png to gif with transparency - imagemagick

I have a png image with some transparency. I would like to transform it to a gif image. I have tried imagemagik using convert myimage.png myimage.gif but transparency is not respected.
Any solution using linux commands? thanks

What you are doing should work out of box.
However, there's an important limitation of GIF as a format (not related to imagemagick). It does not support semi-transparency (alpha channel). Transparency in GIF is on/off (boolean).
Docs claim that the default behavior is to make pixels with (alpha<50%) fully transparent.
Depending on your image, you may achieve satisfactory results though. For example, by tweaking the threshold (code from ImageMagick docs):
convert a.png -channel A -threshold 15% a_no_shadow.gif
See more info on available options at:
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/formats/#gif

Related

How to remove antialias edge in ImageMagick when converting to a binary bitmap?

We're doing a cognitive experiment that requires flashing 480 black-and-white images at high speed against a neutral-gray background. The image shown is detail at about 300% zoom; the full display is 932 x 612; there are actually other clusters similar to this one elsewhere on the screen.
We have to generate these images in a source app and later display them in the experimental app. At first, we were using 24-bit PNG's with the background color built in, but despite the size of each file hovering around 10KB, the total file payload of 480 is too large and takes way too long to preload. We can, however, set a default background color in the app and put up 1-bit images. Although we can change the background color in the source application, we don't have control over bit depth there, so we are stuck generating screen captures and then downsampling to binary. We have tried this with original images that sit on both a white background and the gray background. Using ImageMagick, both of these commands yield similar results:
magick gray.png -transparent "rgb(192,192,192)" -alpha set -depth 1 out\gray-out.bmp (or .png)
magick white.png -transparent white -alpha set -depth 1 out\white-out.bmp (or .png)
The PNGs are coming out to 1.5K to 5K, so this is where we want to be. However, we're stuck with that problem aliased edge whether we start with gray- or white-background images. We've also tried the -fuzz argument (1-99%) to no effect. The resulting pseudoalias artifact that we see in these 1-bit files is the same in multiple apps, so apparently it must be built into the output file generated by ImageMagick's attempt to filter the edge, and not an artifact of any single app or the OS.
We don't quite get how an alpha channel can even be attached to a 1-bit image if it is not strictly RGBA: an alpha channel with a 1-bit image doesn't even make sense. But if an alpha channel isn't being included, then where is the map coming from in a nonbinary image to distinguish that "white" edge from a nonwhite surface? It's not the destination apps. The output files must either not be strictly binary, or else ImageMagick is not computing the channel exactly to the contour edges. (When we remove the -alpha argument, ImageMagick generates a larger file; the aliasing (e.g., when we place into PowerPoint and select Transparent Color to white) may appear in slightly different places, but the effect is essentially the same.
The question is, how is it possible to remove this artifact in a 1-bit image using ImageMagick? We'd like to get the file sizes down to the minimum.

Why ImageMagick changes image brightness when I simply want to convert between JPG and PNG?

I wanted to batch-convert some JPG images to PNG, so I used the following ImageMagick command:
convert before.jpg after.png
However, things didn't go as smooth as I planned. See two images below - first is before.jpg, second is after.png:
You can see that the second one is quite darker than the original.
I'm using ImageMagick 6.9.9-19.
Opening JPEG image in GIMP and exporting it as PNG gives expected result - output image is identical to original.
What am I doing wrong?
Edit: re-saving after.png with GIMP also makes the image identical to original.
Edit: even after I saved after.png with GIMP, re-converting with ImageMagick breaks colors again (convert after-gimp.png after-gimp-and-im.png).
Edit: converting to sRGB or CMYK TIFF, or even again to JPG, does not give this problem. However, I still need PNG.
The two images you posted are identical according to IM 6.9.9.20 Q16 Mac OSX compare -metric rmse GBooF.jpg geDxn.png null: Which produces: 0 (0). It is possible your viewers may display jpg and png differently, since neither have an sRGB profile. Though, png is usually assumed to be sRGB.
Also my viewer shows both of your images as the same --- no difference, in your post on Mac Safari and using Mac Preview.
Try adding an sRGB profile to your jpg. Then convert.
convert GBooF.jpg -profile path2/sRGB.icc GBooF2.jpg
convert GBooF2.jpg GBooF2.png
See if those view the same.

How can I convert image background pattern?

On this similar thread they have been proposed solutions to convert the background color of some image to transparent.
But sometimes the background is a simple pattern, like in this case:
Note the square background pattern.
When processing images, the background does often need to be removed or changed, but firstly you need to detect it (i.e: change its color, or making it transparent). For example, on the above image example, I would like to obtain:
How can I detect/change a specified pattern inside an image?
GUI solutions accepted.
Open source solutions preferred (free at least required).
The simplest solution will be preferred (I would like to avoid installing some hundreds of MB program).
Note: I was thinking about posting this question at Photography
StackExchange site, but I would rather say the mind of a programmer (I
could need to edit dozens of such images) is more close to what I
want. I am not an artist.
This is not a fully developed answer, but it does go some way towards thinking about a method - maybe someone else would like to develop it...
If, as you say, your pattern is specified, you know what it is - good, aren't I? So, you could look for the "Minimum Repeating Unit" of your pattern in your image. In your case it is a 16x16 grid like this:
Now you can search for that pattern in your image. I am using ImageMagick at the command-line, but you can use other tools if you prefer. ImageMagick is installed on most Linux distros and is available for OSX and Windows for free. So, I search for that grid in your globe image and ImageMagick gives me an output image showing white dots at the top-left corner of every location where the two images match:
compare -metric ae -dissimilarity-threshold 1.0 -compose src -subimage-search globe.gif grid.png res.png
That gets me this in file res-1.png
Now the white dots are where the 16x16 "Minimum Repeating Unit" is found in the image, but at the top-left corner so I shift them right and down by 8 pixels to the centre of the matching area, then I create a new output image where each pixel is the maximum pixel of the 16x16 grid in which it existed before:
convert res-1.png -roll +8+8 -statistic maximum 16x16 z.png
I can now invert that mask and then use it to set the opacity of the original image, thereby blanking areas that matched the "Minimum Repeating Unit":
convert globe.gif \( z.png -negate \) -compose copy_opacity -composite q.png
No, it's not perfect, but it is an idea for an approach that could be refined...

ImageMagick: Transparent Backgrounds for JPEG, not PNG

I'm using ImageMagick to convert PDF files to PNGs. (Lots of text, so I'd rather use PNG over JPEG.) I'm doing this on OS X, 10.8.2.
I tried using Ghostscript, then ImageMagick, as was done here and I got a gray background. I shortened it to one line, since ImageMagick can work with PDFs and tried this:
convert -background transparent -transparent white \
Background-Page01.pdf TestClearX1.png
I've tried that with PNG files and JPEG files. (And with and without -transparent white as well.)
If it's a JPEG, I can get a white background (which is probably clear, but in my viewer, I can't tell), but with a PNG, I always get a dark background. I thought about, as a test, trying to generate a BMP, then converting that to PNG, but it won't generate BMP files.
How can I get a transparent background for a PNG file?
And if that's not possible, since JPEG files are not good for text, is there a better alternative?
This isn't an answer, but the format of the comment section doesn't allow sensible formatting, so I am offering it here instead.
You alluded to the fact that Preview in OS X doesn't show transparency properly, and that is correct. To get around that, I made the following script, which overlays the files you want to view onto a checkerboard pattern like Photoshop does. I save it as preview and then use chmod +x preview on it to make it executable. Here is the script:
#!/bin/bash
################################################################################
# preview
# Preview images using OSX "open" but overlay images on top of checkerboard
# first so you can see transparency/transparent pixels, since Preview renders
# them grey :-(
################################################################################
for f in "$#"
do
base=$(basename "$f")
composite -compose Dst_Over -tile pattern:checkerboard "$f" "/tmp/$base"
open -g "/tmp/$base"
done
That enables you to do:
/.preview file1.png file2.gif
and the -g option also means Preview doesn't steal focus too :-)
So, instead of looking like this:
it looks like this:
There's two ways to export a PDF in LibreOffice, and one way does not provide any warnings. The other way provides a warning that PDF/A cannot have transparent objects. The problem is you're using PDF/A files that don't support transparent objects—this results in your PNG always having a background colour.

Convert apng to gif with sufficiant resolution and color depth

I want to convert some animated PNG (APNG) images to animated GIF. I can successfully convert with a utility I found on the web called apng2gif. Expertly named if I may say. The problem is it does not convert the images with sufficient color depth so the output is a little bit to pixelated and not so smooth relative to the original.
Does anyone know of any other image converters that might convert APNG to GIF with more that 16 bit color depth?
The problem is not with the converter, but with GIF format itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format
The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel thus allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colors.
If you need the GIF to blend better with the background, click on Settings button in apng2gif and then choose the background color you want.

Resources