[comp.sys.mac] generic gif to macs

oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (05/09/88)

I've uploaded the files from usenet to the Mac. You must save them to
a unix machine, manually strip out the header and footer, give them a name
_different_ from the name in the "begin xxx.gif" line, run uuexpand on them.
Take the resulting .gif files, and send them to the Mac using some binary 
file transfer.

I use "macput -d xxx.gif" to talk to MacTerminal set up for Mac-to-mac
communication.  (Macput is available in C source from the machine
sumex-aim.stanford.edu  
login: anonymous
password: anonymous
cd <info-mac>

(the angle brackets are part of the name.)

I got the GIF reader from the same source, and the archived GIF pictures.
The StarTrek images are really disappointing: grainy, redish tinged, and only
16 shades.  It is kind of amusing to take these, which were obviously
full-screen images on the machine for which they were originally intended,
but only postcard size on a MacII, and put them all on your screen at
once.

The images archived with GIF are slightly better: 256 colors,
only a very slight reddish tinge.  They are all faces from playboy
centerfolds.  (Not the good bits.)  With a 19" display, you can get all 1
of these on your screen at once. Fun to watch the palette manager at work,
as each time you click on a new window its palette takes over, and all the
other windows get redrawn, with color quickdraw doing its best with the
new palette.

I wrote the scanner software that produced the color image of
a red flower in the April issue of MacWorld. Our scanner produces 6Meg of
data for each image: 1500x1024x24bits_per_pixel.  I may post a GIF image
of that, but it sort of blows GIF out of the water.  The scanner costs
$8.5k.

fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish) (05/12/88)

In article <23993@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes:
>The images archived with GIF are slightly better: 256 colors,
>[...]
>I wrote the scanner software that produced the color image of
>a red flower in the April issue of MacWorld. Our scanner produces 6Meg of
>data for each image: 1500x1024x24bits_per_pixel.  I may post a GIF image
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>of that, but it sort of blows GIF out of the water.  The scanner costs
>$8.5k.
 ^^^^^

Probably most of the 256 color images you currently find in GIF format
are images that were originally digitized in 640 x 480 x 21 bits_per_pixel
on a Commodore Amiga and run through a special program to map the 21 bit
color images to 8 bit color images.  Cost of DigiView for the Amiga?
$149.95 (list).   So, divide the image dimensions and colors per gun by 2
(approximately) and save a few bucks.  :-)

-Fred  ><>


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