Pamlookup User Manual

and a lookup table consisting of a 3x1 PPM image as follows:

The lookup table above says Index 0 corresponds to the color red, Index 1 corresponds to yellow, and Index 2 corresponds to beige. The output of pamlookup is the following PPM image:

Now let’s look at an example of the more complex case where the indices are ordered pairs of whole numbers instead of whole numbers. Our index image will be this 3x2x2 PAM image:

Our lookup table for the example will be this two dimensional PPM:

This lookup table says Index (0,0) corresponds to the color red, Index (0,1) corresponds to yellow, Index (1,0) corresponds to green, and Index (1,1) corresponds to black. The output of pamlookup is the following PPM image:

If an index specifies a row or column that exceeds the dimensions of the lookup table image, pamlookup uses the value from the top left corner of the lookup image, or the value you specify with the -missingcolor option.

The indexfile argument identifies the file containing the index PAM or PNM image. - means Standard Input. The mandatory -lookupfile option identifies the file containing the lookup table image. Again, - means Standard Input. It won’t work if both the index image file and lookup table file are Standard Input. The output image goes to Standard Output.

You can use ppmmake and pnmcat to create a lookup table file.

If you want to use two separate 1-plane images as indices (so that your output reflects the combination of both inputs), use pamstack to combine the two into one two-plane image (and use a 2-dimensional lookup table image).

-lookupfile=lookupfile

lookupfile names the file that contains the PAM or PNM image that is the lookup table. This option is mandatory.

-missingcolor=color

This option is meaningful only if the lookup image (and therefore the output) is a PNM image. color specifies the color that is to go in the output wherever the index from the input is not present in the lookup table (not present means the index exceeds the dimensions of the lookup image -- e.g. index is 100 but the lookup image is a 50 x 1 PPM).

If you don’t specify this option of -fit, pamlookup uses the value from the top left corner of the lookup image whenever an index exceeds the dimensions of the lookup image.

Specify the color (color) as described for the argument of the ppm_parsecolor() library routine .

Another way to deal with a too-small lookup image is to use the -fit option.

-fit

This option says to shrink or expand the lookup image as necessary to fit the indices present in the index image, per the index image’s maxval. For example, if your index image has a single plane and a maxval of 255 and your lookup image is 1 row of 10 columns, pamlookup stretches your lookup image to 255 columns before doing the lookups. pamlookup does the stretching (or shrinking) with the pamscale(1) program.

When you use -fit, pamlookup never fails or warns you due to invalid lookup image dimensions, and the -missingcolor option has no effect.

Example: rainfall map

Say you have a set of rainfall data in a single plane PAM image. The rows and columns of the PAM indicate lattitude and longitude. The sample values are the annual rainfall in (whole) centimeters. The highest rainfall value in the image is 199 centimeters. The image is in the file rainfall.pam.

You want to produce a PPM rainfall map with green for the wettest places, red for the driest, and other colors in between.

First, compose a lookup table image, probably with a graphical editor and the image blown way up so you can work with individual pixels. The image must have a single row and 200 columns. Make the leftmost pixel red and the rightmost pixel green and choose appropriate colors in between. Call it colorkey.ppm.

    pamlookup rainfall.ppm -lookupfile=colorkey.ppm >rainfallmap.ppm

Now lets say you’re too lazy to type in 200 color values and nobody really cares about the places that have more than 99 centimeters of annual rainfall. In that case, just make colorkey.ppm 100 columns wide and do this:

    pamlookup rainfall.ppm -lookupfile=colorkey.ppm -missingcolor=black \
       >rainfallmap.ppm

Now if there are areas that get more than 100 centimeters of rainfall, they will just show up black in the output.

Example: graphical diff

Say you want to compare two PBM (black and white) images visually. Each consists of black foreground pixels on a white background. You want to create an image that contains background where both images contain background and foreground where both images contain foreground. But where Image 1 has a foreground pixel and Image 2 does not, you want red in the output; where Image 2 has a foreground pixel and Image 1 does not, you want green.

First, we create a single image that contains the information from both input PBMs:

    pamstack image1.pbm image2.pbm >bothimages.pam

Note that this image has 1 of 4 possible tuple values at each location: (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), or (1,1).

Now, we create a lookup table that we can index with those 4 values:

    ppmmake white 1 1 >white.ppm
    ppmmake black 1 1 >black.ppm
    ppmmake red   1 1 >red.ppm
    ppmmake green 1 1 >green.ppm
    pnmcat -leftright black.ppm red.ppm   >blackred.ppm
    pnmcat -leftright green.ppm white.ppm >greenwhite.ppm
    pnmcat -topbottom blackred.ppm greenwhite.ppm >lookup.ppm

Finally, we look up the indices from our index in our lookup table and produce the output:

    pamlookup bothimages.ppm -lookupfile=lookup.ppm >imagediff.ppm

pnmremap(1), ppmmake(1), pnmcat(1), pamstack(1), pnm(1), pam(1)

pamlookup was new in Netpbm 10.13 (December 2002).