pnmdepth (1)
NAME
pnmdepth - change the maxval in a portable anymapSYNOPSIS
pnmdepth newmaxval [pnmfile]DESCRIPTION
Reads a portable anymap as input. Scales all the pixel values, and writes out the image with the new maxval. Scaling the colors down to a smaller maxval will result in some loss of information.Be careful of off-by-one errors when choosing the new maxval. For instance, if you want the color values to be five bits wide, use a maxval of 31, not 32.
One important use of
pnmdepth
is to convert a new format 2-byte-per-sample PNM file to the older
1-byte-per-sample format. Before April 2000, essentially all raw
(binary) format PNM files had a maxval less than 256 and one byte per
sample, and many programs may rely on that. If you specify a
newmaxval
less than 256, the resulting file should be readable by any program
that worked with PNM files before April 2000.