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- CJPEG 1 "11 December 1991"
-
- cjpeg - compress an image file to a JPEG file
-
- SYNOPSIS
- cjpeg [-Q " quality"] [-oTIad] [filename]
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- cjpeg compresses the named image file, or the standard input if no file is
- named, and produces a JPEG/JFIF file on the standard output.
- The currently supported image file formats are: PPM (PBMPLUS color
- format), PGM (PBMPLUS gray-scale format), GIF, Targa, and RLE (Utah Raster
- Toolkit format). (RLE is supported only if the URT library is available.)
-
- OPTIONS
-
- -Q " quality"
- Scale quantization tables to adjust image quality. Quality is 0 (worst) to
- 100 (best); default is 75. (See below for more info.)
-
- -o
- Perform optimization of entropy encoding parameters. Without this, default
- encoding parameters are used.
- -o usually makes the JPEG file a little smaller, but cjpeg runs much slower.
- Image quality and speed of decompression are unaffected by -o.
-
- -T
- Input file is Targa format. Targa files that contain an "identification"
- field will not be automatically recognized by cjpeg; for such files you must
- specify -T to force cjpeg to treat the input as Targa format.
-
- -I
- Generate noninterleaved JPEG file (not yet supported).
-
- -a
- Use arithmetic coding rather than Huffman coding (not currently
- supported for legal reasons).
-
- -d
- Enable debug printout. More -d's give more output. Also, version
- information is printed at startup.
-
- The -Q switch lets you trade off compressed file size against quality of the
- reconstructed image: the higher the -Q setting, the larger the JPEG file,
- and the closer the output image will be to the original input. Normally you
- want to use the lowest -Q setting (smallest file) that decompresses into
- something visually indistinguishable from the original image. For this
- purpose the -Q setting should be between 50 and 95; the default of 75 is
- often about right.
- If you see defects at -Q 75, then go up 5 or 10 counts at a time until you
- are happy with the output image. (The optimal setting will vary from one
- image to another.)
-
- -Q 100 will generate a quantization table of all 1's, eliminating loss in
- the quantization step (but there is still information loss in subsampling,
- as well as roundoff error). This setting is mainly of interest for
- experimental purposes.
-
- -Q values above about 95 are not recommended for normal use; the compressed
- file size goes up dramatically for hardly any gain in output image quality.
-
- In the other direction, -Q values below 50 will produce very small files
- of low image quality. Settings around 5 to 10 might be useful in preparing
- an index of a large image library, for example. Try -Q 2 (or so) for some
- amusing Cubist effects. (Note: -Q values below about 25 generate 2-byte
- quantization tables, which are considered optional in the JPEG standard.
- cjpeg emits a warning message when you give such a -Q value, because some
- commercial JPEG programs may be unable to decode the resulting file.)
-
- EXAMPLES
-
- This example compresses the PPM file foo.ppm with a quality factor of
- 60 and saves the output as foo.jpg:
-
- cjpeg -Q foo.ppm >foo.jpg
-
- SEE ALSO
- djpeg (1)
-
- Wallace, Gregory K. "The JPEG Still Picture Compression Standard",
- Communications of the ACM, April 1991 (vol. 34, no. 4), pp. 30-44.
-
- AUTHOR
- Independent JPEG Group
-
- BUGS
- Arithmetic coding and interleaved output not yet supported.
-
- Not all variants of Targa file format are supported.
-
- The -T switch is not a bug, it's a feature. (It would be a bug if the
- Targa format designers had not been clueless.)
-
- Not as fast as we'd like.