pgmnorm(1)

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  prefix.   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

   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
   determines 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
   -wvalue  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  normalizes
   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 pixel  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 saturated component  and  the  pixel  ends  up  with  less  overall
   intensity, and a different 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(1), pgmhist(1), pnmgamma(1), ppmbrighten(1), ppmdim(1), pnm(5)

                            7 October 1993                      pnmnorm(1)

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Free and Open Source Software