I created Graphics::ACT a long time ago.

About a month ago I ran into andy wardley's website and saw Image::BioChrome. While I was waiting for the author to upload it to CPAN(I asked where I could get it), I hacked up these two snippets based on what I did with Graphics::ACT:

• convert image to greyscale (color to black and white)

• EVER MADE FIRE TEXT?

  Have you ever made fire text with Photoshop? What you do is you create some text, you blurr it (gaussian) then you stylize with wind, then distort with a ripple.

  You grayscale the image, then change it to indexed color mode, and then you modify the color table to black body, and you've got burning text.

  Have you ever wanted to make that text burn purple? Pink? Green?

  Well I have, that's why I whipped this up (no reason to waste time with photoshop).

  Sample input/output and the script I used are available at http://crazyinsomniac.perlmonk.org/perl/act/. Right now it's hardcoded for images with 256 colors (indexed color images).