Re: [Inkscape-user] Wanting to understand issue with transparent GIF export
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <atownley@...16...> wrote:
I know IE doesn't support PNG (which is what the FAQ entry is about), but if I create a transparent GIF with the Gimp, I get a transparent GIF (albeit with much worse-looking text) than if I do it with Inkscape. It's been a while since I looked at image formats in detail, but if it is simply a matter of massaging the color of the "background" pixels in the GIF, is there a tool that can do this? I changed the document properties from #ffffff00 to #00000000 wondering if that may make a difference, but it doesn't.
If you know the background colour, gifsicle will fix it for you. (http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/) The MS-Windows binary is not as current as the Un*x ones, but will still do the job you need.
Mike
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 06:42:18PM +0000, Mike Causer wrote:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <atownley@...16...> wrote:
I know IE doesn't support PNG (which is what the FAQ entry is about), but if I create a transparent GIF with the Gimp, I get a transparent GIF (albeit with much worse-looking text) than if I do it with Inkscape. It's been a while since I looked at image formats in detail, but if it is simply a matter of massaging the color of the "background" pixels in the GIF, is there a tool that can do this? I changed the document properties from #ffffff00 to #00000000 wondering if that may make a difference, but it doesn't.
If you know the background colour, gifsicle will fix it for you. (http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/) The MS-Windows binary is not as current as the Un*x ones, but will still do the job you need.
Could you add this info to the FAQ in wiki, in case others run into the same issue?
Thanks, Bryce
On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 18:42, Mike Causer wrote:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <atownley@...16...> wrote:
I know IE doesn't support PNG (which is what the FAQ entry is about), but if I create a transparent GIF with the Gimp, I get a transparent GIF (albeit with much worse-looking text) than if I do it with Inkscape. It's been a while since I looked at image formats in detail, but if it is simply a matter of massaging the color of the "background" pixels in the GIF, is there a tool that can do this? I changed the document properties from #ffffff00 to #00000000 wondering if that may make a difference, but it doesn't.
If you know the background colour, gifsicle will fix it for you. (http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/) The MS-Windows binary is not as current as the Un*x ones, but will still do the job you need.
Mike,
Thanks for the pointer. I wasn't aware of that one.
Based on further exploration (and viewing the raw image data as hex), I discovered my problem: I thought Inkscape was "smart" enough to automatically generate different export bitmap formats by file extension (having years and years of conditioning from GIMP and OO). But, as most of you probably already know, it doesn't: you always get PNG, no matter what you say the file extension should be. This explains a lot, but as a relatively newcommer to Inkscape, it wasn't terribly obvious.
Are there any plans to support exporting to other image formats than PNG in the future?
Cheers,
ast
As I am a newcomer to Inkscape and to Gimp, can you tell me how I can obtain black and white on an image by just knowing the numbers #ffffff00 to #00000000; or any other color? How can one bring in a color by knowing the number.. Thanks SF syfine@...155...
On 11/15/06, Andrew S. Townley <atownley@...16...> wrote:
On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 18:42, Mike Causer wrote:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <
atownley@...16...> wrote:
I know IE doesn't support PNG (which is what the FAQ entry is about), but if I create a transparent GIF with the Gimp, I get a transparent
GIF
(albeit with much worse-looking text) than if I do it with Inkscape. It's been a while since I looked at image formats in detail, but if it is simply a matter of massaging the color of the "background" pixels
in
the GIF, is there a tool that can do this? I changed the document properties from #ffffff00 to #00000000 wondering if that may make a difference, but it doesn't.
If you know the background colour, gifsicle will fix it for you. (http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/) The MS-Windows binary is not as current as the Un*x ones, but will still do the job you need.
Mike,
Thanks for the pointer. I wasn't aware of that one.
Based on further exploration (and viewing the raw image data as hex), I discovered my problem: I thought Inkscape was "smart" enough to automatically generate different export bitmap formats by file extension (having years and years of conditioning from GIMP and OO). But, as most of you probably already know, it doesn't: you always get PNG, no matter what you say the file extension should be. This explains a lot, but as a relatively newcommer to Inkscape, it wasn't terribly obvious.
Are there any plans to support exporting to other image formats than PNG in the future?
Cheers,
ast
Andrew S. Townley <ast@...2044...> http://atownley.org
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Hi Seymour,
As I am a newcomer to Inkscape and to Gimp, can you tell me how I can obtain black and white on an image by just knowing the numbers #ffffff00 to #00000000; or any other color? How can one bring in a color by knowing the number..
I'm not sure if there's a way to feed Inkscape the opacity in the first suggestion I post here, maybe someone else can enlighten us?
Without transparency:
Have the desired hex value, say #bb0000 in the clipboard, select the object in Inkscape that you want to colorise and then right-click on the fill rectangle on the status bar (it's in the bottom-left corner of the Inkscape window and has the character "S" in front of it). You'll get a context menu in which you can paste the hex value (color) you copied to the clipboard.
With transparency:
Select the object you want to colorise, then hit CTRL-SHIT-X to open the XML editor, find the object and edit the "style" attribute. There's two entries called "fill" and "fill-opacity".
Hope that helps
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 18:42, Mike Causer wrote:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <atownley@...16...> wrote:
Are there any plans to support exporting to other image formats than PNG in the future?
As a vector graphics program raster graphics are not a high priority. Generally speaking file formats are not a high priority, SVG and PDF seem to be the two essential vector formats. PNG provides just enough that people can rasterize and finish off their work in other progams.
I'm still a little surprised Inkscape does not use GdkPixbuf and gain all the formats it supports. As a vector graphics program I would expect raster support to come largely from GdkPixbuf and other infrastructure Inkscape could use without significant additional maintaince costs (inkscape already hauls around most of the rest of GTK so using this feature shouldn't be a big deal). It makes most sense to implement these things once so many GTK applications can benefit. Since there is no GIF support in GdkPixbuf it seems extremely unlikely to be added to Inkscape but I do hope GdkPixbuf support will be added soon.
Oops I take that back "Gdk-pixbuf currently supports PNG, XPM, JPEG, TIFF, PNM, RAS, BMP, and even the patented GIF format" http://developer.gnome.org/doc/books/WGA/graphics-gdk-pixbuf.html
The most relevant request in the tracker is probably this one: [ 1516747 ] JPEG (.jpg) export support please https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1516747&gr...
Of course if developers really wanted to they could go in totally the other direction, put less emphasis on vectors and more on raster graphics. Developers could use Inkscape as the basis for an excellent raster graphics program, similar to how Macromedia built Fireworks or Microsoft built/bought Expression. However I do think that is unlikley to happen especially since it would involve reinventing so much of the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 16:56, Alan Horkan wrote:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 18:42, Mike Causer wrote:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <atownley@...16...> wrote:
Are there any plans to support exporting to other image formats than PNG in the future?
As a vector graphics program raster graphics are not a high priority. Generally speaking file formats are not a high priority, SVG and PDF seem to be the two essential vector formats. PNG provides just enough that people can rasterize and finish off their work in other progams.
I'm still a little surprised Inkscape does not use GdkPixbuf and gain all the formats it supports. As a vector graphics program I would expect raster support to come largely from GdkPixbuf and other infrastructure Inkscape could use without significant additional maintaince costs (inkscape already hauls around most of the rest of GTK so using this feature shouldn't be a big deal). It makes most sense to implement these things once so many GTK applications can benefit. Since there is no GIF support in GdkPixbuf it seems extremely unlikely to be added to Inkscape but I do hope GdkPixbuf support will be added soon.
Oops I take that back "Gdk-pixbuf currently supports PNG, XPM, JPEG, TIFF, PNM, RAS, BMP, and even the patented GIF format" http://developer.gnome.org/doc/books/WGA/graphics-gdk-pixbuf.html
The most relevant request in the tracker is probably this one: [ 1516747 ] JPEG (.jpg) export support please https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1516747&gr...
Of course if developers really wanted to they could go in totally the other direction, put less emphasis on vectors and more on raster graphics. Developers could use Inkscape as the basis for an excellent raster graphics program, similar to how Macromedia built Fireworks or Microsoft built/bought Expression. However I do think that is unlikley to happen especially since it would involve reinventing so much of the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
Thanks for the explanation. I can see where you're coming from with it, but let me share a little bit of my main usage scenario so maybe you can see where I'm coming from.
My main purpose for using Inkscape is exactly so I can define vector versions of images and diagrams (including text) that I can then export for use in other programs. I used to do this sort of stuff in OO draw, but it isn't quite sophisticated enough in some cases. What I mostly create are either complete technical diagrams for use in documentation, presentations or on websites, so the majority of the clients of the images can't handle vector graphics.
What I like about using Inkscape is that it is pretty sophisticated (sometimes a little too much so for what I do), so when I need to do something crazy, I can do it more easily than I could in OOD. Most of the time, I can deal with PNG as the image format (Word and PowerPoint generally do the right thing with it), but it doesn't work for cross-browser support on the web very well (and won't for quite a while).
I realize that I'm not really your target audience because I only do creative digital design work occasionally, but providing built-in support for exporting to various image formats through GdkPixbuf would be a big benefit for me. I'm not a big fan of Visio, and I'd have to run it under cxoffice/wine anyway, so that isn't ideal. Unfortunately Word and PowerPoint are necessary evils because you can't guarantee how the conversion from OO will work when people open the files.
So, while I can understand that bitmap graphic export isn't a high priority for the project, it would certainly be something I'd like to see. I'm not asking for Inkscape to become a bitmap graphic editor. As you say, the GIMP is already quite capable in that respect.
Until SVG is more widely supported within other applications as a "native" image format, I see no other way to accomplish what I do and have scalable images and text than create them as SVG in Inkscape and export them to suitable bitmap formats (PNG, JPG and GIF) for the audiences I have.
Sorry if this got a bit long. Thanks for listening.
ast
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 05:21:35PM +0000, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
Until SVG is more widely supported within other applications as a "native" image format, I see no other way to accomplish what I do and have scalable images and text than create them as SVG in Inkscape and export them to suitable bitmap formats (PNG, JPG and GIF) for the audiences I have.
Sorry if this got a bit long. Thanks for listening.
The GIMP has SVG support (I presume from gdkpixbuf) as does my local version of ImageMagick (I presume that is standard). I'll often save SVGs from Inkscape, then manipulate a rasterized version using GIMP or ImageMagick. As they are better at that job, it tends to work out well.
This isn't an argument against more file format exports, but rather pointing out ways to get the job done now.
Jeff
On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 17:37, Jeffrey Brent McBeth wrote:
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 05:21:35PM +0000, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
Until SVG is more widely supported within other applications as a "native" image format, I see no other way to accomplish what I do and have scalable images and text than create them as SVG in Inkscape and export them to suitable bitmap formats (PNG, JPG and GIF) for the audiences I have.
Sorry if this got a bit long. Thanks for listening.
The GIMP has SVG support (I presume from gdkpixbuf) as does my local version of ImageMagick (I presume that is standard). I'll often save SVGs from Inkscape, then manipulate a rasterized version using GIMP or ImageMagick. As they are better at that job, it tends to work out well.
This isn't an argument against more file format exports, but rather pointing out ways to get the job done now.
I actually hadn't realized the GIMP supported SVG. I also take Jon's points about right tool for the job (for exporting/preview/etc), but as I'm not interested in any manipulation other than 'convert this to the file format I need', it just seemed like overkill (and one more heavy-duty application). Of course, convert isn't as heavy-duty, so now that I know you only get PNG, I'll just use it from now on unless I don't get acceptable results.
Thanks for all the discussion/clarifications.
ast
On Nov 15, 2006, at 9:21 AM, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
So, while I can understand that bitmap graphic export isn't a high priority for the project, it would certainly be something I'd like to see. I'm not asking for Inkscape to become a bitmap graphic editor. As you say, the GIMP is already quite capable in that respect.
Until SVG is more widely supported within other applications as a "native" image format, I see no other way to accomplish what I do and have scalable images and text than create them as SVG in Inkscape and export them to suitable bitmap formats (PNG, JPG and GIF) for the audiences I have.
The other reason that it's a lower priority is that there are workflows that are sufficient for most users.
People often create SVG then export as PNG (frequently using the command-line version) and to the destination using image magic.
However, if someone needs good JPEG export (minimizing file size without too much loss of quality) people often then move into GIMP for that.
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 05:21:35PM +0000, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
My main purpose for using Inkscape is exactly so I can define vector versions of images and diagrams (including text) that I can then export for use in other programs. I used to do this sort of stuff in OO draw, but it isn't quite sophisticated enough in some cases. What I mostly create are either complete technical diagrams for use in documentation, presentations or on websites, so the majority of the clients of the images can't handle vector graphics.
I realize that I'm not really your target audience because I only do creative digital design work occasionally, but providing built-in support for exporting to various image formats through GdkPixbuf would be a big benefit for me.
So, while I can understand that bitmap graphic export isn't a high priority for the project, it would certainly be something I'd like to see.
Hi Andrew,
I also use Inkscape for technical drawing, and while I've not needed much beyond PNG, I can understand how important it is.
Can you code? If this is something you would be interested in working on implementing, it would be a handy feature for Inkscape to have. It sounds unlikely that the other developers have it as a priority to work on, but I think we'd all be happy to coach you through the process if it's something you'd be open to working on. :-)
Bryce
On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 18:13, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Can you code? If this is something you would be interested in working on implementing, it would be a handy feature for Inkscape to have. It sounds unlikely that the other developers have it as a priority to work on, but I think we'd all be happy to coach you through the process if it's something you'd be open to working on. :-)
I can code, but my C/C++ is a little rusty as I haven't used it for much in the last 5 years or so. I'd be happy to contribute these sorts of things, but I've a development project list that's already quite long. I'm already over a month behind on getting a website up and running, I've a fairly neglected Java/C# sourceforge project sorely in need of an updated release (http://te-code.sourceforge.net), and I want to do some prototyping/poc work around REST-based SOA using Ruby before the end of the year, so my dance card's pretty full at the minute (so I can totally relate to this not being everyone's first priority!) :)
I'll add it to the list though... maybe if I get frustrated enough, I'll try and figure out some sort of solution, but I don't see how I could do it before January.
Thanks for the suggestion, though.
ast
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 06:34:51PM +0000, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 18:13, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Can you code? If this is something you would be interested in working on implementing, it would be a handy feature for Inkscape to have. It sounds unlikely that the other developers have it as a priority to work on, but I think we'd all be happy to coach you through the process if it's something you'd be open to working on. :-)
I can code, but my C/C++ is a little rusty as I haven't used it for much in the last 5 years or so. I'd be happy to contribute these sorts of things, but I've a development project list that's already quite long.
I'll add it to the list though... maybe if I get frustrated enough, I'll try and figure out some sort of solution, but I don't see how I could do it before January.
Cool, the time issue is well understood. If you do find time some day, I suspect this particular feature may not be too terribly difficult to implement, esp. if you can simply tie in with a library like GdkPixbuf. In any case, I hope it helps to have this as an option, and definitely let me know if you have questions on how to go about it. :-)
Bryce
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Wanting to understand issue with transparent GIF export
On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 16:56, Alan Horkan wrote:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Andrew S. Townley wrote:
On Tue, 2006-11-14 at 18:42, Mike Causer wrote:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:38:00 +0000 "Andrew S. Townley" <atownley@...16...> wrote:
Are there any plans to support exporting to other image formats than PNG in the future?
What I like about using Inkscape is that it is pretty sophisticated (sometimes a little too much so for what I do), so when I need to do something crazy, I can do it more easily than I could in OOD. Most of the time, I can deal with PNG as the image format (Word and PowerPoint generally do the right thing with it), but it doesn't work for cross-browser support on the web very well (and won't for quite a while).
Lets be completely clear, PNG is not the problem. Browsers are not even the problem, just one browser Internet Explorer which has utterly failed to support PNG correctly.
You probably already know that but anyone else reading needs to be left in no doubt that PNG is an excellent format unfortunately hampered by Microsoft failure to support standards and continue to developer their web browser.
From the rest of your post I can see you only want a little more raster
graphics capability in Inkscape which is quite reasonable. I've seen quite a few feature requests I do not believe could easily be implemented so I took my explanation a little further for anyone else who might have high expectations about even more raster features.
On Nov 15, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Alan Horkan wrote:
I'm still a little surprised Inkscape does not use GdkPixbuf and gain all the formats it supports. As a vector graphics program I would expect raster support to come largely from GdkPixbuf and other infrastructure Inkscape could use without significant additional maintaince costs (inkscape already hauls around most of the rest of GTK so using this feature shouldn't be a big deal). It makes most sense to implement these things once so many GTK applications can benefit. Since there is no GIF support in GdkPixbuf it seems extremely unlikely to be added to Inkscape but I do hope GdkPixbuf support will be added soon.
The main problem there is with "sufficient" support.
Using GdkPixbuf would allow someone to get *something* out, but with a very low quality. Good conversion involves many other things including color reduction, dithering, quality settings, preview, etc.
With a bitmap editor like The GIMP you have most of that already in the program, and then extras can be added here and there (look at The GIMP's export for JPEG). If Inkscape wanted to support things enough on the bitmap front to not frustrate users, it would be a huge amount of work.
It's better to do one thing and do it well than to do a lot of things poorly.
participants (8)
-
Alan Horkan -
Andrew S. Townley -
Bryce Harrington -
Jeffrey Brent McBeth -
Jon A. Cruz -
Mike Causer -
Seymour Fine -
Thorsten