JediWizard has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Thanks in advance for any wisdom shared.

I need (want) to dynamically create fairly simple tiff images in perl. I need tiffs of a specific demension, containing only text of a specified font (and size) at very specific locations. The images must be 600 DPI, one bit per sample (black text on a white background), with CCITT Group 4 Fax Compression.

I have tried using the Imager package, as it looked to best match my needs, but have not yet been able to get it to output 1 bit per sample, nor Group4 compression. Below is sample code using Imager:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Imager;


my $impact = Imager::Font->new(file => '/home/me/test/IMPACT.ttf');
my $times  = Imager::Font->new(file => '/home/me/test/times.ttf');

my $img = Imager->new(xsize=>5500, ysize=>6600, chanels=>1, class => '
+fax') || warn Imager->errstr;

my $image = $img->to_paletted(colors=>[Imager::Color->new(255,255,255)
+],
                  class => 'fax',
                  make_colors => 'none',
                  translate => 'errdiff',
                  errdiff => 'stucki') || die Imager->errstr;

$image->string(text=>'14', x=>1750, 'y'=>1220, size=>1470, font=>$impa
+ct, color=>'black', aa=>1, align=>0) or warn $image->errstr;

$image->string(text=>'13716', x=>750, 'y'=>3100, size=>1450, font=>$im
+pact, color=>'black', aa=>1, align=>0) or warn $image->errstr;

$image->write(file=>'./foo.tif') or die $image->errstr;

exit;

[download]

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

—Andy Warhol

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Creating Tiff's from perl
by mpeters (Chaplain) on Jul 11, 2005 at 15:17 UTC
    Crazy as this sounds, I had to to almost the exact same thing recently. I too used Imager. Not only did my images need text in exact locations, but they also needed certain markings, etc. Here's how I did it:

    • First create a tiff of the desired size with any needed markings, at 600 dpi and black and white mode.
    • In perl, use Imager to open that image, create a font, and then write to it in the specified coordinates. Something like: 
      my $img = Imager->new();
$img->open( file => '/path/to/tiff/file' );
my $color = Imager::Color->new("#000000");
my $font = Imager::Font->new(
    file    => '/path/to/ttf/font',
    color   => $color,
);
$img->string(
  text    => $stuff_to_write,
  x       => $x,
  y       => $y,
  font    => $font,
);

      [download]
    My project also had the requirement that each letter of each word need to be in a certain place, so I just had a wrapper sub that would take a word and the x/y coords, split the word into individual letters and then use a 'spacing' var to increment the x value and print each letter one by one.

    HTH

    -- More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk. -- Bruce Schneier
[reply]
[d/l]

      Thank you for you advice. This code does come closer to what I want, but not quite there yet. Even with a one bit input image, with Group4 fax compression, the outputed image becomes 8 bit, without compression.

      They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

      —Andy Warhol

[reply]
[d/l]
        I'm sorry, I forgot to show how to write out the image, silly me! 
        $img->write(
  { 
   file  => $tmp->filename, 
   type  => 'tiff', 
   class => 'fax',
   }
);

        [download]
        And then in order to get the Group4 compression I did resort to ImageMagick's convert util. 
           system("convert -page Letter -compress Group4 $filename $filename")
+;

        [download]
        The last part I'm still not completely happy with, but since this is a batch process I didn't have to worry so much about having the extra system call.

        -- More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk. -- Bruce Schneier
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Creating Tiff's from perl
by marto (Cardinal) on Jul 11, 2005 at 16:15 UTC
[reply]

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