ppmquant(1)

NAME
       ppmquant  -  quantize the colors in a portable pixmap down
       to a specified number

SYNOPSIS
       ppmquant [-floyd|-fs] ncolors [ppmfile]
       ppmquant [-floyd|-fs] -map mapfile [ppmfile]

DESCRIPTION
       Reads a portable pixmap as input.  Chooses ncolors  colors
       to  best  represent the image, maps the existing colors to
       the new ones, and writes a portable pixmap as output.

       The quantization method is Heckbert's "median cut".

       Alternately, you can skip the color-choosing step by spec-
       ifying  your  own  set  of colors with the -map flag.  The
       mapfile is just a ppm file; it can be any shape, all  that
       matters  is  the  colors in it.  For instance, to quantize
       down to the 8-color IBM TTL color set, you might use:
           P3
           8 1
           255
             0   0   0
           255   0   0
             0 255   0
             0   0 255
           255 255   0
           255   0 255
             0 255 255
           255 255 255
       If you want to quantize one pixmap to use  the  colors  in
       another  one, just use the second one as the mapfile.  You
       don't have to reduce it down to only  one  pixel  of  each
       color, just use it as is.

       The -floyd/-fs flag enables a Floyd-Steinberg error diffu-
       sion step.  Floyd-Steinberg gives vastly better results on
       images  where  the  unmodified quantization has banding or
       other artifacts, especially when going to a  small  number
       of  colors  such  as  the above IBM set.  However, it does
       take substantially more CPU time, so the default is off.

       All flags can be abbreviated to their shortest unique pre-
       fix.

REFERENCES
       "Color  Image  Quantization  for  Frame Buffer Display" by
       Paul Heckbert, SIGGRAPH '82 Proceedings, page 297.

SEE ALSO
       ppmquantall(1) pnmdepth(1) ppmdither(1) ppm(5) 

AUTHOR
       Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 by Jef Poskanzer.