pnmnorm
Updated: 7 October 1993
Table Of Contents
NAME
pnmnorm - normalize the contrast in a Netbpm image
SYNOPSIS
pnmnorm [-bpercent N | -bvalue N] [-wpercent N | -wvalue N]
[-keephues]
[-brightmax] [ppmfile]
All options can be abbreviated to their shortest unique pre-
fix. You may use
two hyphens instead of one to designate an option. You may use
either white
space or an equals sign between an option name and its value.
DESCRIPTION
This program is part of Netpbm.
pnmnorm reads a PNM image (PBM, PGM, or PPM). Normalizes the
contrast by
forcing the lightest pixels to white, the darkest pixels to
black, and
linearly rescaling the ones in between; and produces the same
kind of file
as output. This is pretty useless for a PBM image.
The program first determines a mapping of old brightness to
new brightness.
For each possible brightness of a pixel, the program de-
termines a
corresponding brightness for the output image.
Then for each pixel in the image, the program computes a color
which has the
desired output brightness and puts that in the output. With a
color image,
it is not always possible to compute such a color and retain
any semblance
of the original hue, so the brightest and dimmest pixels
may only
approximate the desired brightness.
Note that for a PPM image, this is different from separately
normalizing the
individual color components.
OPTIONS
By default, the darkest 2 percent of all pixels are mapped to
black, and the
lightest 1 percent are mapped to white. You can override these
percentages
by using the -bpercent and -wpercent flags, or you can specify
the exact
pixel values to be mapped by using the -bvalue and -wval-
ue flags.
Appropriate numbers for the flags can be gotten from the
ppmhist tool. If
you just want to enhance the contrast, then choose values at
elbows in the
histogram; e.g. if value 29 represents 3% of the image but
value 30
represents 20%, choose 30 for bvalue. If you want to lighten
the image, then
set bvalue to 0 and just fiddle with wvalue; similarly, to
darken the image,
set wvalue to maxval and play with bvalue.
The -keephues option says to keep each pixel the same hue as
it is in the
input; just adjust its intensity. By default, pnmnorm normal-
izes contrast in
each component independently (except that the meaning of the
-wpercent and
-bpercent options are based on the overall intensities of the
colors, not
each component taken separately). So if you have a color which
is intensely
red but dimly green, pnmnorm would make the red more intense
and the green
less intense, so you end up with a different hue than you
started with.
If you specify -keephues, pnmnorm would likely leave this pix-
el alone, since
its overall intensity is medium.
-keephues can cause clipping, because a certain color may be
below a target
intensity while one of its components is saturated. Where
that's the case,
pnmnorm uses the maximum representable intensity for the satu-
rated component
and the pixel ends up with less overall intensity, and a dif-
ferent hue, than
it is supposed to have.
This option is meaningless on grayscale images.
Before March 2002, there was no -keephues option.
The -brightmax option says to use the intensity of the most
intense RGB
component of a pixel as the pixel's brightness. By default,
pnmnorm uses the
luminosity of the color as its brightness.
This option is meaningless on grayscale images.
Before March 2002, there was no -brightmax option.
SEE ALSO
ppmhist, pgmhist, pnmgamma, ppmbrighten, ppmdim, pnm
_________________________________________________________________
Table Of Contents
* NAME
* SYNOPSIS
* DESCRIPTION
* OPTIONS
* SEE ALSO
UNIX/Linux commands referenced on this page:
- as
- play
- make
- red
- more
- less
- ppmhist
- pgmhist
- pnmgamma
- ppmbrighten
- ppmdim