NAME
imview - displays and interactively analyses images
SYNOPSIS
imview [ options ] [ image ... ]
Where image is an image file in one of the supported formats, e.g:
TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, XPM, PNM, etc...
DESCRIPTION
Imview is an X11 and Windows GDI GUI application for displaying images
on screen. It has advanced capabilities for interactive image analysis
(getting information out of images) and can be easily controlled
through a socket connection for embedding in image analysis systems.
Imview supports a large number of popular and scientific image file
formats, in part through the use of the ImageMagick library.
OPTIONS
Here is the complete list of optional arguments for imview.
- Reads an image from the standard input stream. Example:
-a Reads and appends to an existing pointfile (see option -p).
-C <lutname>
Specifies <lutname> as the default look-up tables for all the
images on the command line.
-c <lutname>
Applies the look-up table <lutname> to the preceding image on
the command line (see example section).
-debug Starts a debugging GUI console where debugging messages can be
seen (there are lots of them!). Under Unix messages are also
appended to the file /tmp/imbugs.txt.
-delete
Any image given to imview on the command line will be deleted
after imview exits. This is useful when imview is started from
an interpreter with a temporary image as argument. For safety
only images with paths beginning with /tmp, /usr/tmp or under
the standard environment variable-controlled TMPDIR directory
are effectively deleted.
-disable_io_keys
This option disables some I/O shortcut that are not menu-
dependent, such as c that closes an image. This is useful in
conjuction with options -hide_menubar and -disable_menubar for
limiting the user’s interaction with the application.
-disable_menubar
This option completely disables the menu bar (but does not hide
it, see -hide_menubar for that). Both hiding and disabling the
menubar at the same time can be useful for producing a viewer
that users cannot control other than through some other means
than the menu (if imview is embedded in another application for
example).
-disable_quit
This option disables the shortcut ways of quitting the imview
application, such as the Escape key, clicking the windows
manager ‘close window’ button, etc. This is useful to restrict
the user’s control over imview.
-fork Sends imview to the background (works on all platforms including
windows). It is better to use this option rather than the shell
semantics (adding & at the end of the command under Unix) when
the server is ran in conjuction with -server, because imview
will synchonize the foreground and background processes so that
the foreground process can know the server port number.
-gamma <value>
Sets the default gamma for all the images. A gamma between 0 and
1.0 will darken the displayed image while a gamma greater than
1.0 will brighten them.
-h Prints an abbreviated list of options and exits.
-hide_menubar
Hides the main menubar. The menu items are still accessible via
shortcuts. For example try Alt+f to get the file->open menu.
From there you can use the keyboard arrow keys to select a menu
item for example. This is useful if you have little screen real
estate, but confusing for the beginner!
-no_dblbuf
Do not use double buffering at certain zoom factors. This is a
hack you might want to experiment with if you find that imview
does not redraw some parts of images after closing and re-
opening images.
-locked
Equivalent to all the following options used together:
-hide_menubar, -disable_menubar, -disable_iokeys and
-disable_quit. If run with this option, imview can only be
controlled via a socket in server mode. This is useful for
embedding imview in another application.
-mag <zoom facto>
Magnifies all images by <zoom factors>. Any positive value is
legal. Values between 0 and 1.0 will reduce the size of the
images while values greater than 1.0 will expand them.
-no_magick
Disables the use of the ImageMagick library. This library is
very useful for reading and writing a large number of file
formats but tries to do too much sometimes, such as converting
text files to images.
-p <pointfile>
Specifies the point file name. A pointfile is a regular text
file in which point (pixel) information can be recorded. The
default point file name is pointfile. This option simply changes
that default, no other action is taken.
-portfile <file>
This option is only useful in combination with -server. Imview’s
server binds to a port in the range 7600-7700. Because it is
often useful to have more than one image server at the same time
and because of the interactive nature of imview, the precise
port number is impossible to predict, so when the server is
started it prints the port it decided to bind against on the
command line, or alternatively in a file, specified by this
option.
NOTE: If you are planning to send imview to the background, for
this command to work as expected, you must also use the -fork
option, otherwise the file might still be empty when the command
returns.
-server
Starts the imview server. In server mode imview performs as a
TCP/IP server on which images can be uploaded and commands can
be run. The aim is to make imview completely remote-
controllable: every command accessible via the menu can also be
made available through the server.
Imview uses its own text-based protocol. For simple commands a
standard telnet session is enough to communicate with imview.
However for uploading images into imview a protocol similar to
FTP has been implemented. A simple imview client is shipped in
source form with the imview distribution. For a specification of
the imview protocol see the full documentation.
Imview’s server port number is in the range 7600-7700 which
allows up to 50 different imview server to be run on the same
machine (each server uses up two ports: one for commands and the
other for binary data exchange, such as uploading images).
-stopdebug
Used in conjunction with -debug, will stop the program after
each debugging message. To continue the user must type <Enter>.
-v Prints the version and build numbers, the date of build, the
configuration options and exits.
-wt <title>
Changes the title of the main window. The default is Imview.
EXAMPLES
In the following examples ‘%’ indicate the shell prompt.
SIMPLE USAGE
% imview
Simply starts imview displaying the splash screen. An image can then be
loaded using the menus.
% imview myimage.tiff
Will display image myimage.tiff.
% imview /home/talbot/images/astro/*
Will display all images in the directory /home/talbot/images/astro/.
Use <spacebar> to switch from one image to the next.
ADVANCED USAGE
% imview aGreyLevelImage.tif -c heat.lut
Will display image aGreyLevelImage.tif. Assuming this image only
contains grey-level information (a black and white photograph for
example), the false colours defined in heat.lut will be applied to it.
SERVER USAGE
% imview -server -fork
Port: 7600
This will start imview in server mode. The only difference with the
normal mode is that imview can now be "remote-controlled" via a TCP/IP
connection. The port imview is bound to is printed on the command line
when the server starts. To save it to a file use the -portfile option.
A simple telnet session can be used to remote-control imview, as
follows. See the full documentation for more details:
% telnet localhost 7600
user talbot
Welcome, talbot /tmp/fileBlabla 000 OK
load "/home/talbot/images/astro/neptune.tiff"
000 OK
zoom factor 2
000 OK
end
Connection closed by foreign host.
imclient is shipped with the source distribution as an implementation
of a sample client that can upload images into imview, as follows:
% imclient -p 7600 /home/talbot/images/astro/jupiter.tiff
BUGS
See the TODO file in the source distribution or the web site for an
updated list of known bugs. Here is a list of the most significant
ones:
· resize still a problem sometimes. Imview gets itself into a weird
state with incorrect limits and partial redraws. Specifying a
complete redraw should clear everything but doesn’t.
· Move to the middle of the screen. Sometimes for no apparent reason
Imview moves to the middle of the screen. This seems to be happening
if the main window resises.
· last line and last column of image often missing when scrollbar are
present.
FILES
~/.fltk/hugues.talbot_csiro.au/imview.prefs
User preferences
<Installation directory>/Imview/*.lut
Colour look-up tables
<Installation directory>/Imview/doc/*.html
On-line documentation
SEE ALSO
imclient (1), ImageMagick (1), djpeg (1)
libtiff (3T)
http://imview.sourceforge.net (full manual can be found there).
AUTHOR
The main author is Hugues Talbot <Hugues.Talbot@cmis.CSIRO.AU>
COPYRIGHT
Imview is Copyrighted (C) 1997-2002 by Hugues Talbot and was supported
in parts by the Australian Commonwealth Science and Industry Research
Organisation. Please see web site for full details.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
01 July 2002