[techtalk] A Postscript question

[T. E. Pickering]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 03:02:20PM -0400, Fan, Laurel wrote:
> Amanda Owens, amowens at radonc.duke.edu, said:
> > I have a photo that started out as a jpg or gif or something, but has been
> > turned (via gimp or xv) into a .ps file. What my boss wants me to do is
> > now edit that postscript file, and insert some lines and text. Is it
> > possible? If so, how?
> 
> If I understand what you want to do, it's possible to do it with
> convert from imagemagick (http://www.imagemagick.org).  It basically
> lets you draw text or shapes on top of an image (and works with a
> few dozen image formats, including ps, so you could do it with the
> original photos).  I believe imagemagick also comes with c libraries
> and/or perl modules with similar functionality.
> 
> I'm sure it's also possible to edit the ps file, but I don't know how
> to do that.

imagemagick, gimp, and xv can all import .ps files as images, but the
catch is that they turn them into fixed resolution bitmaps.  the best
way to annotate .ps (.eps, actually, but that's what xv spits out so
you're cool) files is to use xfig.  it retains the full vector
information of the .ps file so you don't lose any resolution.  i use
it all the time to take .ps files of images and then add text and
arrows and stuff to label up the image.  it is, and has been for many
years, one of the very coolest unix programs around. 

tim

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Tim Pickering                 |     Kapteyn Institute, Postbus 800  |  
|  tim at astro.rug.nl              | 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands  |
|  http://www.astro.rug.nl/~tim/ |                    +31-50-363-6519  |
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