Re: too many colors, using Tk to write images

[bbfu]

I'm fairly certain there's no way to create a Tk::Photo without a parent widget, as it assumes a certain amount of context that's provided by the parent.

My guess regarding running out of colors is that the palettes of the GIF files contain slightly different colors, so they can't be combined naively. I don't know which line of the code you posted is line 228 and generating the error, but if it's the copy line, then the redither won't help because the program never gets to that point. Update: The redither won't help regardless, as it doesn't actually reduce the colors used by the image. If I understand the docs correctly, it's for display purposes only.

If it's the write line, then it may be that the combined palettes contain too many colors to be supported by GIF (IIRC, GIF only supports up to 256 colors per image block; though you can do some trickery using multiple image blocks to get more than 256 colors total in the image, I'd be willing to bet Tk doesn't support that).

The best bet I can think of (and, of course, that doesn't mean the best bet in general ;) would be to reduce the number of palette entries used in the original images.

In the end, however, I think you'd be better served by looking into the other image processing modules available, such as Image::Magick or GD, as their more sophisticated features would probably make this job easier.

Good luck.

Update: Oh, and I assume it's just a typo, but you would need quotes around the value you're passing to the palette option for the code to compile.

bbfu
Black flowers blossom
Fearless on my breath

[elbie]

The line 228 is in the Tk module, but yeah, it's being called through the write method. Commenting that line out eliminates the error.

Assuming that the 256 colour limit is specific to the gif is a good guess. I can play with the palette values to see if that does it. I assume it's a gif thing, as just displaying the image (part of the original code I derived the example from) seems to work fine.

The quotes don't seem to matter, btw. It seems to do what I want, which I think is a result of specifying the options using the hash-like -var => value method of passing parameters.

And yeah, I'm investigating other tools. I'd forgotten about GD though. Funny that. Thanks!

elbieelbieelbie

[bbfu]

The line 228 is in the Tk module, but yeah, it's being called through the write method. Commenting that line out eliminates the error. Assuming that the 256 colour limit is specific to the gif is a good guess. I can play with the palette values to see if that does it. I assume it's a gif thing, as just displaying the image (part of the original code I derived the example from) seems to work fine.

Then it sounds like it's definitely an issue GIF format. You need to find a way to reduce the palette down to 256 colors. Unfortunately, I didn't see any options in the Tk::Image (er, I mean Tk::Photo, and I guess you could always try calling $photo->configure(-palette => '256/256/256');) docs to do so. I'll look some more, though.

The quotes don't seem to matter, btw. It seems to do what I want, which I think is a result of specifying the options using the hash-like -var => value method of passing parameters.

Well, only the left side of the => operator is special. Perl would actually parse -palette => 256/256/256, as: -palette => 0.00390625, (ie, 1 divided by 256). I really don't see how that would get you anything but a monochrome image but I guess I'll take your word for it. :)

Anyway, let us know how it all turns out for you. Good luck.

bbfu
Black flowers blossom
Fearless on my breath