[ka-Map-users] Color shifts using QUANTIZE_COLORS=256

[Paul Spencer]

Steve,

I concluded the same thing you did (that the colours are mangled).   
FrankW had an explanation for this that I didn't really understand.   
He suggested that providing a mechanism to specify a fixed colour  
table would be the real answer.

Tile sizes in my experiments were 50% smaller in most cases (using  
quantization).

Dithering had no observable effect on the colour problem, but did  
result in crappy looking images in most cases (hence I suggested  
turning it off).

ImageMagick is able to produce outstanding 8bit pngs from 24bit  
antialiased images, so it is possible.

I would love to see something in mapserver that kept track of all the  
colours that were allocated in the various styles and rendering  
stages, and from the headers of the raster symbols, and used that as  
the colour table when doing quantization or whatever is needed.

As a minimum, it should be possible to specify a COLORS block or  
something at the MAP level that would force those colours into the  
output image.  This would actually solve a long standing issue with 8  
bit images and raster symbols where antialiased text uses all the  
colours and then the raster symbol colours get mangled.

My 2c

Paul

On 9-Aug-06, at 1:56 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the cross-post, but this seems valid for both groups.
>
> I have mapserver configured to work with ka-map and things are working
> fine except we have noticed color shifts in tiles. We are using:
>
>   OUTPUTFORMAT
>     NAME PNG8
>     DRIVER "GD/PNG"
>     EXTENSION "png"
>     MIMETYPE "image/png"
>     IMAGEMODE RGBA
>     TRANSPARENT OFF
>     FORMATOPTION "QUANTIZE_FORCE=ON"
>     FORMATOPTION "QUANTIZE_DITHER=OFF"
>     FORMATOPTION "QUANTIZE_COLORS=256"
>   END
>
> in our mapfile and my hypotheses is that the GD QUANTIZE process is
> selecting different colors based on the colors available in the  
> various
> meta-tiles. The mapserver source code calls the following function  
> for this process and from the GD manual:
>
>> void gdImageTrueColorToPalette(gdImagePtr im, int ditherFlag, int
>> colorsWanted) gdImagePtr gdImageCreatePaletteFromTrueColor(gdImagePtr
>> im, int ditherFlag, int colorsWanted) (FUNCTION)
>> gdImageCreatePaletteFromTrueColor returns a new image.
>> gdImageTrueColorToPalette permanently converts the existing image.
>> The two functions are otherwise identical.
>> The function converts a truecolor image to a palette-based image,
>> using a high-quality two-pass quantization routine. If ditherFlag is
>> set, the image will be dithered to approximate colors better, at the
>> expense of some obvious "speckling." colorsWanted can be anything up
>> to 256. If the original source image includes photographic
>> information or anything that came out of a JPEG, 256 is strongly
>> recommended. 100% transparency of a single transparent color in the
>> original truecolor image will be preserved. There is no other support
>> for preservation of alpha channel or transparency in the destination
>> image.
>> For best results, don't use this function -- write real truecolor
>> PNGs and JPEGs. The disk space gain of conversion to palette is not
>> great (for small images it can be negative) and the quality loss is
>> ugly. However, the version of this function included in version
>> 2.0.12 and later does do a better job than the version included prior
>> to 2.0.12.
>
> So, a few questions:
>
> 1) Has anyone looked into the impact of using PNG24 images on
>   a) image sizes
>   b) ka-map tile-cache sizing
>   c) compatibility with browsers
>   d) impact on browser memory usage or performance
> 2) I thought Paul Spencer said to use DITHERED=OFF, is this correct
> 3) Has anyone looked at the GD routine? Would it be possible to add  
> a palette of say 32 colors that would be "sticky" and priority over  
> other colors?
>
> -SteveW
> _______________________________________________
> ka-Map-users mailing list
> ka-Map-users at lists.maptools.org
> http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/ka-map-users

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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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