Path: blue.weeg.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!uhog.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!news.duke.edu!eff!news.umbc.edu!haven.umd.edu!umd5.umd.edu!destiny.dorm.umd.edu!snakey From: snakey@destiny.dorm.umd.edu (David Ross) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: MP4/8 Prism Conversion (description) Date: 15 Nov 1994 16:08:37 GMT Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 49 Message-ID: <3aame5$3vr@umd5.umd.edu> References: <3a9m78$k9n@ccnet.ccnet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: destiny.dorm.umd.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Frank M. Lin (fmlin@ccnet.com) wrote: : In article , : Shinya Nagashima wrote: : >I know there has been quite a lot of discussion concerning GS graphic : >converters, but few people have mentioned Prism GS by New Concepts. And I'm : >sure that those who have at least heard of the program may have wondered how : >it stacks up against SuperConvert and freeware/shareware alternatives. I've found that the best way to process pictures is to use the GS as little as possible. :( It's pretty obvious that if you have a picture formatted exatly how IFF2GS likes it, IFF2GS can do one hell of a job on conversion. The problem is, how to get it that way. Unfortunately, no GS utility that I have seen does a good job of converting, scaling, cropping, etc., because they all insist on not working with the raw, possibly 24 bit, image. There is a wonderful set of unix utilities which does a really nice job of manipulating images, and can even write IFF files! You need a nice UNIX shell account to do this from, but here is the alias that I put in my .cshrc file... (actually two) alias gififfsend "giftoppm < \!:1 | pnmcrop | pnmcrop -white | pnmcrop -black | pnmscale -xysize 320 200 | ppmquant -fs 4096 > tempppm; ppmmake rgbi:0/0/0 320 200 > tempppm2; pnmpaste tempppm 0 0 tempppm2 | ppmtoilbm -hamif > \!:2; rm -rf tempppm tempppm2 \!:1 ; sz -bu \!:2" alias jpegiffsend "djpeg -pnm < \!:1 | pnmcrop | pnmcrop -white | pnmcrop -black | pnmscale -xysize 320 200 | ppmquant -fs 4096 > tempppm; ppmmake rgbi:0/0/0 320 200 > tempppm2; pnmpaste tempppm 0 0 tempppm2 | ppmtoilbm -hamif > \!:2; rm -rf tempppm tempppm2 \!:1 ; sz -bu \!:2" Now, the command "gififfsend picture.gif picture.iff" will basically send me, picture.gif, but converted to an iff. It doesn't just convert it though. First it crops out the main part of the picture (removes any blank lines on any sides), then it resizes it so that it is either 320 pixels wide, 200 pixels high, or both, so that the aspect ratio remains correct. Then it pastes that picture onto a black picture that is exactly 320x200, so that the whole picture itself is 320x200. Then it cuts the colors down to 4096 (that can be adjusted, but I just wanted to make ppmquant to most of the "quant"ing because just a plain "ppmtoilbm -hamif" won't do any floyd-stienberg dithering. (The good kind, not the ugly kind.) The picture comes out as an iff, and is sent with zmodem. Both copies are deleted on the remote computer. The other command that I made does the same thing, but with jpegs. Have fun, and let me know if you know of a way to get even better results! Dave Ross Path: blue.weeg.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!uunet!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!haven.umd.edu!umd5.umd.edu!destiny.dorm.umd.edu!snakey From: snakey@destiny.dorm.umd.edu (David Ross) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: MP4/8 Prism Conversion (description) Date: 15 Nov 1994 16:20:08 GMT Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 6 Message-ID: <3aan3o$5bd@umd5.umd.edu> References: <3a9m78$k9n@ccnet.ccnet.com> <3aame5$3vr@umd5.umd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: destiny.dorm.umd.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] One thing I definately forgot to mention... You need to have pbmplus compiled on your UNIX machine. If it's not there, ftp it and compile it, or ask your sysadmin to do it. Have fun! Dave Ross