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<H1>pamtotiff</H1>
Updated: 05 April 2017
<BR>
<A HREF="#index">Table Of Contents</A>
<H2>NAME</H2>
pamtotiff - convert a Netpbm image to a TIFF file
<H2 id="synopsis">SYNOPSIS</H2>
<B>pamtotiff</B>
[<B>-none</B> | <B>-packbits</B> | <B>-lzw</B> | <B>-g3</B> | <B>-g4</B>
| <B>-flate</B> | <B>-adobeflate</B>]
[<B>-2d</B>]
[<B>-fill</B>]
[<B>-predictor=</B><I>n</I>]
[<B>-msb2lsb</B>|<B>-lsb2msb</B>]
[<B>-rowsperstrip=</B><I>n</I>]
[<B>-minisblack</B>|<B>-miniswhite</B>|<B>mb</B>|<b>mw</b>]
[<B>-truecolor</B>]
[<B>-color</B>]
[<B>-indexbits=</B><I>bitwidthlist</I>]
<br>
[<B>-xresolution=</b><i>xres</i>]
[<B>-yresolution=</b><i>yres</i>]
<br>
[<B>-resolutionunit=</b>{<b>inch</b> | <b>centimeter</b> | <b>none</b> |
<b>in</b> | <b>cm</b> | <b>no</b>}]
[<b>-append</b>]
[<b>-tag=</b><i>taglist</i>]
[<I>pamfile</I>]
<P>You can use the minimum unique abbreviation of the options. You
can use two hyphens instead of one. You can separate an option name
from its value with white space instead of an equals sign.
<H2 id="description">DESCRIPTION</H2>
<p>This program is part of <a href="index.html">Netpbm</a>.
<p><b>pamtotiff</b> reads a PNM or PAM image as input and produces a TIFF file
as output.
<p>Actually, it handles multi-image Netpbm streams, producing multi-image
TIFF streams (i.e. a TIFF stream with multiple
"directories"). But before Netpbm 10.27 (March 2005), it
ignored all but the first Netpbm image in the input stream.
<h3 id="output">The Output File</h3>
<P>By default, the output goes to Standard Output. Alternatively, you can
specify an output file with the <b>-output</b> option and <b>pamtotiff</b>
will write its output directly to that file.
<p>Because of the way the TIFF library (which <b>pamtotiff</b> uses) works,
when the program writes to Standard Output, it generates the entire TIFF image
in a temporary file and then copies it to Standard Output; you may see
negative performance effects of this.
<p>The <b>-output</b> method avoids the performance effects of the copy
through the temporary file, but there are restrictions on the output file: it
must be seekable and it must be readable. The program fails if it is not.
With Standard Output, neither of those restrictions applies.
<p>With <b>-output</b>, if the file already exists and has data in it,
<b>pamtotiff</b> appends the image to the existing TIFF file. (A TIFF file
may contain multiple images).
<p>By default, <b>pamtotiff</b> creates the file named by <b>-output</b> if it
does not already exist. But if you also specify <b>-append</b>, the program
fails if the file named by <b>-output</b> does not already exist.
<p>Before Netpbm 10.67 (June 2014), there is no <b>-output</b> option and
Standard Output must be seekable. So pipes are out.
<p>Before Netpbm 10.67 (June 2014), you could append to Standard Output. See
below. The current program does not have the ability; you must
use <b>-output</b> to append to an existing TIFF file.
<p>The difference above means current <b>pamtotiff</b> is actually not
backward compatible, which is a rare thing for Netpbm. But it's a good thing
because the previous function was very strange and probably hardly ever
exploited.
<h4 id="oldoutput">Old Versions</h4>
<p>As alluded to above, <b>pamtotiff</b> does output very differently
in releases before 10.67. The following describes the old function,
which is unusual both for Netpbm and for Unix programs in general.
<ul>
<li>The output file must be seekable. <b>pamtotiff</b> does not
write it sequentially. Therefore, you can't use a pipe; you can't
pipe the output of <b>pamtotiff</b> to some other program. But any
regular file should work.
<li>If the output file descriptor is readable, you must either specify
<b>-append</b> so as to add to the existing file, or make sure the
file is empty. Otherwise, <b>pamtotiff</b> will fail with an
unhelpful message telling you that a TIFF library function failed to
open the TIFF output stream.
<li>If you are converting multiple images (your input stream contains
multiple images), the output file must be both readable and writable.
</ul>
<p>If you're using a Unix command shell to run <b>pamtotiff</b>, you
use facilities of your shell to set up Standard Output. In Bash,
for example, you would set up a write-only Standard Output to the
file /tmp/myimage.tiff like this:
<pre>
<tt>
$ pamtotiff myimage.pnm >/tmp/myimage.tiff
</tt>
</pre>
In Bash, you would set up a read/write Standard Output to the file
/tmp/myimage.tiff like this:
<pre>
<tt>
$ pamtotiff myimage.pnm 1<>/tmp/myimage.tiff
</tt>
</pre>
<h3 id="library">TIFF Capability</h3>
<p><b>pamtotiff</b> uses the Libtiff.org TIFF library (or whatever
equivalent you provide) to generate the TIFF output. Details of the
format it produces are therefore controlled by that library.
<H2 id="options">OPTIONS</H2>
<h3 id="compression">Compression</h3>
<P>By default, <B>pamtotiff</B> creates a TIFF file with no
compression. This is your best bet most of the time. If you want to
try another compression scheme or tweak some of the other even more
obscure output options, there are a number of options which to
play.
<p>Before Netpbm 8.4 (April 2000), the default was to use LZW compression.
But then new releases of the TIFF library started omitting the LZW
compression capability because of concern about patents on LZW. So
since then, the default has been no compression. The LZW patents have
now expired and new TIFF libraries do LZW, but the <b>pamtotiff</b>
behavior remains the same for compatibility with older TIFF libraries
and applications of <b>pamtotiff</b>.
<P>The <B>-none</B>, <B>-packbits</B>, <B>-lzw</B>, <B>-g3</B>,
<B>-g4</B>, <B>-flate</B>, and <B>-adobeflate</B> options are used to
override the default and set the compression scheme used in creating
the output file.
The <B>-predictor</B> option is meaningful only with LZW compression: 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. By default, <B>pamtotiff</B>
creates a TIFF file with msb-to-lsb fill order. The <B>-msb2lsb</B> and
<B>-lsb2msb</B> options are used to override the default and set the fill
order used in creating the file.
<P>With some older TIFF libraries, <B>-lzw</B> doesn't work because
the TIFF library doesn't do LZW compression. This is because of
concerns about Unisys's patent on LZW which was then in force.
Actually, with very old TIFF libraries, <b>-lzw</b> works because no
distributors of the TIFF library were sensitive yet to the patent
issue.
<p><b>-flate</b> chooses "flate" compression, which is the
patent-free compression common in the Unix world implemented by the
"Z" library. It is what the PNG format uses.
<H4 id="faxcompression">Fax Compression</H4>
<p>If you have bilevel data (e.g. PBM), you can generate a TIFF that uses the
same compression scheme specified for use by fax machines. See the <a
href="faxformat.html">Fax Format</a> page for more information on these
compression schemes.
<p>These formats all relate to ITU Group 3 and Group 4 fax machine
standards.
<p>The <b>-g3</b> option chooses MH or MR compression: MR with the additional
option <b>-2d</b>; MH without it. <b>-g4</b> selects MMR. The option names
are a little unfortunate and historical, but are consistent with the TIFF
specification.
<p>MMR has a better compression ratio than the other two.
<p><b>-fill</b> specifies that for MH or MR compression, each encoded scanline
shall be zero-filled to a byte boundary.
<p><b>-2d</b> and <b>-fill</b> are meaningful only with <b>-g3</b>.
<h3 id="fillorder">Fill Order</h3>
<p>The <b>-msb2lsb</b> and <b>lsb2msb</b> options control the fill order.
<P>The fill order is the order in which pixels are packed into a byte in
the Tiff raster, in the case that there are multiple pixels per byte.
msb-to-lsb means that the leftmost columns go into the most
significant bits of the byte in the Tiff image. However, there is
considerable confusion about the meaning of fill order. Some believe
it means whether 16 bit sample values in the Tiff image are
little-endian or big-endian. This is totally erroneous (The
endianness of integers in a Tiff image is designated by the image's
magic number). However, ImageMagick and older Netpbm both have been known
to implement that interpretation. 2001.09.06.
<P>If the image does not have sub-byte pixels, these options have no
effect other than to set the value of the FILLORDER tag in the Tiff
image (which may be useful for those programs that misinterpret the
tag with reference to 16 bit samples).
<h3 id="colorspace">Color Space</h3>
<P><B>-color</B> tells <B>pamtotiff</B> to produce a color, as
opposed to grayscale, TIFF image if the input is PPM, even if it
contains only shades of gray. Without this option, <B>pamtotiff</B>
produces a grayscale TIFF image if the input is PPM and contains only
shades of gray, and at most 256 shades. Otherwise, it produces a
color TIFF output. For PBM and PGM input, <B>pamtotiff</B> always
produces grayscale TIFF output and this option has no effect.
<P>The <B>-color</B> option can prevent <B>pamtotiff</B> from making
two passes through the input file, thus improving speed and memory
usage. See <a href="#multipass">Multiple Passes</a>.
<P><B>-truecolor</B> tells <B>pamtotiff</B> to produce the 24-bit RGB
form of TIFF output if it is producing a color TIFF image. Without
this option, <B>pamtotiff</B> produces a colormapped (paletted) TIFF
image unless there are more than 256 colors (and in the latter case,
issues a warning).
<P>The <B>-truecolor</B> option can prevent <B>pamtotiff</B> from
making two passes through the input file, thus improving speed and
memory usage. See <a href="#multipass">Multiple Passes</a>.
<P>The <B>-color</b> and <b>-truecolor</b> options did not exist
before Netpbm 9.21 (December 2001).
<P>If <B>pamtotiff</B> produces a grayscale TIFF image, this option
has no effect.
<P>The <B>-minisblack</B> and <B>-miniswhite</B> options force the
output image to have a "minimum is black" or "minimum
is white" photometric, respectively. If you don't specify
either, <B>pamtotiff</b> uses minimum is black except when using Group
3 or Group 4 compression, in which case <B>pamtotiff</B> follows CCITT
fax standards and uses "minimum is white." This usually
results in better compression and is generally preferred for bilevel
coding. These photometrics are for grayscale images, so these options are
invalid if the image is color (but only if it is truly color; they are
valid with, for example, a PPM image that contains only shades of gray).
<P>Before Netpbm 9.11 (February 200)1, <B>pamtotiff</B> always produced
"minimum is black," because of a bug. In either case,
<B>pamtotiff</B> sets the photometric interpretation tag in the TIFF
output according to which photometric is actually used.
<p>Before Netpbm 10.78 (March 2017), <b>pamtotiff</b> respected
<b>-miniswhite</b> and <b>-minisblack</b> even with color images, producing
invalid TIFF images that have the indicated photometric but red, green, and
blue raster planes.
<P>The <B>-indexbits</B> option is meaningful only for a colormapped
(paletted) image. In this kind of image, the raster contains values
which are indexes into a table of colors, with the indexes normally
taking less space that the color description in the table.
<B>pamtotiff</B> can generate indexes of 1, 2, 4, or 8 bits. By
default, it will use 8, because many programs that interpret TIFF
images can't handle any other width.
<P>But if you have a small number of colors, you can make your image
considerably smaller by allowing fewer than 8 bits per index, using the
<B>-indexbits</B> option. The value is a comma-separated list of the
bit widths you allow. <B>pamtotiff</B> chooses the smallest width you allow
that allows it to index the entire color table. If you don't allow any
such width, <B>pamtotiff</B> fails. Normally, the only useful value for
this option is <B>1,2,4,8</B>, because a program either understands the 8
bit width (default) or understands them all.
<P>In a Baseline TIFF image, according to the 1992 TIFF 6.0
specification, 4 and 8 are the only valid widths. There are no formal
standards that allow any other values.
<P>This option was added in June 2002. Before that, only 8 bit indices were
possible.
<h3 id="extratags">Extra Tags</h3>
<p>There are lots of tag types in the TIFF format that don't correspond to
any information in the PNM format or to anything in the conversion process.
For example, a TIFF_ARTIST tag names the artist who created the image.
<p>You can tell <b>pamtotiff</b> explicitly to include tags such as this
in its output with the <b>-tag</b> option. You identify a list of tag
types and values and <b>pamtotiff</b> includes a tag in the output for
each item in your list.
<p>The value of <b>-tag</b> is the list of tags, like this example:
<pre>
<code>
-tag=subfiletype=reducedimage,documentname=Fred,xposition=25
</code>
</pre>
<p>As you see, it is a list of tag specifications separated by commas.
Each tag specification is a name and a value separated by an equal
sign. The name is the name of the tag type, except in arbitrary
upper/lower case. One place to see the names of TIFF tag types is in
the TIFF library's <b>tiff.h</b> file, where there is a macro defined
for each consisting of "TIFF_" plus the name. E.g. for
the SUBFILETYPE tag type, there is a macro TIFF_SUBFILETYPE.
<p>The format of the value specification for a tag (stuff after the
equal sign) depends upon what kind of value the tag type has:
<ul>
<li>Integer: a decimal number
<li>Floating point number: a decimal number
<li>String: a string
<li>Enumerated (For example, a 'subfiletype' tag takes an enumerated
value. Its possible values are REDUCEDIMAGE, PAGE, and MASK.): The
name of the value. You can see the possible value names in the TIFF
library's <b>tiff.h</b> file, where there is a macro defined for each
consisting of a qualifier plus the value name. E.g. for the
REDUCEDIMAGE value of a SUBFILETYPE tag, you see the macro
FILETYPE_REDUCEDIMAGE.
<p>The TIFF format assigns a unique number to each enumerated value and
you can specify that number, in decimal, as an alternative. This is useful
if you are using an extension of TIFF that <b>pamtotiff</b> doesn't
know about.
</ul>
<p>If you specify a tag type with <b>-tag</b> that is not independent
of the content of your PNM source image and <b>pamtotiff</b>'s
conversion process (i.e. a tag type in which <b>pamtotiff</b> is
interested), <b>pamtotiff</b> fails. For example, you cannot specify
an IMAGEWIDTH tag with <b>-tag</b>, because <b>pamtotiff</b> generates
an IMAGEWIDTH tag that gives the actual width of the image.
<p><b>-tag</b> was new in Netpbm 10.31 (December 2005).
<h3 id="outputoptions">Output</h3>
<p>See <a href="output">The Output File</a>.
<p><b>-output</b> names the output file. Without this option
<b>pamtotiff</b> writes to Standard Output.
<p>The <b>-append</b> option tells <b>pamtotiff</b> only to append to the file
named by <b>output</b>; not create it. Without this option, the program
creates the file it does not already exist. But even then, if the file does
already exist, the program appends the image to what is in the file already.
(A TIFF file may contain multiple images).
<p><b>-append</b> has no effect if you don't also specify <b>-output</b>.
<p>Before Netpbm 10.67 (June 2014), <b>-append</b> means something rather
different: it means to append the image to the output TIFF file (which is
always Standard Output in 10.67) instead of replacing its contents.
<p><b>-append</b> was new in Netpbm 10.27 (March 2005).
<h3 id="other">Other</h3>
<P>You can use the <B>-rowsperstrip</B> option to set the number of
rows (scanlines) in each strip of data in the output file. By
default, the output file has the number of rows per strip set to a
value that will ensure each strip is no more than 8 kilobytes long.
<H2 id="notes">NOTES</H2>
<P>There are myriad variations of the TIFF format, and this program
generates only a few of them. <B>pamtotiff</B> creates a grayscale
TIFF file if its input is a PBM (monochrome) or PGM (grayscale) or
equivalent PAM file. <B>pamtotiff</B> also creates a grayscale file
if it input is PPM (color) or equivalent PAM, but there is only one
color in the image.
<p>If the input is a PPM (color) file and there are 256 colors or
fewer, but more than 1, <B>pamtotiff</B> generates a color palette
TIFF file. If there are more colors than that, <B>pamtotiff</B>
generates an RGB (not RGBA) single plane TIFF file. Use
<B>pnmtotiffcmyk</B> to generate the cyan-magenta-yellow-black ink
color separation TIFF format.
<P>The number of bits per sample in the TIFF output is determined by
the maxval of the Netpbm input. If the maxval is less than 256, the bits
per sample in the output is the smallest number that can encode the
maxval. If the maxval is greater than or equal to 256, there are 16
bits per sample in the output.
<h3 id="extrachannel">Extra Channels</h3>
<p>Like most Netpbm programs, <b>pamtotiff</b>'s function is mostly
undefined if the input is PAM image with tuple type other than
BLACKANDWHITE, GRAYSCALE, or RGB. Most of the statements in this manual
assume the input is not such an exotic PAM. But there is a little
defined processing of other PAM subformats.
<p><b>pamtotiff</b> assumes any 1 plane PAM image is BLACKANDWHITE
or GRAYSCALE (and doesn't distinguish between those two).
<p><b>pamtotiff</b> assumes a PAM with more than 1 plane is of tuple
type RGB except with that number of planes instead of 3.
<b>pamtotiff</b> doesn't really understand red, green, and blue, so it
has no trouble with a 2-component or 5-component color space. The
TIFF format allows an arbitrary number of color components, so
<b>pamtotiff</b> simply maps the PAM planes directly to TIFF color
components. I don't know if the meanings of 5 components in a TIFF image
are standard at all, but the function is there if you want to use it.
<p>Note that <b>pamtotiff</b> may generate either a truecolor or
colormapped image with an arbitrary number of color components. In
the truecolor case, the raster has that number of planes. In the
colormapped case, the raster has of course 1 plane, but the color map
has all the color components in it.
<p>The most common reason for a PAM to have extra planes is when the tuple
type is xxx_ALPHA, which means the highest numbered plane is a transparency
plane (alpha channel). At least one user found that a TIFF with an extra
plane for transparency was useful.
<p>Note that the grayscale detection works on N-component colors, so if
your planes aren't really color components, you'll want to disable this
via the <b>-color</b> option.
<H3 id="multipass">Multiple Passes</H3>
<P><B>pamtotiff</B> reads the input image once if it can, and
otherwise twice. It needs that second pass (which happens before the
main pass, of course) to analyze the colors in the image and generate
a color map (palette) and determine if the image is grayscale. So the
second pass happens only when the input is PPM. And you can avoid it
then by specifying both the <B>-truecolor</B> and <B>-color</B>
options.
<P> If the input image is small enough to fit in your system's file
cache, the second pass is very fast. If not, it requires reading from
disk twice, which can be slow.
<P>When the input is from a file that cannot be rewound and reread,
<B>pamtotiff</B> reads the entire input image into a temporary file
which can, and works from that. Even if it needs only one pass.
<P>Before Netpbm 9.21 (December 2001), <b>pamtotiff</b> always read
the entire image into virtual memory and then did one, two, or three
passes through the memory copy. The <b>-truecolor</b> and
<b>-color</b> options did not exist. The passes through memory would
involve page faults if the entire image did not fit into real memory.
The image in memory required considerably more memory (12 bytes per
pixel) than the cached file version of the image would.
<h3>Resolution</h3>
<p>A Tiff image may contain information about the resolution of the image,
which means how big in real dimensions (centimeters, etc.) each pixel in the
raster is. That information is in the TIFF XRESOLUTION, YRESOLUTION,
and RESOLUTIONUNIT tags. By default, <b>pamtotiff</b> does not include
any tags of these types, but you can specify them with the <b>-tags</b>
option.
<p>There are also options <b>-xresolution</b>, <b>-yresolution</b>,
and <b>-resolutionunit</b>, but those are obsolete. Before <b>-tags</b>
existed (before Netpbm 10.31 (December 2005), they were the only way.
<p>Note that the number of pixels in the image and how much information
each contains is determined independently from the setting of the
resolution tags. The number of pixels in the output is the same as in
the input, and each pixel contains the same information. For your
resolution tags to be meaningful, they have to consistent with
whatever created the PNM input. E.g. if a scanner turned a 10 centimeter
wide image into a 1000 pixel wide PNM image, then your horizontal
resolution is 100 pixels per centimeter, and if your XRESOLUTION
tag says anything else, something that prints your TIFF image won't
print the proper 10 centimeter image.
<p>The value of the XRESOLUTION tag is a floating point decimal number
that tells how many pixels there are per unit of distance in the
horizontal direction. <b>-yresolution</b> is analogous for the
vertical direction.
<p>The unit of distance is given by the value of the RESOLUTIONUNIT
option. That value is either INCH, CENTIMETER, or NONE. NONE
means the unit is arbitrary or unspecified. This could mean that the
creator and user of the image have a separate agreement as to what the
unit is. But usually, it just means that the horizontal and vertical
resolution values cannot be used for anything except to determine
aspect ratio (because even though the unit is arbitrary or
unspecified, it has to be the same for both resolution numbers).
<p>If you <em>don't</em> use a <b>-tag</b> option to specify the
resolution tag and use the obsolete options instead, note the
following:
<ul>
<li>If you don't include an specify <b>-xresolution</b>, the Tiff image
does not contain horizontal resolution information. Likewise for
<b>-yresolution</b>. If you don't specify <b>-resolutionunit</b>, the
default is inches.
<li>Before Netpbm 10.16 (June 2003), <B>-resolutionunit</b> did not
exist and the resolution unit was always inches.
</ul>
<h2 id="history">HISTORY</h2>
<p><b>pamtotiff</b> was originally <b>pnmtotiff</b> and did not handle
PAM input. It was extended and renamed in Netpbm 10.30 (October 2005).
<H2 id="seealso">SEE ALSO</H2>
<B><A HREF="tifftopnm.html">tifftopnm</A></B>,
<B><A HREF="pnmtotiffcmyk.html">pnmtotiffcmyk</A></B>,
<B><A HREF="pamdepth.html">pamdepth</A></B>,
<B><A HREF="pamtopnm.html">pamtopnm</A></B>,
<B><A HREF="pam.html">pam</A></B>
<H2 id="author">AUTHOR</H2>
Derived by Jef Poskanzer from ras2tiff.c, which is
Copyright (c) 1990 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Author: Patrick J. Naughton (<A HREF="mailto:naughton@wind.sun.com">naughton@wind.sun.com</A>).
<HR>
<H2 id="index">Table Of Contents</H2>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#synopsis">SYNOPSIS</A>
<LI><A HREF="#description">DESCRIPTION</A>
<ul>
<li><a href="#output">The Output File</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#oldoutput">Old Versions</a>
</ul>
<li><a href="#library">TIFF Capability</a>
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="#options">OPTIONS</A>
<ul>
<li><a href="#compression">Compression</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#faxcompression">Fax Compression</a>
</ul>
<li><a href="#fillorder">Fill Order</a>
<li><a href="#colorspacer">Color Space</a>
<li><a href="#extratags">Extra Tags</a>
<li><a href="#outputoptions">Output</a>
<li><a href="#other">Other</a>
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="#notes">NOTES</A>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#multipass">Multiple Passes</A>
<LI><A HREF="#extrachannel">Extra Channels</A>
</UL>
<LI><A HREF="#history">HISTORY</A>
<LI><A HREF="#seealso">SEE ALSO</A>
<LI><A HREF="#author">AUTHOR</A>
</UL>
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