Subject: FITS -> GIF or something converter?

From: pwb at newt.phys.unsw.OZ.AU (Paul W. Brooks)
Date: 25 Jul 91 08:08:54 GMT

I have a number of images from our telescope here at Siding Spring, all
in FITS format (or I wouldn't be posting here!). We also have a meeting
with the ARC (Australian Research Committee - the nasties who determine
if we can have some research money next year) coming up very soon. AT
the moment we have no way to generate colour hardcopy of our images
other than setting up a tripod and photographing the screen. There are a
few commercial graphics houses that can generate slides and Colour
Postscript pages, but they can't read FITS images directly. SO...
	Does anybody have or know where I might get something to convert
FITS images into something that such a company might understand, such as
GIF, PIXX, or other format such as Harvard Graphics format or something?
	Hoping you can help me...

Paul Brooks        |Internet: pwb at newt.phys.unsw.edu.au
Uni. of N.S.W.     |If you have trouble sleeping, try lying on the end of
Kensington NSW 2033|   your bed. With a little luck you'll drop off. 
AUSTRALIA          |                              - Mark Twain.

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From: bglenden at colobus.cv.nrao.edu (Brian Glendenning)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1991 15:36:24 GMT

The Portable Bitmap routines (pbm) purports to be able to convert from
FITS to GIF (among others). Look for pbmplus.tar on a source archive
near you. On uunet, it is under X/contrib.

I haven't used it, so I don't know how good a job it does.

Brian
--
       Brian Glendenning - National Radio Astronomy Observatory
bglenden at nrao.edu          bglenden at nrao.bitnet          (804) 296-0286

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From: bglenden at colobus.cv.nrao.edu (Brian Glendenning)
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1991 08:12:19 GMT

In article <TED.91Jul25190538 at phacelia.spa.umn.edu> ted at aps1.spa.umn.edu (Ted Stockwell) writes:

   In article <BGLENDEN.91Jul25103624 at colobus.cv.nrao.edu> bglenden at colobus.cv.nrao.edu (Brian Glendenning) writes:

   >  The Portable Bitmap routines [...]
   [...]
   The fitstoppm program will only work on a small  variety of
   fits formats. [...]

I tried it on some fits files emitted by AIPS today and discovered
that it can't handle:

1) IEEE format FITS files (BITPIX=-32) or
2) n>3 dimensional files, even if some of the dimensions are
degenerate (=1).

1) is solved (for AIPS) by just writing the file in another format
(obviously this doesn't help much if you only have an IEEE FITS file
and no way to transform it).

2) is solved by just using your favourite binary editor (emacs is fine
for files <8M) to change NAXIS to 2.

The real solution, of course, would be to fix the code. It even looks
like it would be easy...

Brian