NAME

       PDL::ImageRGB -- some utility functions for RGB image data handling

DESCRIPTION

       Collection of a few commonly used routines involved in handling of RGB, palette and
       grayscale images. Not much more than a start. Should be a good place to exercise some of
       the thread/map/clump PP stuff.

       Other stuff that should/could go here:

       •  color space conversion

       •  common image filters

       •  image rebinning

SYNOPSIS

        use PDL::ImageRGB;

FUNCTIONS

   cquant
       quantize and reduce colours in 8-bit images

           ($out, $lut) = cquant($image [,$ncols]);

       This function does color reduction for <=8bit displays and accepts 8bit RGB and 8bit
       palette images. It does this through an interface to the ppm_quant routine from the
       pbmplus package that implements the median cut routine which intellegently selects the
       'best' colors to represent your image on a <= 8bit display (based on the median cut
       algorithm). Optional args: $ncols sets the maximum nunmber of colours used for the output
       image (defaults to 256).  There are images where a different color reduction scheme gives
       better results (it seems this is true for images containing large areas with very smoothly
       changing colours).

       Returns a list containing the new palette image (type PDL_Byte) and the RGB colormap.

   interlrgb
       Make an RGB image from a palette image and its lookup table.

           $rgb = $palette_im->interlrgb($lut)

       Input should be of an integer type and the lookup table (3,x,...). Will perform the lookup
       for any N-dimensional input pdl (i.e. 0D, 1D, 2D, ...). Uses the index command but will
       not dataflow by default. If you want it to dataflow the dataflow_forward flag must be set
       in the $lut piddle (you can do that by saying $lut->set_dataflow_f(1)).

   rgbtogr
       Converts an RGB image to a grey scale using standard transform

          $gr = $rgb->rgbtogr

       Performs a conversion of an RGB input image (3,x,....) to a greyscale image (x,.....)
       using standard formula:

          Grey = 0.301 R + 0.586 G + 0.113 B

   bytescl
       Scales a pdl into a specified data range (default 0-255)

               $scale = $im->bytescl([$top])

       By default $top=255, otherwise you have to give the desired top value as an argument to
       "bytescl". Normally "bytescl" doesn't rescale data that fits already in the bounds 0..$top
       (it only does the type conversion if required).  If you want to force it to rescale so
       that the max of the output is at $top and the min at 0 you give a negative $top value to
       indicate this.

BUGS

       This package doesn't yet contain enough useful functions!

AUTHOR

       Copyright 1997 Christian Soeller <c.soeller@auckland.ac.nz> All rights reserved. There is
       no warranty. You are allowed to redistribute this software / documentation under certain
       conditions. For details, see the file COPYING in the PDL distribution. If this file is
       separated from the PDL distribution, the copyright notice should be included in the file.