I'm using Gimp with sane to scan some documents. If I save as TIFF there 
are several compression options.

None
LZW
Packed bits
Deflate
JPEG

LZW does not work (patent issues), nor does deflate. But does 'packed 
bits' save in a lossless format, or does it intoduce some reduction in 
quality like JPEG does?

On Mon, 02 May 2005 12:36:01 +0100 in comp.graphics.apps.gimp, Dave
<nospam@nowhere.com> wrote,
>I'm using Gimp with sane to scan some documents. If I save as TIFF there 
>are several compression options.
>
>None
>LZW
>Packed bits
>Deflate
>JPEG
>
>LZW does not work (patent issues), nor does deflate. But does 'packed 
>bits' save in a lossless format, or does it intoduce some reduction in 
>quality like JPEG does?

Packbits is lossless.  It is a very simple-minded run length type of
encoding, maybe OK for files with big areas of precisely flat color
like 2-level scans, but probably useless for scanned photos etc.

I thought all the LZW patents were several years expired now?

David Harmon wrote:
> On Mon, 02 May 2005 12:36:01 +0100 in comp.graphics.apps.gimp, Dave
> <nospam@nowhere.com> wrote,
> 
>>I'm using Gimp with sane to scan some documents. If I save as TIFF there 
>>are several compression options.
>>
>>None
>>LZW
>>Packed bits
>>Deflate
>>JPEG
>>
>>LZW does not work (patent issues), nor does deflate. But does 'packed 
>>bits' save in a lossless format, or does it intoduce some reduction in 
>>quality like JPEG does?
> 
> 
> Packbits is lossless.  It is a very simple-minded run length type of
> encoding, maybe OK for files with big areas of precisely flat color
> like 2-level scans, but probably useless for scanned photos etc.
> 
> I thought all the LZW patents were several years expired now?
> 
Cheers.

My images do have a lot of white space and the compression works OK (3:1 
or so). Is there any way produce a postscript file of that image, that 
does not take up so much space? In there are large areas of white, I 
think there should be a way of putting that into a postscript file.

Ultimately I want to make a pdf file.

My Gimp is 1.2.3, so perhaps the patent issue had not been resolved 
then. I have thought of upgrading gimp, but gtk I think needs upgrading 
and since so many things use that, I am a bit reluctant to go down that 
path. I'm only a very basic user anyway - I don't even know how to use 
layers!!

In <42765150@212.67.96.135>, Dave wrote:

> My images do have a lot of white space and the compression works OK (3:1 
> or so). Is there any way produce a postscript file of that image, that 
> does not take up so much space? In there are large areas of white, I 
> think there should be a way of putting that into a postscript file.
> 
> Ultimately I want to make a pdf file.

Then TIFF is a better intermediate format than PostScript because TIFFs
can be embedded directly as is in PDFs.  Best compression ratio for pure
black and white images is achieved with Group4 compression.  I convert my
scans with ImageMagick's `convert` program to Group4 compressed TIFFs and
then I'm using `tiffcp` to put all pages into one big TIFF and turn this
into a PDF with `tiff2pdf`.  The last step adds just some small overhead
to embed the TIFF in a PDF “container”.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
> In <42765150@212.67.96.135>, Dave wrote:
> 
> 
>>My images do have a lot of white space and the compression works OK (3:1 
>>or so). Is there any way produce a postscript file of that image, that 
>>does not take up so much space? In there are large areas of white, I 
>>think there should be a way of putting that into a postscript file.
>>
>>Ultimately I want to make a pdf file.
> 
> 
> Then TIFF is a better intermediate format than PostScript because TIFFs
> can be embedded directly as is in PDFs.  Best compression ratio for pure
> black and white images is achieved with Group4 compression.  I convert my
> scans with ImageMagick's `convert` program to Group4 compressed TIFFs and
> then I'm using `tiffcp` to put all pages into one big TIFF and turn this
> into a PDF with `tiff2pdf`.  The last step adds just some small overhead
> to embed the TIFF in a PDF “container”.
> 
> Ciao,
> 	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
Thanks very much  for that.

Unfortunately, ImageMagick will not work with TIFF support on my 
platform. As far as I can tell, it makes use of libtiff, which is 
installed (latest version) and passes all the self-tests. But the 
configure script for imagemagick disables tiff support, as a test fails.

I've tried asking the users mailing list, as well as the developers, and 
nobody have given the slightest clue as to what could be wrong.

I'm running Solaris 9 on a Sun Ultra 80.

Dave wrote:
> Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
> 
>> In <42765150@212.67.96.135>, Dave wrote:
>>
>>
>>> My images do have a lot of white space and the compression works OK 
>>> (3:1 or so). Is there any way produce a postscript file of that 
>>> image, that does not take up so much space? In there are large areas 
>>> of white, I think there should be a way of putting that into a 
>>> postscript file.
>>>
>>> Ultimately I want to make a pdf file.
>>
>>
>>
>> Then TIFF is a better intermediate format than PostScript because TIFFs
>> can be embedded directly as is in PDFs.  Best compression ratio for pure
>> black and white images is achieved with Group4 compression.  I convert my
>> scans with ImageMagick's `convert` program to Group4 compressed TIFFs and
>> then I'm using `tiffcp` to put all pages into one big TIFF and turn this
>> into a PDF with `tiff2pdf`.  The last step adds just some small overhead
>> to embed the TIFF in a PDF “container”.
>>
>> Ciao,
>>     Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
> 
> Thanks very much  for that.
> 
> Unfortunately, ImageMagick will not work with TIFF support on my 
> platform. As far as I can tell, it makes use of libtiff, which is 
> installed (latest version) and passes all the self-tests. But the 
> configure script for imagemagick disables tiff support, as a test fails.
> 
> I've tried asking the users mailing list, as well as the developers, and 
> nobody have given the slightest clue as to what could be wrong.
> 
> I'm running Solaris 9 on a Sun Ultra 80.
> 
blastwave.org has precompiled a imagemagick package that should have tiff support.
I don't know this for a fact (tiff support) because I don't actually use it however
one of its dependencies is the tiff package. I have compiled my own "package" on
Solaris 8 with tiff support.

The following is how I ran configure:
setenv LDFLAGS "-L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/apps/local/lib -R/usr/local/lib -R/opt/apps/local/lib"
setenv CPPFLAGS -I/opt/apps/local/include
configure --prefix=/opt/apps/local --without-perl

-- 
----------------------------------
Randy Jones
E-Mail: randy@jones.tri.net
----------------------------------

Randy Jones wrote:

>> Unfortunately, ImageMagick will not work with TIFF support on my 
>> platform. As far as I can tell, it makes use of libtiff, which is 
>> installed (latest version) and passes all the self-tests. But the 
>> configure script for imagemagick disables tiff support, as a test fails.
>>
>> I've tried asking the users mailing list, as well as the developers, 
>> and nobody have given the slightest clue as to what could be wrong.
>>
>> I'm running Solaris 9 on a Sun Ultra 80.
>>
> blastwave.org has precompiled a imagemagick package that should have 
> tiff support.

Thanks, I might do that as a last resort, although I prefer to build my 
own.

> I don't know this for a fact (tiff support) because I don't actually use 
> it however
> one of its dependencies is the tiff package. 

what do you mean by "the tiff package"? I assumed it just needed Libtiff,

http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/

which I installed (version 3.7.2), which is the latest version

> I have compiled my own 
> "package" on
> Solaris 8 with tiff support.
> 
> The following is how I ran configure:
> setenv LDFLAGS "-L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/apps/local/lib -R/usr/local/lib 
> -R/opt/apps/local/lib"
> setenv CPPFLAGS -I/opt/apps/local/include
> configure --prefix=/opt/apps/local --without-perl
> 

Thank you very much for that - you have been more helpful than the users 
or developers mailing list for Imagemagick.

It's 0050 here now, so time to go to be and not start configuring 
software, but I'll try that.

Why did you disable perl? I did not do that.

All my bits are in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include, so I did not 
think it would be necessary to add the -R and -L options. I never 
normally do this.

If I am more precise, all my applications are kept in 
/usr/local/stow/application_name

and symbolic links set up so the programs appear to be in 
/usr/local/lib, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/include etc. It's possible 
imagemagick does not think the symbolic links are the files they should 
be, but links are part of UNIX and I'd be surprised there.

Dave wrote:
> Randy Jones wrote:
> 
>>> Unfortunately, ImageMagick will not work with TIFF support on my 
>>> platform. As far as I can tell, it makes use of libtiff, which is 
>>> installed (latest version) and passes all the self-tests. But the 
>>> configure script for imagemagick disables tiff support, as a test fails.
>>>
>>> I've tried asking the users mailing list, as well as the developers, 
>>> and nobody have given the slightest clue as to what could be wrong.
>>>
>>> I'm running Solaris 9 on a Sun Ultra 80.
>>>
>> blastwave.org has precompiled a imagemagick package that should have 
>> tiff support.
> 
> 
> Thanks, I might do that as a last resort, although I prefer to build my 
> own.
> 
>> I don't know this for a fact (tiff support) because I don't actually 
>> use it however
>> one of its dependencies is the tiff package. 
> 
> 
> what do you mean by "the tiff package"? I assumed it just needed Libtiff,
According to the dependancies list ( http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php/imagemagick )
it (Blastwave's imagemagick) needs CSWtiff

> 
> http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
> 
> which I installed (version 3.7.2), which is the latest version
If I remember correctly compiling imagemagick with tiff support also requires the
some tiff include files ie tiff.h and probably some others. Make sure your install
includes these.
The tiff package available at sunfreeware.com has the needed included files.

> 
>> I have compiled my own "package" on
>> Solaris 8 with tiff support.
>>
>> The following is how I ran configure:
>> setenv LDFLAGS "-L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/apps/local/lib 
>> -R/usr/local/lib -R/opt/apps/local/lib"
>> setenv CPPFLAGS -I/opt/apps/local/include
>> configure --prefix=/opt/apps/local --without-perl
>>
> 
> Thank you very much for that - you have been more helpful than the users 
> or developers mailing list for Imagemagick.
> 
> It's 0050 here now, so time to go to be and not start configuring 
> software, but I'll try that.
> 
> Why did you disable perl? I did not do that.
I couldn't get configure to run without disabling perl. Although I didn't try very hard because
for my use I don't need the perl option.

> 
> All my bits are in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include, so I did not 
> think it would be necessary to add the -R and -L options. I never 
> normally do this.
I
> 
> If I am more precise, all my applications are kept in 
> /usr/local/stow/application_name
> 
> and symbolic links set up so the programs appear to be in 
> /usr/local/lib, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/include etc. It's possible 
> imagemagick does not think the symbolic links are the files they should 
> be, but links are part of UNIX and I'd be surprised there.
> 


-- 
----------------------------------
Randy Jones
E-Mail: randy@jones.tri.net
----------------------------------