GETTING UNIQUE COLORS WITH JPGS an Image Magick Tute by Flo
NOTE: Presently (September 10, 2006) the only Image Magicks that have Unique Colors installed in Transform are: Koya IM, Redux IM and Arbor IM. Check the other IMs periodically to see whether Mr. Cristy has installed Unique Colors in them.
EXAMPLE Original Passionate Dance
Unique Colors is a new tool in Transform. It separates all the different, unique colors it finds in an image into narrow stripes lined up horizontally, but only 1 pixel in height. The more unique colors an image contains, the longer this bar becomes, because each unique color is one pixel wide. When Mr. Cristy first installed this tool, imagers thought it worked only for gifs. Gifs do not have more than 256 colors. Jpgs, jpegs and pngs, however, have color numbers usually well into the thousands. When we tried to use Unique Colors with jpgs, we'd get a pop-up saying this contains too much information to use. Apparently this pop-up is produced by our webby browser, not by the IM! So at first, imagers tried to use Colormap to reduce the color numbers. Sometimes this worked, sometimes not. It just wasn't a fool-proof method. When I took the image above to Unique Colors, I'd forgotten it is a jpg. So I got that pop-up because the Unique Colors image was over 8000 pixels wide. NOTE: This will work for colored images that are drawings and paintings, but not usually for photographic images. The latter contain up to over 100,000 colors. This is too much even for IM to deal with. So for photographs, you might have to reduce the number of colors first. I clicked on the pop-up to get rid of it. I clicked on Resize and got the pop-up again, so I got rid of it again. I typed in the dimensions I wanted to resize the 8000+ pixel wide image and clicked on the Resize radio button. Success! So now we have a way of using Unique Colors with jpgs. HOW I MADE THE TITLE IMAGE Create a gradient background (100x500) of skyblue-midnight blue, then rotate it left. Annotate the first two words - IM's Alpine Medium font - gravity=center, point size=40, no fill color, stroke color=white, stroke width=2. Output as a jpg and save. (Put this url into the Find box) Input it again. Go to Transform, click on Unique Colors. (This time I didn't get the pop-up, as the little image was only 3200 pixels wide.) Resize to 500x100! (remember to use the "!" after the new dimensions). Annotate the last 2 words onto it (all settings same as above except for point size=48). Output for a temp url. Back up one screen and click on Input. Delete the url in the box. Scroll down and make a white xc 500x160. First Comp/Over the bottom part of the title (temp url), gravity-south, offset=+0-20. Then Comp/Darken the url in the Find box, gravity=north offset +0+0 CaliKat's Examples page, showing how the Unique Colors results change according to the number of colors we reduce a jpg to in Colormap. Choco's Unique Colors tute CaliKat's Make Your Own Unique Colors tute These two tutes are the first ones written (August, 2006) on the new Transform/Unique Colors feature. Remember: We are limited only in our imaginations and creativity. Friday 30th of July 2010 01:35:23 PM Flo's Image Magick Tutes ~ Flo's Other Tutes Dave's Tools Tutes by Flo by Tone By Tone Dot Net Tandem Tooters ~ Arbor Hosting ~