pngtopnm - convert a Portable Network Graphics file into portable
anymap
pngtopnm [-verbose] [-alpha | -mix] [-background color]
[-gamma value] [-text file] [-time] [pngfile]
Reads a Portable Network Graphics as input. Produces a portable
anymap as output. The type of the output file depends on the input file - if
it's black & white, a pbm file is written, else if it's grayscale
a pgm file, else a ppm file.
- -verbose
- Display the format of the input file and the type of the output file. If
the chunks are part of the png-file, the alpha, transparency and
gamma-values will be indicated.
- -alpha
- Output the alpha channel or transparency mask of the image. The result is
either a pbm file or pgm file, depending on whether
different levels of transparency appear.
- -mix
- Compose the image with the transparency or alpha mask against a the
background. When a background chunk is available that color is taken, else
black will do.
- -background
color
- If no background color chunck is present in the png-file, or when
another color is required this parameter can be used to set the background
color of images. This is especially useful for alpha-channel images or
those with transparency chunks. The format, to specify the color in, is
either (in the case of orange) "1.0,0.5,0.0", where the values
are floats between zero and one, or with the syntax "#RGB",
"#RRGGBB" or "#RRRRGGGGBBBB" where R, G and B are
hexa-decimal numbers.
- -gamma value
- Converts the image to a new display-gamma value. When a gAMA chunk is
present in the png-file, the image-gamma value will be used. When
not, the image-gamma is considered to be 1.0. Based on the image-gamma and
the display-gamma given with this option the colors written to the
pnm-file will be adjusted.
Because the gamma's of uncompensated monitors are around 2.6, which results
in an image-gamma of 0.45, some typical situations are: when the
image-gamma is 0.45 (use -verbose to check) and the picture is too light,
your system is gamma-corrected, so convert with "-gamma 1.0".
When no gAMA chunk is present or the image-gamma is 1.0, use 2.2 to make
the picture lighter and 0.45 to make the picture darker.
- -text file
- Writes the tEXt and zTXt chunks to a file, in a format as described in the
pnmtopng man-page. These chunks contain text comments or
annotations.
- -time
- Prints the tIME chunk to stderr.
All flags can be abbreviated to their shortest unique prefix.
Instead of pngtopnm|pnmtoxxx, a specific converter should be used,
if available. E.g. ptot (PNG to TIFF conversion), etc.
There could be an option to read the comment text from pnm
comments instead of a separate file.
The program could be much faster, with a bit of code
optimizing.
Copyright (C) 1995-1997 by Alexander Lehmann
and Willem van Schaik.