forced palette for RGBA images

[Daniel Morissette]

Could we please have a ticket for this referred from the SVN change 
comment, summarizing the info from this thread, just so that we have a 
place to point users to when they ask about this change in a few months?

Personally I'd like to see tickets for anything that's not a trivial 
bugfix... but that's just me of course.

Daniel


Steve Lime wrote:
> Thomas, these are great additions. I'm looking forward to using them myself as I'm dealing
> with image size issues with AGG/OpenLayers. 
> 
> On your questions, if you think it might be disruptive then perhaps users should opt in (e.g.
>  --enable-experimental-png).
> 
> I'd go ahead and commit. No sense waiting and that gives more folks a chance to test.
> 
> Steve
> 
>>>> On 12/12/2007 at 2:46 AM, in message
> <d2b988930712120046n1c0dce28ye568b9c693040f0d at mail.gmail.com>, thomas bonfort
> <thomas.bonfort at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> A quick update on this.
>> I've now also added quantization for rgba images ( based on the median
>> cut implementation of pngquant / ppmquant:
>> http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/apps/pngquant.html ).
>>
>> examples here (the first two images are actually transparent. you'd
>> have to open them in an image editor to see that):
>>
>> the full rgba png:
>> http://www.terriscope.fr/ms_tmp/rgba.png : 129k
>>
>> the quantized rgba png (may look funny under oldish MS IEs)
>> http://www.terriscope.fr/ms_tmp/palette.png : 39k
>>
>> the output produced with the current gd quantization
>> http://www.terriscope.fr/ms_tmp/rgbapalettegd.png 
>>
>> I'd personally enable the pngquant quantization for rgb images to , as
>> it produces higher quality results, but there's a tradeoff on
>> rendering speed (rough times for quantization only: 1.5 sec for
>> pngquant vs 0.3 sec for gd, on a 2000x2000 image). Or this could be
>> yet another formatoption selectable option.
>>
>> Dan: all this will be documented. We've talked with Assefa about
>> either writing a complete reference on the different formatoptions,
>> and/or a howto on reducing image size with agg (palette, quantization,
>> and tradeoffs beween speed/imagesize/flexibility)
>>
>> Now for the questions:
>> * how should I add this? I'd go for a configure option
>> (--disable-experimental-png) with ifdef'd code as I don't know how
>> disruptive this would be on all platforms.
>> * can I add this soon? It's stable on my setup, but there might be
>> issues on other platforms. I'd like to have it tested as much as
>> possible before 5.2
>>
>> cheers,
>> thomas
>>
>> On Dec 7, 2007 10:46 PM, Daniel Morissette <dmorissette at mapgears.com> wrote:
>>> Sounds like a cool feature. We'd need to make sure it is well documented
>>> and not just hidden in the source. A short RFC or ticket for this maybe?
>>>
>>> Daniel
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> thomas bonfort wrote:
>>>> hello list,
>>>>
>>>> I've added the possiblity to force a color palette for RGBA images. As
>>>> gd does not support this kind of images, I had to resort to directly
>>>> use libpng functions for the actual saving of the file.
>>>>
>>>> The steps needed to actually use this would be:
>>>> - create a 24 bit rgba image representative of a typical image that
>>>> would be produced
>>>> - use an external program to create an rgba paletted version of the
>>>> image (pngquant, pngnq, photoshop...)
>>>> - extract the palette from the created image and save the values in
>>>> the form r,g,b,a in a text file (one per line)
>>>> - use palette_force and palette formatoptions in the outputformat block.
>>>>
>>>> This is rather complicated, but usefull on production setups to
>>>> minimize image size when using clients that overlay layers (eg
>>>> openlayers).
>>>>
>>>> There are still a few quirks I'd have to work on before the code is
>>>> robust enough for inclusion in the trunk, so I'd like to know if this
>>>> is a feature we'd definitely like to have before putting too much
>>>> effort into that.
>>>>
>>>> cheers,
>>>> thomas
>>>
>>> --
>>> Daniel Morissette
>>> http://www.mapgears.com/ 
>>>


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/