Wasn't really sure where to post this, but...

I was wondering if GIMP will ever support JP2s, or if there is some arcane reason why it won't. (proprietary licensing weirdness, political wackiness, technical incompatibility, etc.)

For all I know, it may already.
Please note that I run a Debian Linux platform... The Lenny package. Latter day Lenny, but still, it's not bleeding edge.

IF it won't, or doesn't or something, a suggestion as to how to read them in a linux platform would be most appreciated.

I know this latter part is dangerously close to being off-topic, but... the first part is, at least, about Gimp.

Thanks....

~DorBluBrd

GIMP already supports jp2 files Dorthy.

edit:

Come to think of it, I might have downloaded a GIMP plugin for this; don't use it at all and my version doesn't appear to support transparencies unfortunately. Went to the registry and found this thread; might be of help to you.

http://registry.gimp.org/node/9899

Well, I looked at the thread, and thought about it a while... then went back and reread it.

It looks like it supports .jp2 files... if you happen to be a hacker and can fix the bugs with it. Oh, and you have a Windows machine. Which... I don't.

Now, it's possible that I haven't properly digested the implications of the discussion. I am not a programmer, and am a step up, perhaps, from a super-user. Sure I have studied some basic programming, even written a few programs... but apparently not enough to help with this.

However, things get easier now that my computer knows how to view these images.

I can strip out individual files from the archive, then open them with Kview to save them in a pcx format, which, hooray(!), my version of GIMP can read. I don't know how much loss one gets from doing that, but it looks good from my initial test. As an added bonus, my system doesn't act like it's digesting a particularly large meal.

I didn't want to try a standard JPG, largely because ginormous files in JPG have lots of cpu overhead, and can cause... problems. Hence, why jp2 was created in the first place. I was thinking of TARGA format, too, because I have heard that it is supposed to be good for large cumbersome files, but I have never tried it.

(*!*)

Ooops, sorry about the (possible) drift. Should I start a new topic before going on a rip about file formats?

If so, I can install a link here in case others want to follow the progression.

because I have heard that it is supposed to be good for large cumbersome files, but I have never tried it.

how much large ?

Let's see... the largest is 973.2 KB, (gimp says 28.2 MB)and the smallest is 602.3 KB. So far. There's a huge batch of them that I am processing.

It is a quarto size, high-definition scan of a book published in 1689. "Devises et Embleme" is it's name.

Googlebooks is awesome. You can find such nifty stuff in public domain...

...

Upon further investigation, the translation into .pcx turned the images into 72 dpi by default. The originals looked to be much higher quality, probably 300 dpi if not higher. The program that can read the jp2s is not terribly sophisticated in terms of meta data... and I don't know how accurate that number is.

So my current method works for display on the web... not sure for much else.



This is not the quality of image I want for processing. It looks... a touch blurry to me.
I mean, if I were just posting this as-is, I'd just dial in the sharpen and be done with it.

The irony is, I've worked with images this size before, and the machine seems to struggle more with translation of jp2 than other formats (mostly xcf... I get layer-crazy sometimes, esp working with multilayer text) Note that my sample is just a small portion of the total image size... a full page would be a bit much. Especially since the edges of the book are also scanned, and the bindings and have lots of rust and graphical features that adds to the bulk of each image.

So size is probably not as big of a deal as it could be. I'll try regular jpgs and targa and see what happens.

PS you forgot a very important info
In what format you saved your scanner ? (jpg, tiff , png)
and your scanner saved as greyscale , or RGB ?

OR you edited the scanned images in gimp and you are processing xcf files ?
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i really don't think that with max 973.2 KB they may be "large cumbersome file"

Almost everything i do is more then 2MB , once flattened and exported as png,( much more as XCF file,)
supposing you have a not a very old computer and 1GB or at least 500MB of Ram you should not have any problem to process similar files

I will discorage use jpg2000, is a cool format but not sufficently commune, i will just use png when is needed highest quality and...well just plain jpg (for better quality..just raise the quality from default 85, to 95 )

PS for Targa there is a similar situation then for jpg2000, may be good but i am not sure will be displayed by browser.
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Usually in linux for this kind of batch is "imagemagick" the tool for the trade
If you get Wine you may also install "irfanview" that also may convert between the most different graphic format in batch.. but offer a intuitive graphic interface.

I did not scan the images myself. I downloaded a pre-scanned "book" comprised of high quality jp2 images, sourced from Googlebooks. I don't have a choice about formats... it was either jp2 or PDF, and the image quality in PDF is not high enough.

I am planning on backtracking to the download site, and see if I can find any raw formats or see if they have more information about what quality the images were scanned at.

i see
it seems you have no much choise
The best support for Jpg2000 (data from http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000 )
is offered by Xnview that is a free windows program that should work in linux with wine (there was a unix port but is quite inferior to the win one)

Follow Irfanview (for sure will work in ubuntu with wine, already tested )and the 2 classic unix tool ImageMagick and GraphicMagick

But gimp should be able to read, (not write ) jpg2000 without any plugin, the plugin should be needed only to save
(anyway for batch operation any other of the program i quoted is much more adapt then gimp )

I thought I had JPEG2000 for my Gimp (Windows) and now can't find it. Hmmm?

Doesn't "Seperate+" filter suite have JPEG 2000 support? Or is Seperate just for printing?