpg WordPerfect Corp WordPerfect 1 through 8 bits per pixel In addition to raster images WordPerfect files may contain vectors and text information Such information is lost when reading WordPerfect files Convert the image newpict pcx to a black and white WPG file alchemy newpict pcx b c2 W Image Alchemy 245 Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Example 246 Image Alchemy b XBM files are used by the X Windowing System XBM files are C source code files which can be read and written by various X utilities and are designed to be included in C source code for use as icons and other bit mapped graphic images b xbm bm MIT The X Windowing system 1 bit per pixel black and white Because xbm files are actually C source code files there can be many variations of xbm files Since adding a C preprocessor to Alchemy to handle all the theoretically allow
227. parately so that bright blue will become bright yellow Negate the file sample gif generating a GIF file called negative gif alchemy sample gif negative N g Image Alchemy 301 Palette Purpose Comments Related options Examples 302 Image Alchemy Force the output image to be paletted 8 This option is 8 because paletted images are typically 8 bits per pixel Alchemy defaults to the 8 option if the input file is paletted or gray scale Some file formats require files to be paletted for those formats the 8 option is assumed Some file formats do not have a paletted variation in those cases the 8 option will be ignored if specified Some file formats only allow gray scale files to be 8 bit in those cases Alchemy will ignore the 8 option if the image being written is not gray scale The actual number of bits per pixel is determined by the c option below If the input file is true color the output file will be quantized and dithered see the c and d options below 15 True color output 16 True color output 24 True color output 32 True color output C specify number of colors in image d dither Convert the JPEG file bigimage jpg into a paletted TIFF file with 256 colors alchemy bigimage jpg 8 t Convert the Targa file madonna tga to a 16 color PCX file note that the 8 option is implied by the use of the c16 option alchemy madonna tga c16 p Image Alchemy 303 Pale
228. peat the filename tag three times The first filename tag specifies the red data file the second blue and the third green You must also specify both the height and width and the number of planes in the image which must be three when using three filename tags ordinarily Alchemy can calculate one tag from the others See below for an example The width of the image data in pixels The height of the image data in pixels The number of planes of image data 1 gray scale 2 gray scale with an alpha channel 3 RGB 4 RGB with an alpha channel You can read a black and white image which consists of packed data i e 8 pixels per byte by specifying 1 bitspersample see below for more information on the bitspersample In this case you should not use a planes tag but you must specify both the height and width of the image ordinarily Alchemy can calculate one from the other See below for an example The size of the header in bytes This many bytes are skipped when reading the file leftpadding rightpadding order interleave upsidedown format The number of bytes to remove from the beginning of each scan line The number of bytes to remove from the end of each scan line The order of the pixels For 1 channel g g gray For 2 channel images either ga or ag a alpha For 3 channel images any sequence of r g and b rgb rbg grb gbr brg or bgr r red g green b blue For 4 channel images any sequence
229. pha channel image data optional Spaceward Graphics Spaceward Graphics 1 bit black and white 8 bit grayscale 8 bit paletted and 24 bit color images with and without alpha channels Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the Targa file apple tga to a Spaceward file include the alpha channel information alchemy apple tga I s SPOT Image Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments S SPOT Image files are high resolution satellite images produced by SPOT Image Corporation S For GIS tape format hdr Header information bil Pixel data clr Palette data optional For CCT CD ROM format dat SPOT Image Corp SPOT Image Corp 8 bits per pixel GIS tape format files 8 and 24 bits per pixel CCT CD ROM format files input only Only GIS tape format images are currently written contact us if you are interested in writing CCT SPOT Image files SPOT Image GIS tape images are actually three files You specify the name of the hdr file and Alchemy automatically generates the name of the bil and clr files If no palette file clr file exists Alchemy will assume the image is grayscale There may also be a statistics file with a stx extension but Alchemy ignores this file Image Alchemy 221 Example 222 Image Alchemy When writing a SPOT file Alchemy will overwrite without w
230. ption If you don t have any other icons you can also match to one of the 16 color wallpaper files supplied with Windows Alchemy can write a BMP file which contains an identity palette as specified in the Microsoft Multimedia Development Kit These images provide for quicker bitmap loading when used with the Multimedia Extensions A palette identity file has the first and last 10 palette entries reserved for 20 system defined colors Alchemy will write such an image if you specify c 246 10 as part of the command line Note that ordinarily this would produce a file which has 246 palette entries but in this special case the file will have 256 palette entries 20 fixed by the Windows specifications and 236 chosen by Alchemy Note that you can also specify a number smaller than 246 but the palette will always have 256 colors since the last 10 have to occupy positions 246 through 255 Convert the image test gif to a Windows BMP file alchemy test gif w Do the same thing but force the output file to be a 15 bit BMP file alchemy test gif w 15 Image Alchemy 243 244 Image Alchemy Convert the image test gif to a 16 color Windows BMP file to be used as wallpaper the file chess bmp is supplied with Windows 3 0 substitute leaves bmp when using Windows 3 1 this example assumes that it is in the current directory alchemy test gif f chess bmp w Convert the image test gif to a 256 color Windows BMP file to be used as wall
231. puters Originally created by ZSoft for use by their paint software PCX files can be read and written by almost all MS DOS paint software and desktop publishing software A variation of PCX file DCX is used by many MS DOS fax boards P type type 0 Standard PCX 1 DCX 2 PCJ The default is standard PCX pcx dcx ZSoft Corporation PC Paint Publisher s Paintbrush Most paint and desktop publishing software can read and write PCX files Fax board software uses the DCX variation of PCX 1 4 8 and 24 bits per pixel for standard PCX files 1 bit per pixel for DCX files 8 bits per pixel for PCJ files Limitations Comments PCX format files are often written out incorrectly Alchemy attempts to figure out what is wrong and make intelligent decisions things Alchemy can deal with include PCX files without palettes files missing the last line of image data and files with illegal and incorrect combinations of bits per pixel and planes The 24 bit PCX file variation is new and many programs which support PCX do not support the 24 bit variation Therefore unless you are sure that the software you are using can read a 24 bit PCX file you probably want to use the 8 option to force Alchemy to write a paletted file when generating a PCX file DCX files are multiple page PCX images which are used by various manufacturers of fax boards and fax software Alchemy always writes single page DCX files Because so many soft
232. r Convert the file contract ps which was originally created to print on legal size paper 8 5 x 14 to a PCL file at 300 dpi alchemy contract ps P Zi8 5i 14i Image Alchemy 5I 52 Image Alchemy Note that the output image will be 8 5 x 14 if instead you wanted to reduce the image to be no larger than 8 5 x 11 you could add an output page size option and the preserve aspect ratio option alchemy contract ps P Z1i8 5i 141i Zo 8 51 11i Z Margins Parameter Comments Zb Specify that the converted PostScript image should have margins borders removed from the edge Zb xl units yl units x2 units y2 units xl Amount to remove from the left side of the image The default is 0 yl Amount to remove from the bottom of the image The default is 0 x2 Amount to remove from the right side of the image The default is the same as the left margin y2 Amount to remove from the top of the image The default is the same as the bottom margin units The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter This option is used to trim any margin the PostScript file may have to conform to non printable areas on a laser printer for example If a units parameter is used it must immediately follow the size parameter Image Alchemy 53 Examples 54 Image Alchemy Co
233. rcolor removal portion of UCR files is compatible with the format used by Stork Colorproofing B V The format of this file is described in Appendix G Undercolor Removal Files Convert the file image tga to an HP RTL file called image rtl using the ACC file dj2500a acc alchemy image tga r7 Cdj2500a acc Convert the file image tga to an HP RTL file called image rtl using the undercolor removal file sample ucr alchemy image tga r7 Csample ucr Image Alchemy 289 Colors Purpose Parameters Comments Limitations 290 Image Alchemy Specify the number of colors for the output file c colors reserveColors colors Specifies the number of colors in the output image May be between 2 and 256 reserveColors Specifies the number of colors to reserve in the output image May be between 0 and 255 If the input file has a larger number of colors than specified for the output file the image will be quantized using Heckbert s median cut algorithm and dithered For further information on Heckbert s median cut algorithm see Appendix B Color and Dithering The number of colors to reserve is an optional parameter If it is present it causes the specified number of colors to be reserved from the beginning of the palette The output image will not contain any of those color indices This can be useful if you have menus or other information you wish to display at the same time as the images and they use colors at the beginni
234. rded when writing a GOES image 0 is written for all values for which data is unavailable Convert the Erdas file florida gis into a GOES GARS image alchemy florida gis G0 Do the same thing but write out a GOES McIDAS image alchemy florida gis Gl Image Alchemy 145 Histogram Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments 146 Image Alchemy H Histogram files are HSI Raw files which contain a histogram H options options 0 Do not ignore any pixels 1 Ignore white 2 Ignore black 3 Ignore sharp peaks 0 Do not generate a cumulative histogram 10 Generate a cumulative histogram 0 Use a black background for the histogram 100 Use a white background for the histogram See the comments section below for more information Options can be combined by adding see below for an example The default is 0 hst Handmade Software Inc Image Alchemy Output only can be read as a raw file Histogram files are always paletted with 8 colors Histogram files are HSI Raw files which contain the frequency of occurrence of pixel values The horizontal axis indicates the intensity from 0 at the left to 255 at the right The vertical axis shows the frequency the axis is automatically scaled so that 100 corresponds to the most frequently occurring value Examples Ignore white and black automatically removes the white and black values from the histogram This is useful if the background color
235. rdly ever happens To write an output image without aspect ratio information specify an aspect ratio of 0 zero This option also has an effect when using the MS DOS version of Image Alchemy and displaying images It is not possible to specify both an aspect ratio and a dots per inch value for an image This is because specifying a dots per inch value implies an aspect ratio Many file types do not have an aspect ratio value specifying one when writing such a file type will have no effect Related options Examples D Specify resolution You are converting a 640x350 IBM EGA PCX image called ega pcx which has an aspect ratio of 35 48 to a TIFF image and you want the TIFF image to have the correct aspect ratio value so that an intelligent TIFF reader will correctly interpret the image Note that the value of 73 is 35 48 100 alchemy ega pcx D 73 t The resulting image will still be 640x350 but the TIFF file now contains the information that the pixels are not square and in fact are 35 48 If you had instead wanted to convert the image to a 640 by 480 image with square pixels you could have used alchemy ega pcx Y480 D100 t The D option isn t really needed here since any software reading the TIFF file will assume that if there is no aspect ratio specified the pixels are square Image Alchemy 345 Specify Image Resolution D Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments 346 Image Alchemy Specify
236. re parameters which vary depending on the format being read The comments section for each format describes any input options which apply to that format When reading images Alchemy automatically recognizes and reads MacBinary II files MacBinary files are generated when you accidentally leave MacBinary mode on when transferring a file from a Macintosh Alchemy will preserve as much information in each file as practical this always includes the height and width of the image and the number of colors in the image Some file types include other data such as the name of the image the aspect ratio of the image the date the image was created etc Since most of these items are only supported by a few file formats Alchemy discards everything but the height width number of colors gamma aspect ratio resolution values and optionally alpha channel information The individual file formats supported by Alchemy are described in alphabetical order on the following pages The descriptions follow the template given overleaf Image Alchemy 93 Name of format Parameters Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments Related options Examples 94 Image Alchemy option Overview of file format Description of syntax Even though it is shown in this section any parameter following the file format output is optional Brief description of the parameters Those parameters which require a detailed explanati
237. red in a file with a r extension the green data has the extension g and the blue data has the extension b The ASCII BIF file is identical to the standard BIF file except that the data is stored as ASCII instead of binary Each line of data in the original image is stored as one line of data in the BIF file with a new line character at the end of the line There are commas separating each of the pixel values This type of BIF file cannot be read by Image Alchemy The Group III BIF files that Alchemy outputs are CCITT Fax Group IlI compressed They have the least significant bit first end of line markers before the first line and after every line except the last and are not byte aligned This is the native order for a fax machine This format can be useful if you are generating data to be sent via a fax modem Image Alchemy 109 Examples 110 Image Alchemy The Group IV BIF files that Alchemy writes are CCITT Fax Group IV compressed they have the least significant bit first Packed BIF files are required to be black and white Packed files are identical to standard BIF files except that 8 pixels are packed together into one byte and the data is padded to a multiple of 8 pixels per line Convert the file data to a GIF file alchemy data bif g Convert the image helen pcx to a Binary file this will create two files helen raw and helen bif alchemy helen pcx B Calcomp CCRF Parameter Extensions Creator Used b
238. rently available for SVGA boards using chipsets from Cirrus Logic ATI Technologies Chips and Technologies Everex Systems Genoa Systems Paradise Logic Sigma Designs STB Systems Tecmar Headland Technology Video 7 Orchid Technology Appian Technology Trident Microsystems and Oak Technology If Alchemy cannot find a VESA SVGA board it attempts to determine what kind of SVGA board is present If Alchemy can identify the type of SVGA board installed either a 640x400x256 or 640x480x256 mode will be available SVGA boards which are known to work with Alchemy include Paradise Tseng Labs 3000 amp 4000 Video 7 Trident and Everex chipset based SVGA Boards The 320x200x256 mode is a standard IBM VGA mode and will work on all VGA boards The 360x480x256 is a non standard VGA mode which should also work on all VGA boards Image Alchemy 351 Display Resolution Wrong RGB order Actions during viewing 352 Image Alchemy Unless you explicitly specify a resolution after the view command Alchemy automatically uses the lowest resolution mode which will display the entire picture Alchemy can be told to not use above a particular resolution by setting the environment variable alchemy to the largest horizontal resolution to be used For example if your monitor can only display up to 800x600 pixels but your VESA compatible VGA board can display up to 1024x768 pixels You would set alchemy 800 to insure that Alchemy won t t
239. rting a paletted image to true color will not improve its quality or change its appearance The primary use of this option is to force an image to be true color when converting to a format which allows either paletted or true color but where the paletted variation is not well supported like the Targa image format If the file format you are converting to does not have a 24 bit mode the closest true color mode available will be chosen in the following order 32 bit 16 bit 15 bit 8 Paletted output 15 True color output 15 bits 16 True color output 16 bits 32 True color output 32 bits Example Convert the GIF file test gif into an uncompressed true color Targa file called test tga alchemy test gif a0 24 Image Alchemy 317 True Color 32 bits 32 Purpose Force the output image to be true color 32 bits 8 bits per component 8 bits for the alpha channel Syntax 32 Comnents See the True Color 24 bits section above Related options 8 Paletted output 15 True color output 15 bits 16 True color output 16 bits 24 True color output 24 bits Example Convert the GIF file test gif into an uncompressed true color 32 bit Targa file called test tga the alpha channel will be empty alchemy test gif a0 32 318 Image Alchemy Uniform Palette Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Limitations Use a Uniform Palette u paletteType paletteType 1 Unevenly weight palette 2 Netscape 216 col
240. ry to use the 1024x768 mode You may want to add this command to your autoexec bat file so that it is automatically set when your computer is turned on When an image is displayed that is smaller than the screen resolution the image will be centered in the display and the area around the image will be set to the darkest color in the image which is usually black There seem to be a number of SVGA boards that have the incorrect RGB order information in their VESA driver You can correct for this problem while viewing by the using the swap RGB option n see chapter 8 for more information While images are being viewed there are several actions that you can perform These include skipping to the next image if you are using wildcards to view multiple images marking the current image and deleting the current image file These actions can be useful if you are viewing a large number of images such as you might have downloaded from a bulletin board Disabling actions These keys may be pressed either while the image is being displayed or afterward while Alchemy is waiting for a keystroke to go on to the next image pressing any other key at that point will skip to the next image Key Action q Quit viewing s Skip to next image m Mark the image alt d Delete the image A list of images that were marked is displayed after Alchemy finishes If you redirect the output from Alchemy to a file the file will contain a list of the im
241. s and ignored You must use the Wildcard option if the response file contains multiple filenames This command is usually used along with a response file containing a list of input names Wildcards and are not allowed in a response output file You want to convert the following list of files to JPEG files testl gif image tga scanl tif scan2 tif scan3 tif You want the output files to have the following names imagel jpg image2 jpg image3 jpg image4 jpg image5 jpg Assuming the first list is called files and the second list is called outnames the following command can be used alchemy files outnames j Image Alchemy 271 Response Paired Filenames Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Limitations Example 272 Image Alchemy Allows you to specify an arbitrary list of input filename and output filename pairs filename filename An ASCII file containing a list of input and output filename pairs Lines beginning with are treated as comments and ignored You must use the Wildcard option if the response file contains multiple filenames Wildcards and are not allowed in a response paired file You have a list of paired filenames containing one input filename and one output filename per line like this testl gif imagel jpg image tga image2 jpg scanl tif image3 jpg scan2 tif image4 jpg scan3 tif image5 jpg Assuming the list is called pairs the following
242. s cannot be read nor written if you have any tiled files please contact us we d like to add support for tiled files but haven t been able to find any for testing Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file traced qdv to an Pixar file alchemy picture gif j Pixel Power Collage C Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Comments Example Collage files are used by Pixel Power s Collage system C Varies with filename Pixel Power Collage 8 bit grayscale and 24 bit RGB images with and without alpha channels Collage files contain a smaller preview image to read this image specify that you want to read page to use option U 2 When writing files Alchemy always writes a preview image which is one quarter the height and width of the original image Alpha channel data can be read and written by using the I option see Chapter 6 for more information Convert the file sample jpg to Pixel Power Collage format alchemy sample jpg c Image Alchemy 203 PNG Portable Network Graphics n Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations 204 Image Alchemy PNG files are used by the WWW n outputType outputT ype 0 None 1 Sub filtering 2 Up filtering 3 Averaging 4 Paeth filtering 9 Adaptive filtering 0 Standard 10 Interlaced The default is Paeth filtering non interlaced Optio
243. sed by Epson Stylus printers Syntax K outputType Parameter outputType 0 Stylus Color 1 Stylus Color II and Is 2 Stylus Color 400 3 Stylus Color 600 4 Stylus Color 800 5 Stylus Color 1520 6 Stylus Color 3000 0 Microweave 10 Disable Microweave 0 Uni directional 20 Bidirectional The default is Stylus Color 800 Microweave Uni directional outputType 4 Options are combined by adding Extensions prn Creator Epson Used by Epson Stylus printers Variations 4 bit CMYK Limitations Epson Stylus files can only be 1420x720 720x720 360x360 or 180x180 dpi depending on printer model selected If you specify any other dpi value the output file will automatically switch to one of those 122 Image Alchemy Comments Examples Only Epson Color Stylus 600 800 1520 and 3000 support 1440x720 dpi mode If you specify it for the other models Alchemy will use 720x720 dpi mode instead To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the file page1 tif to a 360 dpi Epson Stylus Color 800 file scaled to 5 inches wide alchemy pagel tif K D 360 360 Xb5i Do the same thing but use a gamma correction value of 2 0 alchemy pagel tif K D 360 360 Xb5i Gil 0 Go2 0 Do the same thing but use a dpi value of 1440x720 alchemy pagel tif K D 1440 720 Xb5i
244. since the printer has a 1 6 border on all four edges alchemy jpg P Xb8 16i Yb10 66i D300 300 d22 Image Alchemy 337 Scale Image in Vertical Direction Y Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments 338 Image Alchemy Scale the vertical dimension of the image to the specified size Y scaleType size units scaleType The type of scaling to use a Nearest Neighbor b Averaging Linear Interpolation c Lanczos2 d Lanczos3 scaleType is optional the default is Nearest Neighbor The higher the scale type the higher the quality and the longer the processing time size The size of the output image in the vertical dimension units The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters x factor units is optional the default is pixels The units value must immediately follow the size parameter Nearest neighbor type scaling is faster than the other types but introduces aliasing which reduces image quality The highest quality scaling supported is lanczos3 but it takes much longer than averaging linear interpolation and usually doesn t produce significantly better results Limitations Related options Examples Specifying a units value of x causes the size parameter to be treated as a scale factor e g Y 2 5x scales the image by a factor of 2 5 in the Y direction If you specify a units for the image size in inches or centimeters you must specify a dots per Inch value for the output i
245. splay options MS DOS Only 7 PostScript input options Default is 0 general help Limitations The help option cannot be combined with any other options Comments The help information given by this command is only a summary The numbers in braces after the command name refer to the page numbers in this manual Example Get help on the color options alchemy h4 258 Image Alchemy Multi Page Input U Purpose Allow the conversion of multiple pages with a single execution of Alchemy Syntax U U page U firstPage lastPage stepPage Parameter page Specify page number The default is page 1 startPage Specify beginning page number endPage Specify ending page number stepPage Specify step between pages Comments The multi page option allows you to process multiple pages of an image when reading an image file which contains multiple pages Each page of the image can be written to a separate file or to a single multiple page output file if writing to a format which supports multiple pages and using the U option If writing separate files the output file names will be as specified with the extension replaced with 001 for first page 002 for the second and so on If the U option is used without a following parameter all pages in the input file s will be converted Image Alchemy 259 Limitations Examples 260 Image Alchemy If you specify a single parameter after the U option only that pa
246. splayed pressing the space bar will return to DOS Pressing the space bar while an image is being displayed will stop the display of the image see the Actions during viewing section below for other things you can do while displaying images Depending on the hardware you have installed Alchemy supports the following display resolutions 640x480 800x600 1024x768 and 1280x1024 Also depending on the hardware Alchemy supports the following display depths 8 bit 15 bit 16 bit and 24 bit for 256 32768 65536 and 16 777 216 colors respectively Image Alchemy 349 350 Western Digital 8514 A Al 8514 A XGA Image Alchemy In addition Alchemy supports the standard VGA mode of 320x200x256 the quasi standard VGA mode of 360x480x256 and the common SVGA mode of 640x400x256 When instructed to display an image Alchemy automatically detects which type of display board you have installed If there are multiple display boards installed in your computer then Alchemy will display images on the first board it finds searching in the following order Western Digital based 8514 A board AI compatible 8514 A board XGA board VESA compatible SVGA board Other SVGA board 8514 A boards which are equipped with the Western Digital chipset are automatically recognized by Alchemy Depending on the model board and the amount of memory installed 640x480x256 1024x768x256 and 1280x 1024x256 modes are available Alchemy requires AI
247. sponse Files 00 0 0 cesses 37 Using Paired Filename Response Files cee eeeeeeeeeees 38 Using Sequential Filenames 0 0 0 cee eeeeeeeeneeeseceeeeeeees 38 Multiple Runs of Alchemy cee eeeeeeeseeseeeneceneeeseeeees 39 Chapter 3 Reading PostScript EPS and PDF Files Introduction sw Guia nie hn tet E e a neon 41 Converting PostScript files 0 0 ee eeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeneeenaeens 41 PostScript Conversion Parameters Anaha Snoes nanena a e i oe etcere aes 45 Clip ooren iep a ea ek E E E E A ET ee 46 C lor Mode siscgtis seiecssbesceustentetiislgesstcagee sabe iat iarsi ie 47 Image Qffsetiee noen oa n a E a a 49 Input Page SiZ menmen E E 51 Margins eves nenene a E a E eke 53 Output Page S1Ze i eetere koiriensa rtea iais 55 Output Page Width ooo eee eeseeseeeeeeeeeeeeecaeenaeees 57 Output Page Height eeeeeeneeeeseeeeeeeererreerrerssrreresreeen 58 PARC 58 ET EAE E AIEA 59 Pr load Ponts c1 esi sete aT T os 61 Preserve Aspect Rati ei cee ceeeeseesecseceseceeeeeeeeeeeneee 62 Rotate Page tists aesae a S E AaS 63 Specify Image Resolution eeeeseeeeeeeeereeseereeresresress 64 Use Bounding Boksian ey ae 65 Example Sisirin arde ateses iee iae er aea E Eiaa 66 Generating PostScript Files eeseseeeeeeeeseeeresreerereesresresn 71 Generating PostScript files from Microsoft Windows 71 Generating PostScript files from a Macintosh 719 Chapter 4 PostScript Fonts alchtOnt sister Seow e
248. sty ImageMagick html for more information Img Software Set Written by Paul Raveling Available from ftp expo lcs mit edu contrib img_1 3 tar Z or ftp venera isi edu pub img_1 3 tar Z XLI Written by Graeme Gill XLI is based on xloadimage written by Jim Frost XLI and XloadImage are available by anonymous ftp from a variety of ftp sites Image Alchemy 413 414 Image Alchemy Configuring DOS 4GW Pro MS DOS Only Updating from previous versions Virtual Memory DOS 4GW Pro is the DOS Extender used by Image Alchemy 386 and Image Alchemy PS The DOS Extender is the software that allows protected mode software to run under MS DOS Only alch386 exe use the DOS Extender This chapter explains how to control various operations of the DOS Extender to optimize use of your computer If you have been using earlier versions of Image Alchemy and have made use of the DOS4GVM environment variable you will have to make changes to that variable In particularly the old style DOS4GVM I setting is no longer supported it isn t needed since that is now the default operation and all symbols must be changed to The Virtual Memory Manager VMM uses a swap file on disk to augment RAM With VMM you can use more memory than your machine actually has When RAM is not sufficient a portion of memory is swapped out to disk until it is needed again The combination of the swap file and available RAM is called virtual memory Image Alc
249. t Binary files are files which are just image data In other words they do not contain any information other than the actual pixels in the image file In order to read these files you must create a file using a text editor which describes to Alchemy the format of the file you are trying to read This is called a BIF file and typically has the extension bif At the minimum a BIF file needs to contain the name of the image data file and either the height or the width of the image Alchemy will make assumptions about the other characteristics of the image based on the information that it is given and the total length of the image file The first line contains the letters BIF which identifies the file as a BIF file Each of the rest of the lines in the BIF file consist of an information tag followed by the information The spelling of the tags must be exact or Alchemy will report an unknown tag error The usage of many of the tags may not be entirely clear from the description please see the examples section if the usage of a tag needs more explanation Data following each tag can be in decimal or hex Ox before the number indicates hex See below for a example of using hex data in BIF file Image Alchemy 387 388 Tag filename width height planes header Image Alchemy Description The name of the file containing the image data To read images that consist of separate files for the red green and blue data re
250. t Windows w compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 RLE 10 Write an ICOn file The default is none bmp Microsoft Corp Microsoft Windows 1 4 8 15 16 and 24 bit RGB raw RLE4 and RLE8 files Several of the programs which claim to read and write RLE files do not do so correctly we do not recommend writing RLE files unless you have verified that they work with your intended application Microsoft supplied Windows utilities cannot read nor write RLE4 or RLES files If you are converting an image to use as wallpaper on a 16 color display you will want to match the palette of the output image to one of the existing 16 color BMP images supplied with Windows chess bmp for example If you do not do this the wallpaper will not be loaded correctly See the example section below Examples If you are converting an image to use as wallpaper on a 256 color Windows 3 1 display you will want to reserve the first 8 colors Use the c 256 8 option to do this see below for an example This will force the first 8 colors of the palette to be the standard Windows colors If you are writing a Windows icon ico file you must scale the image to a width and a height of 16 32 or 64 pixels 32 being the best choice since Windows displays all icons as 32x32 Also Windows seems to remap all icons to the standard 16 colors so the best results can be obtained if you match the palette of your icons to an existing icon see the f o
251. t XY format input 1 8 and 24 bits per pixel Z format and 1 and 8 bit XY format output Convert the XBM file icon xbm to an XWD file alchemy icon xbm w Image Alchemy 251 252 Image Alchemy General Options Introduction General options are options which do not affect the conversion of the image They control such things as the overwriting of existing files and the way that memory is used Image Alchemy 253 Control Memory Usage Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Examples 254 Image Alchemy Control the amount of memory uses for temporary storage of image data memory memory The amount of memory in kilobytes Default is 0 use as much memory as needed Using the without a following parameter causes Alchemy to use as little memory as possible both for temporary image storage and for other internal buffers On MS DOS based systems using the standard version of Alchemy this will usually allow conversion of larger images than would otherwise be possible Using the option with a parameter causes Alchemy to use no more than that much memory for temporary image storage but use as much memory as necessary for other internal buffers Note that a value of 0 following the causes Alchemy to use as much memory as needed this is different than without a parameter Using this option will limit the amount of virtual memory that Alchemy will use Convert the image giant tga to a TIF
252. t fonts for use by Alchemy PS read me A text document describing any last minute revisions samples A directory containing sample data files and images See the read me2 file in this directory for further information ps A directory containing the fonts supplied with Alchemy PS Use tar to copy the files from each of the distribution disks or tape to a subdirectory of the current directory called alchemy The examples below assume you are installing Alchemy in SHOME alchemy if you install Alchemy elsewhere you will have to modify the examples appropriately Image Alchemy 27 CD ROM installation instructions Environment variable usage path 28 Image Alchemy Change to the directory where you wish to install Alchemy To install into the default HOME alchemy directory do the following cd Shome mkdir alchemy cd alchemy To install the software from diskette insert each diskette starting at disk 1 and issue the following command for each diskette tar xvf dev fd0 For tape installation insert the tape in the appropriate tape drive and replace dev d0 with the name of the tape device The name of the tape device varies between different models and configurations of systems ask your system administrator if you don t know the name of your tape device See the installation guide packaged with the CD ROM for installation instructions appropriate for your platform Alchemy uses several different environme
253. take less memory so the hardware to display them is less expensive The dominance of paletted hardware is changing as the price of memory and the processing power it takes to update large amounts of memory at a reasonable speed drops Until true color graphics devices become the norm there is a need to convert images from true color to paletted This conversion is done in two steps the first is to generate a palette for use by the image the second is to map the image to the new palette The color model generally used by computers is a cube with red green and blue as the axes this is known as a color cube or RGB cube Each point inside the cube is a different color depending on the amount of red green and blue used In nature each of the three axes is nearly continuous therefore there are a nearly infinite number of colors available Computer hardware and software represent colors in a discrete fashion Image Alchemy 375 Generating a palette 376 Uniform palettes Image Alchemy For true color displays or file formats the number of discrete positions along each axis of the color cube gives the color resolution of the output device For example a Targa 24 board for an IBM PC has 8 bits per red green and blue channel for a total of 24 bits or 256 discrete shades of each color for a total of 16 million colors 256x256x256 This is also the color resolution of most true color file formats A 15 bit SVGA boards has 5 b
254. the horizontal dimension units The units the size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters x factor units is optional the default is pixels The units value must immediately follow the size parameter Nearest neighbor type scaling is faster than the other types but introduces aliasing which reduces image quality The highest quality scaling supported is lanczos3 but it takes much longer than averaging linear interpolation and usually doesn t produce significantly better results Image Alchemy 335 Limitations Related options Examples 336 Image Alchemy Specifying a units value of x causes the size parameter to be treated as a scale factor e g X 2 5x scales the image by a factor of 2 5 in the X direction If you specify a units for the image size in inches or centimeters you must specify a dots per inch value for the output image All of the scale types other than nearest neighbor give much better results than nearest neighbor scaling but they are slower and require a new palette to be generated for paletted output files you can force Alchemy to use the original palette by using the f option and specifying the original image as the palette file or using the f option Y Scale in vertical dimension Preserve aspect ratio D Specify image resolution Scale the input image test gif to 640 by 480 using good quality scaling calling the output file test2 gif alchemy test gif test2 gif Xb640
255. the pages at 10 so page 1 will be page 10 etc alchemy addendum tif addendum U 10 Etta E Do the same thing but starting number the pages at 100 and count down alchemy addendum tif addendum U 100 1 SeLEt te Image Alchemy 275 Use Input Directories for Output Purpose Place the output files into the same directory as the input files Syntax period Comments By default Alchemy places output files into either the current directory or a directory specified on the command line If the option is used the output files will be written to the same directory as the input files Example Convert all the PCX files in the directories imgs and photos to JPEG files placing the output files in the same directories the input files were read from alchemy imgs pcx photos pcx j 276 Image Alchemy Use Input File Format for Output Purpose Syntax Parameter Comments Limitations Examples Causes Alchemy to write out a file in the same format as the file being read compressionOption compressionOption Sets the output compression or output type based on the format being written If the output file already has the extension that Alchemy uses for the file being read and the output file is not being written to a different directory this command will fail unless the o command is used Only one parameter can be specified i e
256. those cases there s usually a second ADEX file which contains the palette to be used To read those images that don t have palettes use the F false color option to read the palette from a separate file Convert the file test gif to an uncompressed ADEX file called test img alchemy test gif A Image Alchemy 95 Adobe Acrobat PDF d Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations 96 Image Alchemy Adobe Acrobat PDF Portable Document Format files are used by Adobe Acrobat d compressionType compressionType 0 None 1 Run Length 2 LZW 3 CCITT Group 3 fax 4 CCITT Group 4 fax 5 JPEG Low Quality 6 JPEG Medium Quality 7 JPEG High Quality 0 ASCII Encoding 10 Binary Encoding The default is no compression and ASCII Encoding Options are combined by adding see below for an example pdf Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe Acrobat 1 bit black and white 8 bit grayscale 8 bit paletted and 24 bit color images CCITT Group 3 fax and Group 4 fax files are always 1 bit black and white Selecting either compression type will cause Alchemy to automatically convert the input image to black and white Comments Examples For more information on reading Adobe Acrobat files see Chapter 3 Alchemy can write multi page PDF files when used with the U option See below for an example Convert the JPEG file sample jpg to a Run Length compressed PDF file alchemy sample jpg d 1 Convert
257. tility that manipulates computer image files Image Alchemy converts between various graphics file formats including industry standard file formats as well as vendor specific file formats For example from GIF to TIFF or from Sun Raster to Scodl Currently Alchemy supports over 90 different formats and new formats are always being added Image Alchemy can also resize an image change the number of colors in an image change an image from color to black and white and change the color space an image uses In addition Image Alchemy PS converts PostScript EPS and PDF files to over 90 different raster file formats such as TIFF and PCX Alchemy PS also allows you to print PostScript EPS and PDF files on non PostScript printers and plotters such as HP LaserJet printers HP DesignJet plotters and Novajet plotters Image Alchemy I5 About this manual 16 Chapter 0 Chapter Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Appendix G Appendix H Appendix Appendix J Appendix K Glossary References Colophon Index Image Alchemy This manual is divided into 11 chapters 11 appendices a glossary references a colophon and an index Introduction and Conventions Installation Instructions Introduction to Alchemy Reading PostScript Files PostScript Fonts Conversion Options General Options Color and Palette Op
258. tio and a dots per inch value for an image This is because specifying a dots per inch value automatically implies an aspect ratio This option is ignored when writing a file format which does not have image resolution Many file formats that are associated with output devices such as HP PCL or ALPS only support certain resolutions for example an HP PCL file cannot have a resolution of 500 DPI In these cases writing a file with an unsupported resolution will give unpredictable results D Specify aspect ratio Convert the Targa file input tga to a TIFF file called output tif specifying that the resolution of the image in the TIFF file is 300 dpi alchemy input tga output t D 300 300 Convert the file scan tif to a DCX variation of a PCX file scaling the output image to 1500 by 750 preserving the image s aspect ratio and setting the resolution to 200 dpi by 100 dpi this is useful if you will be faxing the image using a fax card alchemy scan tif p1 X1500 Y750 D 200 100 Image Alchemy 347 348 Image Alchemy Viewing Options MS DOS Only Introduction Display hardware Image Alchemy is primarily designed as an image file conversion utility but it can also display images on properly equipped MS DOS based computers Using wildcards or multiple file names allows you to display a series of images After each image is displayed pressing the space bar will skip to the next image After the last image is di
259. tions Scaling and Filtering Options Viewing Options MS DOS only Answers to Frequently Asked Questions Color and Dithering JPEG Description Customer Support Binary Information Files BIF HSI Raw Files Undercolor Removal Files PAL Files Acknowledgments Other Useful Software Configuring DOS 4GW MS DOS only Document conventions Type style italic fixedspace Used for Parameters You supply values for the items shown in italic For example if the description of a command includes filename you would type in the name of the desired file Brackets Indicate optional items Ellipses Indicates a list of items or items which may be repeated Examples of Alchemy usage which can be typed in exactly as written Many of the examples give file names which probably don t exist on your system substitute different file names as appropriate Image Alchemy 17 18 Image Alchemy Installing Image Alchemy Overview Installation of Image Alchemy is straightforward it involves copying the Alchemy program and support files off of the supplied floppy disks or tape onto your hard drive or network and setting some environment variables The PC versions of Alchemy includes a setup program which copies the files for you You need to be familiar with the tar command if doing a UNIX installation If you are unsure of how to use this command you may wish to read the manuals which came with your computer or ask someone
260. tions Company ISBN 1 884777 00 7 Graphics File Formats David C Kay and John R Levine Windcrest McGraw Hill ISBN 0 8306 3060 0 Programming for Graphics Files in C and C John Levine John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 0 471 59854 2 Heckbert Color Quantization Image Scaling Bitmapped Graphics Programming in C Marv Luse Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 63209 8 Graphics File Formats James D Murry and William vanRyper O Reilly amp Associates ISBN 1 56592 161 5 Bit Mapped Graphics Steve Rimmer Windcrest ISBN 0 8306 3558 0 The Graphic File Toolkit Steve Rimmer Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 60846 4 Supercharged Bit Mapped Graphics Steve Rimmer Windcrest McGraw Hill ISBN 0 8306 3788 5 Color Image Quantization for Frame Buffer Display Paul S Heckbert SIGGRAPH 82 Proceedings Median Cut Color Quantization Anton Kruger Dr Dobb s Journal September 1994 Digital Image Warping George Wolberg IEEE Computer Society Press Monograph ISBN 0 8186 8944 7 Image Alchemy 423 JPEG PDF Portable Document Format VGA Programming 424 PostScript Image Alchemy JPEG Still Image Compression Standard William B Pennebaker and Joan L Mitchell Van Nostrand Reinhold ISBN 0 442 01272 1 Portable Document Format Reference Manual Adobe Systems Incorporated Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 62628 4 PostScript Language Reference Manual Second Edition Adobe Systems Incorporated Addison Wesley ISBN 0 201 181
261. to a gif file using the Netscape palette alchemy many tga g u 2 Scaling and Filtering Options Introduction These options are all related to image scaling and filtering Image Alchemy 321 Center Image Purpose Parameter Comments Limitations Related options 322 Image Alchemy The center image option changes the position of the image on the page It only affects printer and plotter formats _ xSize units ySize units underscore xSize The width of the page ySize The height of the page units The units each size parameter is in p pixels i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is pixels The units value must immediately follow the appropriate size parameter To only center the image in one dimension use 0 for the dimension that you do not want centered this is useful when you have roll paper loaded into your ink jet plotter Only works for those output options that support centering These are Fargo Epson Spaceward Sharp GPB Imaging Technology Pixel Power Collage Mimaki Raster Graphics Alps Calcomp EPS Fargo HP PCL and HP RTL If you specify the page size in inches or centimeters you must also specify a dots per inch value Can be used in conjunction with offset image to offset the image from the center of the page Sa Offset image Example Convert the image temp gif to an HP PCL file at 300 dpi centering it on the page alchemy temp gif P50 _ 8 5i 111
262. to assist you The installation instructions are divided into different sections for Image Alchemy for PC including MS DOS Windows 95 and Windows NT and Image Alchemy for UNIX Please refer to the section which corresponds to the version of Image Alchemy you have Image Alchemy and Image Alchemy PS for PC include an executable named alchlong exe Alchlong exe is a 32 bit Windows 95 NT console application it is run from the command line Alchlong exe has two advantages over alchemy exe or alch386 exe when converting Postscript files it uses up to 2 processors on a multi processor Windows NT machine and it can process files with long filenames Image Alchemy 19 PC Installation Required equipment 20 Computer Memory Image Alchemy Depending on which version of Image Alchemy you purchased there are up to three executable files included alchemy exe alch386 exe and alchlong exe The alchemy exe program is the standard version of Image Alchemy and can be used to process files up to 2550 pixels by 3300 pixels 8 5 x 11 at 300 dpi The alch386 exe program is an extended 32 bit version of Image Alchemy which can be used to process files up to 65000 pixels by 65000 pixels It is also slightly faster than alchemy exe The disadvantage that alch386 exe has is that it has a longer startup time so much so that converting small images takes longer than using alchemy exe and it does not support image viewing The alch
263. to be installed to use 8514 A displays which aren t based on the Western Digital chipset In addition to 8514 A boards Alchemy should also be able to display on other AI compatible boards such as 340x0 based boards however this has not been tested For AI based boards the only resolution available is 1024x768x256 Alchemy automatically detects the presence of an XGA or XGA2 board and will use it when displaying images The display modes available for XGA boards are 640x480x256 1024x768x256 and 640x480x65536 the actual modes available vary with the model XGA board installed and the amount of memory available VESA Other SVGA VGA The best support for SVGA boards is available for VESA compatible SVGA boards VESA is an SVGA standard which allows application software such as Image Alchemy to interrogate the SVGA board to determine which display modes are available Some SVGA boards have VESA support built directly into the BIOS found on the board in this case Alchemy will automatically detect the VESA driver and use it Other SVGA boards require a software driver to be installed these drivers are usually found on the floppy disks which came with your SVGA board typically the driver is called VESA EXE If you can t find a driver on the diskettes and the documentation does not explicitly mention that VESA support is built into the BIOS you might call the manufacturer to see if a VESA driver is available VESA drivers are cur
264. to be treated as a bounding box Y Set Vertical DPI Preserve aspect ratio Set the horizontal dpi value so that the image test tif is converted to an EPS file that will be 5 inches across when printed alchemy test tif e X 5i Do the same thing but preserve the aspect ratio so the vertical dpi will be set to the same value as the horizontal dpi alchemy test tif e X 5i Do the same thing but set the vertical size to 6 inches this will cause the 5 in x 6 in dimension to be treated as a bounding box alchemy test tif X 5i Y 6i Image Alchemy 341 Set Vertical DPI Purpose Parameters Comments Related options Examples 342 Image Alchemy Y Change the vertical dpi of an image to a value based on the specified final image size e g if you have an image which is 125 pixels down and you specify 5 inches this command sets the vertical dpi to 25 Y size units size The size of the output image in the vertical dimension units The units the size parameter is in i inches c centimeters units is optional the default is inches The units value must immediately follow the size parameter This command is similar to the D command except that the dpi value is set based on the size specified and the number of pixels in the image To set the horizontal dpi use the X command described above If you want to preserve the aspect ratio in the image use the command Using both the
265. tte Selection Heckbert Tuning zh Purpose Syntax Parameters Comments Example 304 Image Alchemy Select the specific Heckbert quantization method to use zh heckbertType heckbertType 0 Method 0 1 Method 1 2 Method 2 3 Method 3 The default is Method 0 The default Heckbert quantization method produces good results for most images however you may find the results are better for your images using one of the other methods This may be especially true when reducing images to a small number of colors in this case method 1 will probably produce better results Image Alchemy v1 7 7 and earlier used Heckbert quantization method 2 To produce images identical to those versions use zh2 on the command line Convert the file input tga to a gif filed called output gif with 16 colors using Heckbert Method 1 for the color reduction alchemy input tga output gif g zh 1 c16 Palette Selection Palette Selection Zp Purpose Syntax Parameters Conments Example Alter the method which Heckbert quantization uses to select colors zp selectionType selectionType 0 Mean 1 Median 2 Corner The default is Mean See Appendix B Color and Dithering for an explanation of these choices See Appendix B Convert the file sample jpg to a GIF file using the corners of the Heckbert boxes to select the palette entries alchemy sample jpg zp 2 Image Alchemy 305 Palette Selection Palette Sorting ZO
266. using type of file type of computer which generated it name and version of software which wrote the file size of image and the number of colors in image We may ask you to send us the file so that we can figure out what went wrong If you send us a file we will attempt to modify Image Alchemy so that it can read the file Once Alchemy is modified we will send you an updated copy of it Similarly if any files that Image Alchemy writes cannot be read by other software please contact us We may ask you to send us a copy of a file that can be read by that software package for comparison Please contact us even if you are just using a demo copy of Alchemy In addition to helping fix a bug we feel the best way to get you to purchase a copy of Alchemy is to demonstrate how committed we are to customer support Image Alchemy 385 How to contact us 386 Image Alchemy Our address and phone numbers are Handmade Software Inc 48860 Milmont Drive Suite 106 Fremont CA 94538 1510 252 0101 Voice 1510 252 0909 Fax The most efficient way to contact us is by e mail this is especially true if you can send us a sample file which demonstrates the problem you are having Please enclose a short note with your name and phone number so that we may call you if we need further information Our e mail address is Internet support handmade com Binary Information Files BIF Overview Required information BIF file forma
267. values to scale the 16 bit data to 8 bit data alchemy earth doc Z1 g IFF ILBM Syntax Extensions Creator Used by Variations Limitations Comments Example IFF Interchange File Format files are used by Amiga computers for storing a number of types of data including images text and music ILBM InterLeaved BitMap is a type of IFF file used to store images i bm iff ilbm Commodore Amiga Corp Amiga Deluxe Paint 1 through 8 bit 24 bit HAM and PBM images input 1 through 8 bit and 24 bit images output Dynamic Hi Res images are not supported Does not write images in any of the Amiga specific display modes If you re writing an ILBM file for use on an Amiga you probably want to write either a paletted file with 32 colors or a 24 bit file 24 bit ILBM files can then be converted to one of the Amiga specific display modes with various third party utilities Convert the file input pcx to an IFF ILBM file called output lbm with 32 colors alchemy input pcx output lbm i c32 Image Alchemy 171 Imaging Technology M Little is known about this format it was added at the request of a customer If you have any information please contact us Extensions img Creator Imaging Technology Used by Imaging Technology software Variations 8 bits per pixel grayscale Examples Convert the file sample jpg to a Imaging Technology file alchemy sample jpg M 172 Image Alchemy Img Softwar
268. ware packages can read and write PCX files we are especially interested in supporting as many variations as possible If you have any PCX files which Alchemy does not read correctly please contact us Since DCX files are always 1 bit black and white images Alchemy assumes the use of b c2 8 when writing the DCX variation of PCX Recently some of the header information in PCX files has been changed to include image resolution information Some fax board software makes use of this information when transmitting PCX or DCX files as faxes See the example section below for an example of how to specify image resolution when writing a PCX file Image Alchemy 197 Examples 198 Image Alchemy PCJ files are a variation of 256 color PCX files which have the palette in a separate file The palette file has the extension p13 Alchemy will automatically look for the palette file in the same directory as the PCJ file when reading When converting a DCX file which contains multiple pages you can specify which page to convert by using the Z option followed by the page number You can also convert all of the pages in the file by using the Multi Page option U see the examples section below Convert the GIF file lush gif to a PCX file alchemy lush gif p Convert the scanned image pagel tif to a DCX file alchemy pagel tif p1 Convert the scanned image page2 tif to a DCX file specifying an image resolution of 200x100 a common r
269. ween images There are 4 different disposal methods supported by the GIF specification and using Alchemy it is possible to write any one of them Disposal method 0 Restore to background color Disposal method 1 Do not dispose leave image in place Disposal method 2 Restore area to previous Disposal method 3 No disposal required It s difficult to convey what this actually means when an image is displayed The easiest thing to do is to write out a multi page GIF using each of the disposal methods and use the software which you will use to display the image to view the results If each of the images in the multi page GIF is the same the disposal method has little effect the most obvious differences are noted when an image is smaller than the previous image The LZW compression used in GIF files is patented by Unisys Corporation and used under license If you write software to read or write GIF files you need to contact Unisys to arrange a license See Appendix I in the Image Alchemy manual for contact information Image Alchemy 141 Examples 142 Image Alchemy Convert the image test pcx to a GIF87A image alchemy test pcx g Convert the file input tga to a 16 color GIF89A file alchemy input tga c16 g1 Convert the image logo pcx to a GIF89A image using white as the transparent color white is the default transparent color so we do not need to specify 255 255 255 after the t alchemy logo pcx gl t Do the same thin
270. wings Multi pass files are useful when generating JPEG files which are going to be displayed on the WWW A multi pass file allows a rough preview of the image to be displayed quickly when using a browser which supports multi pass JPEG files Image Alchemy 179 Related options Examples 180 Image Alchemy q Apply Smoothing when decompressing a JPEG image Because JPEG compression works on 8x8 pixel blocks there may be discontinuities at the edges of these blocks producing block artifacts Smoothing attempts to reduce these artifacts Smoothing is really only necessary at very low quality settings less than 10 even then the effects of smoothing are not particularly significant Convert the file photo tga to a JPEG file called photo jpg using a high quality setting alchemy photo tga j70 Convert the file photo tga to a JPEG file called photo jpg using a low quality setting and generating optimum Huffman tables alchemy photo tga jh10 Convert the file photo tga to a JPEG file called photo jpg using four pass mode and a low quality setting alchemy photo tga j10 4 Convert the JPEG file lores jpg to a PCX file using smoothing alchemy lores jpg p q Lumena CEL Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Comments Example Lumena CEL files are used by Time Arts software L cel Time Arts Lumena 15 and 32 bit RGB images including alpha channels for 32 bit files Alpha ch
271. y Variations Comments Calcomp raster files are used by Calcomp thermal transfer printers and electrostatic and ink jet plotters type lower case 1 type Thermal Transfer Printer 0 Uncompressed 1 White Space Suppression 2 Run Length Compression Electrostatic plotter CCRF 6 8 bit bytes 8 bit compression units 7 8 bit bytes 16 bit compression units 8 8 bit bytes 32 bit compression units Ink jet Plotter Interleaved CCRF 46 8 bit bytes 8 bit compression units 47 8 bit bytes 16 bit compression units 48 8 bit bytes 32 bit compression units 49 8 bit bytes Zip compression The default is Thermal transfer uncompressed crf ccrf prn Calcomp Calcomp thermal transfer printers and electrostatic and ink jet plotters including the CrystalJet Black and white or 4 bit CMYK If there is only black and white data in the image a 1 bit file will be generated Image Alchemy IHI Example 112 Image Alchemy To position the image on the page use the offset image option _ or the center image option _ see Chapter 8 for details To improve the output quality you may want to use gamma correction or a color correction file when converting to this format See the G and C options in Chapter 8 for more information Convert the Targa file imagel tga to a CCRF file using 16 bit compression units alchemy pagel tif 17 CALS Syntax Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations
272. y Variations Examples X Iris CT is used by Scitex scanners X ct Scitex Scitex scanners 32 bit CMYK Convert the file sample jpg to Scitex CT format alchemy sample jpg X Image Alchemy 215 Scodl Parameter Extension Creator Used by Variations Limitations Conments 216 Image Alchemy Scodl files are used by Agfa Matrix slide recorders S type type 0 Non scalable image MVP version pre 4 2 1 Scalable image MVP version 4 2 or later The default is 0 Non scalable scd Agfa Corporation Matrix Instruments Inc Agfa Matrix slide recorders 8 and 24 bit run length coded RLC images output only Output only Agfa Matrix made significant changes to the Scodl file format when they introduced version 4 2 of the MVP and Conductor software in 1992 Old version Scodl files could not be scaled by the MVP software new version Scodl files can be scaled but only work with the newer version of the MVP and Conductor software Scalable Scodl images have the advantages that they do not have to be scaled to a specific output resolution and are therefore generally smaller than pre scaled Scodl images They can also be imaged on a film recorder with any output resolution or previewed on a monitor The disadvantage of scalable Scodl images is that you must be using at least Scodl MVP version 4 2 and the Scodl MVP software does not perform very high quality scaling In particular the MVP softwar
273. y creating an alias or purchase the font and install it using alchfont Image Alchemy will always look for fonts in a file called fontmap when interpreting a PostScript file If you need several fontmaps perhaps for different users you can make font additions and deletions using the fontmap option to specify which fontmap to work on Then when you want to use a particular fontmap copy it to a file called Fontmap For example assume you have three different fontmaps titled allan marcos and jill To add Tekton to the marcos fontmap you would type alchfont fontmap marcos tekton pfb Then to make marcos the fontmap that Alchemy will find copy marcos to a file called fontmap in the alchemy ps directory copy marcos alchemy ps Fontmap It is important to realize that the copy command will overwrite any other file named Fontmap in the directory Conversion Options Introduction Output variations The one option which is always required when running Image Alchemy is the output image file type Even if you are just re sizing an image or changing the number of colors in an image Alchemy needs to know what type of image you want to create The file types that Image Alchemy supports are listed below In addition to the syntax required to generate the file any known restrictions or limitations are listed If you have trouble reading an image in one of the file formats we claim to support please contact us see Appendix
274. y for you For more information on virtual memory please refer to Appendix K Alchemy uses the environment variable TMP to determine where to open temporary files If the TMP environment variable is not set these files will be opened in the current directory The temporary files that Alchemy PS uses may be very large when rendering high resolution PostScript images For example rendering a 8 5 x 11 PostScript file at 300 dpi in full color may create up to 50 megabytes of temporary files If Alchemy PS runs out of disk space while writing to a temporary file it will report an error An example of setting the TMP variable to the temp directory on drive e would be set TMP e temp Use of extended and expanded memory Checking for 8514 A boards If you are using alchemy exe and there is enough extended or expanded memory available Alchemy will use it instead of some of the temporary files it would otherwise use during some conversions To use extended memory you must have an XMS driver installed in the config sys file such as HIMEM SYS QEMM or 386MAX To use expanded memory you must have a LIM 3 2 or LIM 4 0 expanded memory driver installed such as EMM386 QEMM or 386MAX Alchemy s use of extended expanded memory can be disabled To disable the use of extended and expanded memory set the environment variable alchemy to x type set alchemy x at the DOS prompt The availability of extended or expanded memory will not all
275. y of these packages and you would rather not be on this list please let us know that also These programs are only available as executable code and can only be run under MS DOS A public domain image file conversion and printing tool Written by Lee Crocker and the Stone Soup Group Available via CompuServe Image Alchemy 4il Cshow Vivid Workstations Utah Raster Toolkit URT Fuzzy Bitmap Manipulation FBM Portable BitMap PBMPLUS 412 Image Alchemy A shareware image viewing program Written by Bob Berry Available from Canyon State Systems and Software PO Box 86 Sedona AZ 86336 A shareware ray tracing program Written by Stephen B Coy Available from Stephen Coy 15205 NE 13th P1 2904 Bellevue WA 98007 These programs are only available as source code and generally require a workstation running UNIX or one of its variants Written by Spencer W Thomas Rod G Bogart and James Painter Available from ftp cs utah edu pub urt 3 0 tar Z ftp weedeater math yale edu pub urt 3 0 tar Z or ftp freebie engin umich edu pub urt 3 0 tar Z Written by Michael Mauldin Available from ftp nl cs cmu edu usr m1m ftp fbm tar Z ftp uunet uu net pub fbm tar Z or ftp ucsd edu graphics fbm tar Z Written by Jef Poskanzer Available from ftp expo lcs mit edu contrib pbmplus tar Z or ftp ftp ee lbl gov pbmplus tar Z ImageMagick Written by John Cristy See http www wizards dupont com cri
276. ylus 122 ER Mapper 124 Erdas Inc 126 Erdas LAN GIS IMG 126 Error diffusion dithering 378 errors 280 expanded memory 25 Explore TDI 129 extended memory 25 extension 32 F factor 55 57 58 335 338 Falcon CAD 160 Falcon Graphics 160 False Color 296 Fargo 130 322 329 Fargo Electronics 130 Fargo Primera 130 fax 67 393 FBM 132 412 Fifteen bits 314 FILE 74 File Formats 422 filenames 34 filter 326 First Publisher ART 133 FLC 134 Flip 327 328 Flip Image 327 Floyd Steinberg 293 font aliases 87 Font Inclusion 83 85 fonts 23 29 61 forward slashes 30 Freedom of Press 135 FTP 419 Fuzzy Bitmap Manipulation 412 G gamma 93 297 Gamma Correction 297 GARS 144 GEM VDI Image File 136 General Options 253 GIF 138 370 Giffer 210 Gill Sans 425 GIS 221 Glossary 419 GOES 144 GPB 219 GRASP 194 gray scale 373 419 gray scale 285 GROB 164 Group IV 393 H Halftone 293 Halo 118 Hammermill 425 Handmade Software Inc 108 165 166 167 188 Header 420 Heckbert 420 423 Heckbert quantization 365 Heckbert s median cut algorithm 377 Help 258 Hewlett Packard Company 150 156 158 164 HIMEM SYS 25 Histogram 146 Hitachi Raster Format 148 Image Alchemy 433 Hitachi Software Engineering Co Ltd 148 HJ 800 160 HP 158 HP 7600 159 322 329 HP LaserJet 66 149 322 329 HP PCL 149 322 329 HP PhotoSmart 156 HP Printer Command Language 149 322 329 HP Raster Tr
277. ze of 8 5 x 11 and you specify clipping the final image will be smaller than 8 5 x 11 Convert the file person eps to a black and white TIFF file called person tif to be used on a 600 dpi laser printer and clip the image to the active image area alchemy person eps t zZdqd600 600 Zc1 Color Mode Parameter Comments Zm Specify whether to render the image in black and white grayscale or color Zm mode mode 0 Black and White 1 bit 1 GrayScale 8 bit 2 RGB Color 24 bit 3 CMYK Color 4 bit 4 CMYK Color 32 bit The default is Black and White Alchemy defaults to rendering the image in 1 bit black and white If you specify grayscale or RGB color Alchemy will automatically fall back to grayscale or black and white if the image doesn t use any color or grayscale respectively However the memory disk space requirements and processing time all increase dramatically when telling Alchemy to render in Mode 1 or Mode 2 so don t specify those modes if it is not necessary You may want to specify grayscale output even when converting a PostScript file which will be printed on a black and white device This way Alchemy can do a better job raster scaling the image and you have control over the dithering type used If you specify black and white mode the only dither available is the halftone dither Using CMYK 4 bit mode can significantly speed up conversion times since the amount of data written is less

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