PICTPixie is an application which allows you to compress images using QuickTime. It is meant to be used as a tool for testing image compression components, and can also be used for compressing PICT images. It is not meant to be an image processing application, or an example of a recommended human interface for an image compression application. As such it is not a supported product, so do not report any bugs which you may find and which are present. If you think a bug is a QuickTime¬ bug as opposed to a PictPixie bug, then please reproduce it with another application before reporting it. PictPixie is provided as a tool for developers, and should not be distributed to end users, who should get the QuickTime Starter Kit from Apple.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Ñ Macintosh with 68020 or better: (Macintosh II family , Macintosh LC, Quadras, PowerBook 140 or 170, Macintosh SE/30, Macintosh Classic II)
ÑSystem 6.0.7 or 6.0.8 with 32-Bit QuickDraw 1.2 or System 7.0 or later
ÑQuickTime¬ 1.0 or later
ÑHard Disk
Ñ2 MB DRAM (4 MB recommended)
ÑGrayScale or Color Display recommended
----------------------------- Using PICTPixie -----------------------------
Here is how you use PICTPixie to compress PICT images. Use the "Open╔" item in the file menu to open an existing PICT file. If you have an image that is stored in some other format, you can open it with another application, select the image ( or a piece of it), copy it and paste it into a new document in PICTPixie. Now you have an image to work with. To compress it, choose the "Compression╔" item under the image menu. This will bring up the standard dialog box for choosing the compression parameters. It contains two pop-up menus and a slider control. The first pop-up menu allows you to choose the compression format you want to use. You will see the standard compressors included with QuickTime, plus any you may have written yourself or installed from third parties. Some compressors allow you to limit the color resolution of the compressed image to save space, others do not allow this. If the compressor you picked, allows you to specify a color depth, the available color depths appear in the second pop-up menu. Choose the one which gives you the best color representation that you want for the compressed image. Now set the slider to the quality level you desire. When you set the slider, the preview image in the dialog will be updated to show the what the compressed result will look like.
Higher quality images look better, but may be larger than lower quality images. The relationship between quality and size may not be linear for a given compressor, and will vary based on the content of the original image. It is good to experiment to get the best results, although picking something in the center of the range is usually a good starting point. After you click the okay button, the image will be compressed, and the result will be decompressed and displayed in a new window called "Compressed (name of the original image)". Repeating the compression step, replaces the compressed image with the one with the new parameters. If you want to save the compressed image at any point, just use the save menu item and the compressed image will be saved as a compressed PICT. The compressed PICT can be displayed by any application which supports PICTs on any Macintosh with QuickTime, and the decompressor for the compression format used installed. On other systems a default picture reminding the user that QuickTime is required is displayed instead.
----------------------------- Other features -----------------------------
Zooming
You can set the zoom factors for the active window using any of the three zoom menu items under the image menu. "Zoom in" makes the image 10% larger and "Zoom Out" makes the image 10% smaller. The "Zoom╔" menu item allows you to type in a magnification factor ( expressed as percent of the original ) for both axes, or for horizontal and vertical independently.
You can quickly display the active window at its actual size (100% zoom factor) by selecting the actual size menu item in the image menu.
If you want to see the entire image, you can enable the Fit To Window item in the image menu and the image will be fit to the window, regardless of its size. Note that this does not preserve the aspect ratio of the image, and it will appear distorted. When you return to actual size, or reset the zoom factors so the are the same for horizontal and vertical this will be restored.
Statistics
For a display of statistics about the original and compressed images, use the statistics menu item, which displays a window with information about both images. It tells you which compression format is used for each image ( note that the original image, may already be compressed). The quality setting ( only for compressed images), which is a number between 0 (lowest quality) and 3.99 ( highest quality). The special value of 4.00 means that the compression process was lossless. The resolution of the image is also given in pixels. Note that the screen size may be different if the image is not a 72 dot per inch image, If it is not a 72 DPI the resolution in DPI, this is indicated in the center of the status bar at the top of the window, next to the magnification percentage. The size of each image in bytes is also displayed. This size is the actual number of bytes in the entire PICT file. The compression and decompression times are also given, in milliseconds.
Grid
If you wish to display a grid over your image for referencing pixel locations you can use the Show Grid item in the image menu. If you hold down the option key while selecting this item, a dialog will come up allowing you to set the grid interval in pixels.
Printing
You can print the contents of the original or compressed image, based on which window is active when you choose the print menu item. Note that the image is printed so that it fits on the page, and there are no page setup options.
Making selections
You can select a portion of an image by clicking and dragging the mouse in the image area. ( Note that auto-scrolling does not work). You can however, resize the selection area by grabbing the sides of it or the handles in any corner of the selection rectangle ( you can tell when you've got it because the cursor will change into a two-headed arrow) You can also move the selection rectangle by dragging inside of it ( the cursor will be a hand ). Once you have a selection, it can be copied for pasting into other applications. If you want to compress only part of an image, select it, copy it, and then close the original window and paste it into a new original window, which can then be compressed. Note when you paste into an image, the entire existing image is replaced with the pasted in image.
Previewing
When you choose open from the file menu, PICTPixie uses the StandardPreview feature of QuickTime to allow you to see a preview of PICT files you may want to open. If a PICT file does not have a preview, you can use the "Create" button in the StandardPreview dialog box to create a preview for the selected file.
When you save a file with PICTPixie, the preview picture can be created when the file is saved. This is done when the create preview check box is checked in the StandardPutFile dialog when you do a save. This also creates a custom finder ICON for the document which can be seen with System 7.0 or later.
----------------------------- Advanced Features -----------------------------
Importing other image formats
PICTPixie allows you to import images in certain other formats. Currently the only ones supported are JFIF and GIF. JFIF is the JPEG File Interchange Format specified by C-Cube Microsystems as a format for storing JPEG compressed images. JFIF files should have the Macintosh file type of 'JFIF'. GIF is the Graphics Interchange Format specified by CompuServe for storing 8-bit images. GIF files should have the Macintosh file type 'GIFf'.
To open GIFf or JFIF files which have their file types properly specified, use the normal open command and they will be opened as PICTs are. If the file types are not set, and you don't want to set them ( use ResEdit or MPW for this), you may use the Import menu item. This will allow you to choose one of the supported image formats. This is then followed by a open file dialog, which will show you ALL files of ALL types. You must select only files which are in the format which you are specifying.
Storing other image formats
PICTPixie supports a few other formats for compressed data for the purpose of interchange with other machines. The formats currently supported are JFIF and Encapsulated PostScript Level 2, both of which are valid only for JPEG compressed images. If you have compressed an image with the Photo compressor and want to save it in one of these formats, hold down the option key while selecting the Save as╔ item from the file menu, and select the desired format from the pop up menu which appears in the standard putfile box. Note, that if you open up a PICT which happens to be compressed as JPEG ( as indicated by the status bar ) the original PICT may actually be banded ( i.e. composed of more than one horizontal bands, each of which is a separate JPEG image.) because of the way it was compressed. For example, this happens if an application calls the QuickTime CompressPicture() call and there is not enough memory available to hold the original image when it is compressed. If you want to store one of these banded images directly as JFIF or PostScript, only the first band of the image will be saved in the JFIF or PostScript file. To
get around this, you can recompress the image using PICTPixie, and then save it in the desired format. Recompressing may degrade the quality slightly, but PICTPixie always compresses the image without banding, and therefore it can be saved in the other formats properly.
Choosing a specific compressor
Normally, when compressing an image, PICTPixie asks for any available compressor for the selected format, which will give you the fastest compressor for that format. If you want to pick a particular compressor for a given format, you can hold down the option key when you select the "Compression╔" menu item, and each compressor will appear in the compression pop-up menu individually.
Image buffer settings
PICTPixie uses an offscreen image buffer to store the images before they are displayed. It is the size of the image in pixels ( regardless of the resolution, i.e. for a 144 DPI image which is 640x480 pixels, the image buffer is that size, although the displayed image is only 1/4 of that size when displayed on the 72 DPI monitor.), and it defaults to 32 bits deep. If there is not enough memory to allocate this buffer, a dialog will appear warning you of this. At that point you can choose a lower depth for the image buffer ( which may sacrifice some color resolution in your image, depending on its content) or to not use an image buffer. If you do not use an image buffer, the compression must be done from the screen, which means you are limited to the color depth and pixel area of your monitor, which may not be as good as an offscreen image buffer, and PICTCompresor has bugs when doing this operation. You can reset the image buffer parameters at any time from the "Image╔" menu item. This allows you to enable or disable the image buffer, set its pixel depth or if it is less than 16 bits/pixel, to select which color look up table to use. If you attempt to open an image, and there is not enough room in the application, or in multifinder temp memory, a dialog will appear allowing you to change the image buffer settings. You can either reduce the depth, or by checking the "Half Resolution" check box, store the image at half spatial resolution, which will reduce the memory required. Note that changing the image buffer settings significantly effect the quality of the compressed image created from it.
Testing your own compressors
For those people developing their own compressor/decompressor components, there is a menu item which allows you to install your compressor/decompressor so that PICTPixie can use it. Just use the "Install Codec" menu item and pick your component file. It will be installed for use by PICTPixie, but no other applications ( drop it in the system folder, if you want it used by all applications ). This allows you to test your compression or decompression software easily. You can try this with the example compressor in the sample code folder on the QuickTime CD-ROM.
