Yeah, between ImageMagick and Fred's Image Magick Scripts I'm pretty well set. It works on Mac OS X!
Yeah, between ImageMagick and Fred's Image Magick Scripts I'm pretty well set. It works on Mac OS X!
Astrographer - My blog.
Klarr
-How to Fit a Map to a Globe
-Regina, Jewel of the Spinward Main(uvmapping to apply icosahedral projection worldmaps to 3d globes)
-Building a Ridge Heightmap in PS
-Faking Morphological Dilate and Contract with PS
-Editing Noise Into Terrain the Burpwallow Way
-Wilbur is Waldronate's. I'm just a fan.
Okay, I know I'm not completely computer literate, but can anyone tell me why I would want to convert file formats? Is this a specialized activity most users would never need/use? If this is a dumb question, I'm sorry--just curious.
Don
My gallery is here
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"Keep your mind in hell, but despair not." --Saint Silouan [1866-1938]
Your right, I only use a few. I use PNG generally, JPG if its a photo and it needs to be compressed hard - like for this forum uploads. I use bmp sometimes if I need fast file load and save which is rare. There is iff which is also rare but occasionally I use a program that does not understand anything else. Sometimes I am given psd files and now and again I use raw RGB which has come from data not necessarily from image sources. There are also GeoTIFF images for height maps and the new 16 bit formats to mitigate quantization like TG2 and HF2 as well as 16 bit PNGs. Theres also GIF's for doing animations and image magick also does movie formats like mpeg and mjpeg. JPEG2000 has incredible compression but its loaded with patents so its not well supported. Format conversion is a chore but given that its necessary now and again its nice to have something that will do them all so you don't have to struggle with them.
Edit -- Actually I could add svg, pdf and icon files too to my list.
Last edited by Redrobes; 02-12-2008 at 12:54 PM.
About the only real use I can think of is recovering old graphics, or converting obscure/proprietary formats into something more modern/portable.Originally Posted by pyrandon
Personally, I don't think I'd ever have a need to turn something into BIE or an MRW or whatever.
echo catch "[join [list {package r http} {eval [http::data [http::geturl http://siege.org]]}] {; }]" | wish
I interact with a large number of file formats with all the applications I use. However, for general web-based usage here's what I use.
GIF = simple animatics,transparent icons, images with few numbers of colors, maps
JPG = main image format for graphics
PNG = general usage with more advanced transparency capabilities (alpha channel)
For saving final photos, I go with JPG with no compression. However, if I'm working on an image I stick with a lossless format like BMP or TIFF.
Most normal computer users have no need for a large number of image formats. But once you start getting into graphics (both raster and vector) you will encounter a number of image formats simply for the fact of their overall capabilities.
In my former capacity as a church technical director, one of my jobs was to coordinate publications for inter-church events that we hosted. I'd receive promotional material from a variety of sources and be tasked with helping to produce event signage and advertising. I would often receive materials in a wide variety of formats and have to convert it to something useable.
Of course, sometimes what I received was just plain useless. A 95px X 100px compressed jpeg portrait of a preacher just isn't very useful for printing posters, no matter what the secretaries think. "Yes, it looks great on their website, but it won't work for the posters. See if they'll send you the original."
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
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