.TH INTRO 9
.SH NAME
intro \- introduction to raster image software
.SH DESCRIPTION
Plan 9 provides a suite of commands and library routines to create and
manipulate files containing gray-scale and full-color images.  Section 9 of the
manual is divided into subsections numbered like the main manual
sections:  9.1 for commands, 9.2 for library routines, 9.6 for file formats.
.PP
Picture files are two-dimensional arrays of multi-byte records with a
textual header describing the dimensions of the image, the algorithm
used to encode the file, and whatever other information programs may wish to
preserve.
.IR picfile (9.6)
describes the file format;
.IR picopen (9.2)
describes a library of routines to read and write picture files.
.PP
.B /bin/fb
contains a collection of programs to manipulate picture files.
.PP
.I Drop
displays a picture file in an
.IR 8½ (1)
window or on a raw Plan 9 terminal.
.I Examine
similarly displays an image and allows interactive
examination of its pixel values.
.I Picinfo
displays the
header of a picture file on its standard output.
.I Pcp
copies picture files, modifying header attributes as requested and updating
the encoded picture array correspondingly.
It can clip a subwindow out of a picture, permute, delete and rename channels,
change the encoding type and even convert full-color images to monochrome and
vice-versa.
.I Hed
is a more brute-force version of
.I pcp
that can apply an arbitrary
.IR sed (1)
script to a picfile header.  It copies the image array verbatim
and can thus convert precious images into garbage or vice-versa.
.PP
.I Dumppic,
.I gif2pic,
.I picopic
and
.I Face2pic
convert files in various alien formats to
.IR picfile (9.6)
format.
.I Pic2ps
converts picfiles to encapsulated Postscript.
.I Nohed
removes the header from a picture file.
When applied to a
.B TYPE=dump
picture this converts it into the ubiquitous `raw dump' format.
.I Mugs
is an interactive program to convert picfiles into 48\(mu48 icons of
the sort used by
.B seemail
(see
.IR mail (1)).
.PP
Some commands create simple images out of whole cloth.
.I Card
writes an image of constant color.
.I Ramp
creates an image that is one color at one edge and changes linearly to another
color at the opposite edge.
.PP
.I Twb
and its subroutine
.I dpic
convert
.IR troff (1)
input into anti-aliased images.
.PP
.I Aplot
reads a square array of data points and draws an anti-aliased perspective
plot of the surface it defines.
.PP
There are numerous commands that read one or more images and write a modified
image on standard output.
See
.IR remap (9.1),
.IR filters (9.1),
.IR floyd (9.1),
.IR he (9.1),
.IR lam (9.1),
.IR lerp (9.1),
.IR logo (9.1),
.IR lum (9.1),
.IR quantize (9.1),
.IR resample (9.1)
.IR transpose (9.1)
and
.IR xpand (9.1)
for descriptions.
.PP
.I Moto
is an animator's command language.  It converts concise descriptions of
simultaneous processes overlapping in time into sequential command files
suitable for producing frames of an animation.
.SH "SEE ALSO
Sections
.IR add (2),
.IR balloc (2),
.IR cachechars (2),
.IR subfalloc (2),
.IR bitblt (2),
.IR event (2),
.IR frame (2),
.IR print (2),
.IR bit (3),
.IR layer (2),
.IR bitmap (6)
and
.IR font (6)
describe the standard Plan 9 interactive bitmap graphics interface.
