[fitsbits] Re: fits to gif or png

[Tom Talbott]

mperrin+news at arkham.berkeley.edu (Marshall Perrin) wrote in message news:<9j2fqe$13c8$1 at agate.berkeley.edu>...
> dwalker <dwalker at terra.cl> wrote:
> > I need to transform a whole lot of 16bit FITS images to gif or png
> > format for display on a web server(2000 fits images a day) however
> > IRAF commands for export, netpbm in C and other such software change
> > the images to a greyscale gif that looks terrible. This has to be done
> > "autonomously" in a script or c program on LINUX, at the moment the
> > only way is by opening the files in Ximdisplay and saving the files
> > one by one , which come out great.
> > I have also investigated what seems to be Fits2gif.pro a script it
> > seems but I don't know how to implement it.
> 
> You may wish to look into the ImageMagick package. I use it for batch 
> conversion and resizing of JPGs with great success, and the documentation
> asserts that it can read FITS files. Worth experimenting with, in any case.
> It's also open source if you feel the need to hack on it to get things
> Just Right. :-)
> 

ImageMagick appears to have the same issue from what I can tell. 
Produces dim 256 color grey scale images with severe banding.  Anyone
find different or have a better solution?