Simple way to add an image in postscript

Question

I am trying to write a document in postscript.

Thus far I\'ve been able to write simple text, and work with lines and shapes.

I\'m now trying to add some ima

Answer 1

There is a simple method and Postscript does support the jpeg format. If you are using ghostscript you may have to use the -dNOSAFER option to open files. Here is an example:

gsave
 360 72 translate     % set lower left of image at (360, 72)
  175 47 scale         % size of rendered image is 175 points by 47 points
  500                   % number of columns per row
  133                    % number of rows
  8                    % bits per color channel (1, 2, 4, or 8)
  [500 0 0 -133 0 133]       % transform array... maps unit square to pixel
  (myJPEG500x133.jpg) (r) file /DCTDecode filter % opens the file and filters the image data
  false                 % pull channels from separate sources
  3                    % 3 color channels (RGB)
  colorimage
grestore

Answer 2

You can download the PostScript Language Reference, third edition from adobe (this is the "bible book" for postscript). Chapter 4.10 Images would be a good starting point.

Answer 3

Use a program like convert and then remove any extra code it generated.

Answer 4

Is this a late answer! The problem with -dNOSAFER prevented me from using the other solutions, so I did the following:

Use Python to read the JPG file as binary and make it a string, compatible with /ASCIIHexDecode:

''.join(["%02x" % ord(c) for c in open(filename, "rb").read()])

Then instead of reading and decoding the image file from the postscript file, paste the above computed string in the postscript file, and filter it, first through /ASCIIHexDecode then /DCTDecode:

(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>)
  /ASCIIHexDecode
  filter             % ascii to bytes
  0 dict
  /DCTDecode         % jpg to explicit
  filter

the above snippet replaces (myJPEG500x133.jpg) (r) file /DCTDecode filter in the otherwise very helpful @Hath995 answer.

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if you want something else than JPEG but still RGB (i.e.: you want something for which postscript has no decoder), and you can use Python to prepare your postscript file, you can use PIL, like this (it ignores the transparency byte, which is a on/off operation in postscript):

import PIL.Image
i = PIL.Image.open("/tmp/from-template.png")
import itertools
''.join(["%02x" % g 
         for g in itertools.chain.from_iterable(
                    k[:3] for k in i.getdata())])

for indexed files I would not know, but it can't be difficult to work it out.