--- name: "imview" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "imview" version: "1.1.9h-4+b3" release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/imview" --- # imview(1) displays and interactively analyses images ## NAME imview - displays and interactively analyses images ## SYNOPSIS **imview** \[ **options** \] \[ **image** *...* \] Where image is an image file in one of the supported formats, e.g: TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, XPM, PNM, etc... ## DESCRIPTION **Imview** is an X11 and Windows GDI GUI application for displaying images on screen. It has advanced capabilities for interactive image analysis (getting information out of images) and can be easily controlled through a socket connection for embedding in image analysis systems. Imview supports a large number of popular and scientific image file formats, in part through the use of the ImageMagick library. ## OPTIONS Here is the complete list of optional arguments for **imview**. - **-** Reads an image from the standard input stream. Example: - **-a** Reads and appends to an existing pointfile (see option *-p*). - **-C \** Specifies \ as the default look-up tables for all the images on the command line. - **-c \** Applies the look-up table \ to the **preceding** image on the command line (see example section). - **-debug** Starts a debugging GUI console where debugging messages can be seen (there are lots of them!). Under Unix messages are also appended to the file /tmp/imbugs.txt. - **-delete** Any image given to **imview** on the command line will be deleted after **imview** exits. This is useful when **imview** is started from an interpreter with a temporary image as argument. For safety only images with paths beginning with /tmp, /usr/tmp or under the standard environment variable-controlled TMPDIR directory are effectively deleted. - **-disable\_io\_keys** This option disables some I/O shortcut that are not menu-dependent, such as c that closes an image. This is useful in conjunction with options *-hide\_menubar* and *-disable\_menubar* for limiting the user's interaction with the application. - **-disable\_menubar** This option completely disables the menu bar (but does not hide it, see *-hide\_menubar* for that). Both hiding and disabling the menubar at the same time can be useful for producing a viewer that users cannot control other than through some other means than the menu (if **imview** is embedded in another application for example). - **-disable\_quit** This option disables the shortcut ways of quitting the **imview** application, such as the Escape key, clicking the windows manager \`close window' button, etc. This is useful to restrict the user's control over **imview**. - **-fork** Sends **imview** to the background (works on all platforms including windows). It is better to use this option rather than the shell semantics (adding & at the end of the command under Unix) when the server is ran in conjunction with *-server*, because imview will synchronize the foreground and background processes so that the foreground process can know the server port number. - **-gamma \** Sets the default gamma for all the images. A gamma between 0 and 1.0 will darken the displayed image while a gamma greater than 1.0 will brighten them. - **-h** Prints an abbreviated list of options and exits. - **-hide\_menubar** Hides the main menubar. The menu items are still accessible via shortcuts. For example try Alt+f to get the file-\>open menu. From there you can use the keyboard arrow keys to select a menu item for example. This is useful if you have little screen real estate, but confusing for the beginner! - **-no\_dblbuf** Do not use double buffering at certain zoom factors. This is a hack you might want to experiment with if you find that **imview** does not redraw some parts of images after closing and re-opening images. - **-locked** Equivalent to all the following options used together: *-hide\_menubar*, *-disable\_menubar*, *-disable\_iokeys* and *-disable\_quit*. If run with this option, **imview** can only be controlled via a socket in server mode. This is useful for embedding imview in another application. - **-mag \** Magnifies all images by \. Any positive value is legal. Values between 0 and 1.0 will reduce the size of the images while values greater than 1.0 will expand them. - **-no\_magick** Disables the use of the ImageMagick library. This library is very useful for reading and writing a large number of file formats but tries to do too much sometimes, such as converting text files to images. - **-p \** Specifies the point file name. A pointfile is a regular text file in which point (pixel) information can be recorded. The default point file name is pointfile. This option simply changes that default, no other action is taken. - **-portfile \** This option is only useful in combination with *-server*. **Imview**'s server binds to a port in the range 7600-7700. Because it is often useful to have more than one image server at the same time and because of the interactive nature of **imview**, the precise port number is impossible to predict, so when the server is started it prints the port it decided to bind against on the command line, or alternatively in a file, specified by this option. **NOTE:** If you are planning to send imview to the background, for this command to work as expected, you must also use the *-fork* option, otherwise the file might still be empty when the command returns. - **-server** Starts the **imview** server. In server mode **imview** performs as a TCP/IP server on which images can be uploaded and commands can be run. The aim is to make **imview** completely remote-controllable: every command accessible via the menu can also be made available through the server. **Imview** uses its own text-based protocol. For simple commands a standard telnet session is enough to communicate with **imview**. However for uploading images into **imview** a protocol similar to FTP has been implemented. A simple **imview** client is shipped in source form with the imview distribution. For a specification of the **imview** protocol see the full documentation. **Imview**'s server port number is in the range 7600-7700 which allows up to 50 different imview server to be run on the same machine (each server uses up two ports: one for commands and the other for binary data exchange, such as uploading images). - **-stopdebug** Used in conjunction with *-debug*, will stop the program after each debugging message. To continue the user must type \. - **-v** Prints the version and build numbers, the date of build, the configuration options and exits. - **-wt \** Changes the title of the main window. The default is Imview. ## EXAMPLES In the following examples \`%' indicate the shell prompt. ### SIMPLE USAGE ``` % imview ``` Simply starts imview displaying the splash screen. An image can then be loaded using the menus. ``` % imview myimage.tiff ``` Will display image myimage.tiff. ``` % imview /home/talbot/images/astro/* ``` Will display all images in the directory /home/talbot/images/astro/. Use \ to switch from one image to the next. ### ADVANCED USAGE ``` % imview aGreyLevelImage.tif -c heat.lut ``` Will display image aGreyLevelImage.tif. Assuming this image only contains grey-level information (a black and white photograph for example), the false colours defined in heat.lut will be applied to it. ### SERVER USAGE ``` % imview -server -fork Port: 7600 ``` This will start **imview** in server mode. The only difference with the normal mode is that **imview** can now be "remote-controlled" via a TCP/IP connection. The port **imview** is bound to is printed on the command line when the server starts. To save it to a file use the *-portfile* option. A simple telnet session can be used to remote-control **imview**, as follows. See the full documentation for more details: ``` % telnet localhost 7600 user talbot Welcome, talbot /tmp/fileBlabla 000 OK load "/home/talbot/images/astro/neptune.tiff" 000 OK zoom factor 2 000 OK end Connection closed by foreign host. ``` **imclient** is shipped with the source distribution as an implementation of a sample client that can upload images into imview, as follows: ``` % imclient -p 7600 /home/talbot/images/astro/jupiter.tiff ``` ## BUGS See the TODO file in the source distribution or the web site for an updated list of known bugs. Here is a list of the most significant ones: - • resize still a problem sometimes. Imview gets itself into a weird state with incorrect limits and partial redraws. Specifying a complete redraw should clear everything but doesn't. - • Move to the middle of the screen. Sometimes for no apparent reason Imview moves to the middle of the screen. This seems to be happening if the main window resises. - • last line and last column of image often missing when scrollbar are present. ## FILES - **~/.fltk/hugues.talbot\_csiro.au/imview.prefs** User preferences - **\/Imview/\*.lut** Colour look-up tables - **\/Imview/doc/\*.html** On-line documentation ## SEE ALSO imclient (1), ImageMagick (1), djpeg (1) libtiff (3T) http://imview.sourceforge.net (full manual can be found there). ## AUTHOR The main author is Hugues Talbot \ ## COPYRIGHT Imview is Copyrighted (C) 1997-2002 by Hugues Talbot and was supported in parts by the Australian Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organisation. Please see web site for full details. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.