pfsinrgbe(1)

💖 pfsinrgbe 💖

okay bestie so this is pfsinrgbe(1) — straight outta the General Commands Manual, and it's lowkey the gateway drug for getting Radiance RGBE images into pfstools. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

pfsinrgbe — load images or frames in Radiance RGBE format. that's it, that's the job 💅

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

pfsinrgbe [--linear] (<file> [--frames <range>] [--skip-missing])
[<file>...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so pfsinrgbe loads images in Radiance RGBE format and writes a pfs stream to the Standard Output. the pfs stream usually gets piped into another program for further processing — classic pipeline main character energy ✨. if you want the format detected automatically based on the extension, use pfsin instead, iykyk.

since RGBE is an HDR format, the 'LUMINANCE' tag is set to 'RELATIVE' (that's relative linear luminance values, no cap).

to read images from standard input, use a single dash - instead of a filename. the images are read until EOF is reached. 🙈

each file can contain a %d pattern, which gets substituted with frame numbers. the pattern has the same syntax as the C printf command. for example, you can use %04d to make the frame number four digits with leading zeros (yes the original says "proceedings zeros", we love a typo that ate 🍓). you can select the frames using the following options — and the options must always be given after the file name:

--frames <range>

the range is given in mathlab / octave format:

startframe:step:endframe

frame numbers start with startframe (default 0), are increased by step (default 1), and stop at endframe. you can skip one of those values, for example 1:100 for frames 1,2,...,100 and 0:2: for frames 0,2,4,... up to the last file that exists. iconic behavior honestly 🌸

--skip-missing

skip up to ten frames in a row if the corresponding files are missing. otherwise the program stops reading the sequence at the first file that does not exist. this switch does not apply to the first frame in a sequence. this switch can be useful if there's a rendered animation where some of the frames have not been generated. very forgiving of you 💜

--linear

ignored — it's just there for compatibility with pfsinppm. it's giving "i'm here but i'm not doing anything" 💀

--radiance, -r

correct the stored values so that the luminance is reported the same in pfsview and radiance tools (xview or Photospheare). see IMPORTANT NOTE below. ⚠️

--quiet, -q

disable the warning message about the change in handling absolute values in RGBE files. see IMPORTANT NOTE below.

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

pfsinrgbe intro%d.hdr frame%d.hdr | ...

concatenate two animations into one and pass it to the pipe for further processing. chef's kiss 🔥

👑 IMPORTANT NOTE 👑

there is an incompatibility between viewers of RGBE format in terms of absolute luminance values. the ximage viewer from the Radiance package expects radiance values in RGBE files and multiplies the resulting luminance by the WHITE_EFFICACY constant equal to 179.0f to convert from radiance to luminance. 💅

to remain compatible with Radiance (xview and Photospheare), pfstools prior to 1.9.0 divided red, green and blue values by 179 on writing and multiplied by that constant on reading RGBE files. this in turn caused incompatibility with other software, such as Photoshop or HDR toolbox. starting from pfstools 1.9.0, this division / multiplication step was removed to make pfstools compatible in terms of absolute values with the majority of the software.

the downside is that this change made luminance units) with the pfstools 1.9.0 or later. — bestie that sentence is literally cut off mid-thought in the original and i am NOT fixing it, i'm just reporting it exactly as it is 😭

to avoid any mistakes because of that change, a long warning message is shown each time pfsinrgbe or pfsoutrgbe is called. the message can be suppressed with the --quiet option. 🫶

to enable the old functionality and read or write RGBE files with the correction for WHITE_EFFICACY, add the --radiance option to the command line.

💀 BUGS 💀

please report bugs and comments on implementation to the discussion group http://groups.google.com/group/pfstools — they wanna hear from you fr fr 🙏

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• pfsin(1)
• pfsout(1)

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this little cutie lives in the General Commands Manual, and its official signature is pfsinrgbe(1) — that's the footer, that's the vibe, that's the whole thing. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶