tiffcrop - select, copy, crop, convert, extract, and/or process
one or more TIFF files
tiffcrop [ options ] src1.tif …
srcN.tif dst.tif
tiffcrop processes one or more files created according to
the Tag Image File Format, Revision 6.0, specification into one or more TIFF
file(s). tiffcrop is most often used to extract portions of an image
for processing with bar code recognizer or OCR software when that software
cannot restrict the region of interest to a specific portion of the image or
to improve efficiency when the regions of interest must be rotated. It can
also be used to subdivide all or part of a processed image into smaller
sections and export individual images or sections of images as separate
files or separate images within one or more files derived from the original
input image or images.
The available functions can be grouped broadly into three
classes:
- 1.
- Those that select individual images or sections of images from the input
files. The options -N for sequences or lists of individual images
in the input files, -Z for zones, -z for regions, -X
and -Y for fixed sized selections, -m for margins, -U
for units, and -E for edge reference provide a variety of ways to
specify portions of the input image.
- 2.
- Those that allow the individual images or selections to be exported to one
or more output files in different groupings and control the organization
of the data in the output images. The options -P for page size
grouping, -S for subdivision into columns and rows and -e
for export mode options that produce one or more files from each input
image. The options -r, -s, -t, -w control
strip and tile format and sizes while -B, -L, -c,
-f modify the endian addressing scheme, the compression options,
and the bit fill sequence of images as they are written.
- 3.
- Those that perform some action on each image that is selected from the
input file. The options include -R for rotate, -I for
inversion of the photometric interpretation and/or data values, and
-F to flip (mirror) the image horizontally or vertically.
Functions are applied to the input image(s) in the following
order: cropping, fixed area extraction, zone and region extraction,
inversion, mirroring, rotation.
Functions are applied to the output image(s) in the following
order: export mode options for grouping zones, regions, or images into one
or more files, or row and column divisions with output margins,
or page size divisions with page orientation options.
Finally, strip, tile, byte order, output resolution, and
compression options are applied to all output images.
The output file(s) may be organized and compressed using a
different algorithm from the input files. By default, tiffcrop will
copy all the understood tags in a TIFF directory of an input file to the
associated directory in the output file. Options can be used to force the
resultant image to be written as strips or tiles of data, respectively.
tiffcrop can be used to reorganize the storage
characteristics of data in a file, and to reorganize, extract, rotate, and
otherwise process the image data as specified at the same time whereas
tiffcp does not alter the image data within the file.
Using the options for selecting individual input images and the
options for exporting images and/or segments defined as zones or regions of
each input image, tiffcrop can perform the functions of tiffcp
and tiffsplit in a single pass while applying multiple operations to
individual selections or images.
- -h
- Display the syntax summary for tiffcrop.
- -v
- Report the current version and last modification date for tiffcrop.
- -N
odd|even|#,#-#,#|last
- Specify one or more series or range(s) of images within each file to
process. The words odd or even may be used to specify all
odd or even numbered images counting from one. Note that internally, TIFF
images are numbered from zero rather than one but since this convention is
not obvious to most users, tiffcrop used 1 to specify the first
image in a multipage file. The word last may be used in place of a
number in the sequence to indicate the final image in the file without
knowing how many images there are. Ranges of images may be specified with
a dash and multiple sets can be indicated by joining them in a
comma-separated list. eg. use -N 1,5-7,last to process the 1st, 5th
through 7th, and final image in the file.
- -E
top|bottom|left|right
- Specify the top, bottom, left, or right edge
as the reference from which to calculate the width and length of crop
regions or sequence of positions for zones. When used with the -e
option for exporting zones or regions, the reference edge determines how
composite images are arranged. Using -E left or -E right
causes successive zones or regions to be merged horizontally whereas using
-E top or -E bottom causes successive zones or regions to be
arranged vertically. This option has no effect on export layout when
multiple zones or regions are not being exported to composite images.
Edges may be abbreviated to the first letter.
- -e
combined|divided|image|multiple|separate
- Specify the export mode for images and selections from input images. The
final filename on the command line is considered to be the destination
file or filename stem for automatically generated sequences of files.
Modes may be abbreviated to the first letter.
| Export mode |
Description |
| combined |
All images and selections are written
to a single file with multiple selections from one image combined into a
single image (default) |
| divided |
All images and selections are written
to a single file with each selection from one image written to a new
image |
| image |
Each input image is written to a new
file (numeric filename sequence) with multiple selections from the image
combined into one image |
| multiple |
Each input image is written to a new
file (numeric filename sequence) with each selection from the image
written to a new image |
| separate |
Individual selections from each image
are written to separate files |
- -U in|cm|px
- Specify the type of units to apply to dimensions for margins and crop
regions for input and output images. Inches or centimeters are converted
to pixels using the resolution unit specified in the TIFF file (which
defaults to inches if not specified in the IFD).
- -m
top,left,bottom,right
- Specify margins to be removed from the input image. The order must be
top, left, bottom, right with only commas
separating the elements of the list. Margins are scaled according to the
current units and removed before any other extractions are computed.
- -X #
- Set the horizontal (X-axis) dimension of a region to extract relative to
the specified origin reference. If the origin is the top or bottom edge,
the X axis value will be assumed to start at the left edge.
- -Y #
- Set the vertical (Y-axis) dimension of a region to extract relative to the
specified origin reference. If the origin is the left or right edge, the Y
axis value will be assumed to start at the top.
- -Z #:#,#:#
- Specify zones of the image designated as position X of Y equal sized
portions measured from the reference edge, eg 1:3 would be first third of
the image starting from the reference edge minus any margins specified for
the confining edges. Multiple zones can be specified as a comma separated
list but they must reference the same edge. To extract the top quarter and
the bottom third of an image you would use -Z 1:4,3:3.
- -z x1,y1,x2,y2: ...
:xN,yN,xN+1,yN+1
- Specify a series of coordinates to define regions for processing and
exporting. The coordinates represent the top left and lower right corners
of each region in the current units, eg inch, cm, or pixels. Pixels are
counted from one to width or height and inches or cm are calculated from
image resolution data.
Each colon delimited series of four values represents the
horizontal and vertical offsets from the top and left edges of the
image, regardless of the edge specified with the -E option. The
first and third values represent the horizontal offsets of the corner
points from the left edge while the second and fourth values represent
the vertical offsets from the top edge.
- -F horiz|vert
- Flip, ie mirror, the image or extracted region horizontally or
vertically.
- -R 90|180|270
- Rotate the image or extracted region 90, 180, or 270 degrees
clockwise.
- -I
[black|white|data|both]
- Invert color space, eg dark to light for bilevel and grayscale images.
This can be used to modify negative images to positive or to correct
images that have the PHOTOMETRIC_INTERPRETATION tag set
incorrectly. If the value is black or white, the
PHOTOMETRIC_INTERPRETATION tag is set to MinIsBlack or MinIsWhite,
without altering the image data. If the argument is data or both, the data
values of the image are modified. Specifying both inverts the data and the
PHOTOMETRIC_INTERPRETATION tag, whereas using data inverts the data
but not the PHOTOMETRIC_INTERPRETATION tag. No support for
modifying the color space of color images in this release.
- -H #
- Set the horizontal resolution of output images to #, expressed in
the current units.
- -V #
- Set the vertical resolution of the output images to # expressed in
the current units.
- -J #
- Set the horizontal margin of an output page size to # expressed in
the current units when sectioning image into columns ×
rows subimages using the -S cols:rows option.
- -K #
- Set the vertical margin of an output page size to # expressed in
the current units when sectioning image into columns ×
rows subimages using the -S cols:rows option.
- -O
portrait|landscape|auto
- Set the output orientation of the pages or sections. Auto will use the
arrangement that requires the fewest pages. This option is only meaningful
in conjunction with the -P option to format an image to fit on a
specific paper size.
- -P page
- Format the output images to fit on page size paper. Use -P list to
show the supported page sizes and dimensions. You can define a custom page
size by entering the width and length of the page in the current units
with the following format #.#x#.#.
- -S cols:rows
- Divide each image into cols across and rows down equal sections.
- -B
- Force output to be written with Big-Endian byte order. This option only
has an effect when the output file is created or overwritten and not when
it is appended to.
- -C
- Suppress the use of "strip chopping" when reading images that
have a single strip/tile of uncompressed data.
- -c
- Specify the compression to use for data written to the output file: -c
none for no compression, -c packbits for PackBits compression,
-c lzw for Lempel-Ziv & Welch compression, -c jpeg for
baseline JPEG compression. -c zip for Deflate compression, -c
g3 for CCITT Group 3 (T.4) compression, -c g4 for CCITT Group 4
(T.6) compression. By default tiffcrop will compress data according
to the value of the Compression tag found in the source file.
The CCITT Group 3 and Group 4 compression algorithms can only
be used with bilevel data.
Group 3 compression can be specified together with several
T.4-specific options: 1d for 1-dimensional encoding, 2d
for 2-dimensional encoding, fill to force each encoded scanline
to be zero-filled so that the terminating EOL code lies on a byte
boundary. Group 3-specific options are specified by appending a
:-separated list to the g3 option; e.g. -c
g3:2d:fill to get 2D-encoded data with byte-aligned EOL codes.
LZW compression can be specified together with a
predictor value. A predictor value of 2 causes each scanline of
the output image to undergo horizontal differencing before it is
encoded; a value of 1 forces each scanline to be encoded without
differencing. LZW-specific options are specified by appending a
:-separated list to the lzw option; e.g. -c lzw:2
for LZW compression with horizontal differencing.
- -f
- Specify the bit fill order to use in writing output data. By default,
tiffcrop will create a new file with the same fill order as the
original. Specifying -f lsb2msb will force data to be written with
the FillOrder tag set to LSB2MSB, while -f msb2lsb
will force data to be written with the FillOrder tag set to
MSB2LSB.
- -i
- Ignore non-fatal read errors and continue processing of the input
file.
- -k size
- Set maximum memory allocation size (in MiB). The default is 256MiB. Set to
0 to disable the limit.
- -l
- Specify the length of a tile (in pixels). tiffcrop attempts to set
the tile dimensions so that no more than 8 kilobytes of data appear in a
tile.
- -L
- Force output to be written with Little-Endian byte order. This option only
has an effect when the output file is created or overwritten and not when
it is appended to.
- -M
- Suppress the use of memory-mapped files when reading images.
- -p
- Specify the planar configuration to use in writing image data that has
more than one sample per pixel. By default, tiffcrop will create a
new file with the same planar configuration as the original. Specifying
-p contig will force data to be written with multi-sample data
packed together, while -p separate will force samples to be written
in separate planes.
- -r
- Specify the number of rows (scanlines) in each strip of data written to
the output file. By default (or when value 0 is specified),
tiffcrop attempts to set the rows/strip that no more than 8
kilobytes of data appear in a strip. If you specify the special value
-1 it will results in infinite number of the rows per strip. The
entire image will be the one strip in that case.
- -s
- Force the output file to be written with data organized in strips (rather
than tiles).
- -t
- Force the output file to be written with data organized in tiles (rather
than strips).
- -w
- Specify the width of a tile (in pixels). tiffcrop attempts to set
the tile dimensions so that no more than 8 kilobytes of data appear in a
tile.
- -D
opt1:value1,opt2:value2,opt3:value3:opt4:value4
- Debug and dump facility
Display program progress and/or dump raw data to non-TIFF
files. Options include the following and must be joined as a comma
separated list. The use of this option is generally limited to program
debugging and development of future options. An equal sign may be
substituted for the colon in option:value pairs.
debug:N:
Display limited program progress indicators where larger
N increases the level of detail.
format:txt|raw:
Format any logged data as ASCII text or raw binary
values. ASCII text dumps include strings of ones and zeroes representing the
binary values in the image data plus identifying headers.
level:N:
Specify the level of detail presented in the dump files.
This can vary from dumps of the entire input or output image data to dumps of
data processed by specific functions. Current range of levels is 1 to 3.
input:full-path-to-directory/input-dumpname:
output:full-path-to-directory/output-dumpname:
When dump files are being written, each image will be
written to a separate file with the name built by adding a numeric sequence
value to the dumpname and an extension of .txt for ASCII dumps or
.bin for binary dumps.
The four debug/dump options are independent, though it makes
little sense to specify a dump file without specifying a detail level.
Note: tiffcrop may be compiled with -DDEVELMODE to
enable additional very low level debug reporting.
However, not all option combinations are permitted.
Note 1: The (-X|-Y), -Z, -z and -S options are mutually
exclusive. In no case should the options be applied to a given selection
successively.
Note 2: Any of the -X, -Y, -Z and -z options together with other
PAGE_MODE_x options such as -H, -V, -P, -J or -K are not supported and may
cause buffer overflows.
The following concatenates two files and writes the result using
LZW encoding:
tiffcrop -c lzw a.tif b.tif result.tif
To convert a G3 1d-encoded TIFF to a single strip of G4-encoded
data the following might be used:
tiffcrop -c g4 -r 10000 g3.tif g4.tif
(1000 is just a number that is larger than the number of rows in
the source file.)
To extract a selected set of images from a multi-image TIFF file
use the -N option described above. Thus, to copy the 1st and 3rd
images of image file album.tif to result.tif:
tiffcrop -N 1,3 album.tif result.tif
Invert a bilevel image scan of a microfilmed document and crop off
margins of 0.25 inches on the left and right, 0.5 inch on the top, and 0.75
inch on the bottom. From the remaining portion of the image, select the
second and third quarters, ie, one half of the area left from the center to
each margin:
tiffcrop -U in -m 0.5,0.25,0.75,0.25 -E left -Z 2:4,3:4 -I both MicrofilmNegative.tif MicrofilmPostiveCenter.tif
Extract only the final image of a large Architectural E sized
multipage TIFF file and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise while reformatting
the output to fit on tabloid sized sheets with one quarter of an inch on
each side:
tiffcrop -N last -R 90 -O auto -P tabloid -U in -J 0.25 -K 0.25 -H 300 -V 300 Big-PlatMap.tif BigPlatMap-Tabloid.tif
The output images will have a specified resolution of 300 dpi in
both directions. The orientation of each page will be determined by
whichever choice requires the fewest pages. To specify a specific
orientation, use the portrait or landscape option. The paper size option
does not resample the image. It breaks each original image into a series of
smaller images that will fit on the target paper size at the specified
resolution.
Extract two regions 2048 pixels wide by 2048 pixels high from each
page of a multi-page input file and write each region to a separate output
file:
tiffcrop -U px -z 1,1,2048,2048:1,2049,2048,4097 -e separate CheckScans.tiff Check
The output file names will use the stem Check with a
numeric suffix which is incremented for each region of each image, eg
Check-001.tiff, Check-002.tiff … Check-NNN.tiff.
To produce a unique file for each page of the input image with one new image
for each region of the input image on that page change the export option to
-e multiple.
In general, bilevel, grayscale, palette and RGB(A) data with bit
depths from 1 to 32 bits should work in both interleaved and separate plane
formats. Unlike tiffcp, tiffcrop can read and write tiled
images with bits per sample that are not a multiple of 8 in both interleaved
and separate planar format. Floating point data types are supported at bit
depths of 16, 24, 32 and 64 bits per sample.
Not all images can be converted from one compression scheme to
another. Data with some photometric interpretations and/or bit depths are
tied to specific compression schemes and vice-versa, e.g. Group 3/4
compression is only usable for bilevel data. JPEG compression is only usable
on 8 bit per sample data (or 12 bit if libtiff was compiled with 12
bit JPEG support). Support for OJPEG compressed images is problematic at
best. Since OJPEG compression is no longer supported for writing images with
LibTIFF, these images will be updated to the newer JPEG compression when
they are copied or processed. This may cause the image to appear color
shifted or distorted after conversion. In some cases, it is possible to
remove the original compression from image data using the option -c
none.
tiffcrop does not currently provide options to up or
downsample data to different bit depths or convert data from one photometric
interpretation to another, e.g. 16 bits per sample to 8 bits per sample or
RGB to grayscale.
tiffcrop is very loosely derived from code in tiffcp
with extensive modifications and additions to support the selection of input
images and regions and the exporting of them to one or more output files in
various groupings. The image manipulation routines are entirely new and
additional ones may be added in the future. It will handle tiled images with
bit depths that are not a multiple of eight that tiffcp may refuse to
read.
tiffcrop was designed to handle large files containing many
moderate sized images with memory usage that is independent of the number of
images in the file. In order to support compression modes that are not based
on individual scanlines, e.g. JPEG, it now reads images by strip or tile
rather than by individual scanlines. In addition to the memory required by
the input and output buffers associated with libtiff one or more
buffers at least as large as the largest image to be read are required. The
design favors large volume document processing uses over scientific or
graphical manipulation of large datasets as might be found in research or
remote sensing scenarios.
pal2rgb (1), tiffinfo (1), tiff2cmp (1),
tiffcp (1), tiffmedian (1), tiffsplit (1),
libtiff (3tiff)
1988-2023, LibTIFF contributors