Imagedata row order

Jeanne A. E. DeVoto revolution at jaedworks.com
Tue Jul 25 12:32:58 EDT 2006


At 8:03 AM -0700 7/25/2006, Rob Cozens wrote:
>* Rev. Dictionary:  "Revolution supports GIF, JPEG, PNG, PICT, BMP, 
>PBM/PGM/PPM, and XBM/XPM/XWD formats, as well as its own internal 
>format".  My presumption is (untested)  the "internal format", 
>designated as "rle" in the image's paintCompression property, is the 
>format used for imageData  [4 bytes per pixel:  null, red, green, 
>blue].

No. It's run-length-encoded. Just as well, since the text property is 
what's stored on disk, and a 32-bit image with no compression 
whatever would take up a ton of room. Take a look at the length of 
the text versus the length of the imageData of a typical image object.

(Why would you assume that these are the same?)

>*  Rev Dictionary: "Because most picture formats include 
>compression, the content of an image is normally smaller than its 
>imageData property."  My presumption is (untested) that if an image 
>has never been resized since created in rle format, the image's text 
>& imageData properties will be identical. [ I would also note the 
>Dictionary is likely to be incorrect  if the image is displayed at 
>less than full size.]

This is never the case. There is no situation in which the text and 
imageData properties are the same; they're in completely different 
formats.

>*  Rev Dictionary: "To manipulate each pixel (for example, to 
>brighten the image or remove the red channel), to examine the actual 
>screen appearance of the image, or to work with the picture data in 
>a format-independent way, use the imageData property."  I think this 
>should read "use the rle format" instead of "use the imageData 
>property."  [Though one could reference the imageData property to 
>convert images in other formats to rle.]

No. It is possible to manipulate data by starting with the formatted 
text property of the image, of course - but the easiest way to do 
this is to write a routine that expands that text property so that 
each channel of each pixel is represented by a separate byte, and 
place that data in a variable to be worked with. Since what I've just 
described is the imageData property of the image, it seems 
considerably easier to use that instead of spending time reconverting 
the text picture data into that format.

If I had meant "use the text property of an image in RLE format" 
instead of "use the imageData property", that's what I would have 
written.
-- 
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ revolution at jaedworks.com
http://www.jaedworks.com



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