Blender as 2D, Convert 8bit to 16bit / FOSS Img Editor?

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

Can you import an image into Blender, convert it from 8 bit to 16 bit, and then output just the image?

Background:
I need to be able to manipulate 16 bit images, but it appears Gimp doesn’t handle 16 bit. And I feel dirty using Photoshop.
Can Blender import 16 bit images and convert to 8 bit?
Or is there an open source 2D app that could do this?

I admit I haven’t done a whole lot of searches on this. I’ve perused the forums here, but I may have missed it. If you could even point me in the right general direction, I would appreciate it.

Thank you in advance if you have a chance to respond.

2

Yes. You can open and save both bit depths in Blender. Krita also support 16bit. Gimp development version might have that too.

If you need mass convert, could try imagemagick.

3

Issue here would be color space handling and bit reduction. You may get unintended hue changes from first and banding from the second. Not entirely sure but using the compositor would be best, so that you can try to engineer work arounds to them.

4

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. I’ll give that another try. Haven’t used the compositor in blender much.

5

what exactly do you need to do ?
i use a lot of DEM’s in planetary work

for 16 bit( signed and unsigned ) and 32 bit float i use a custom built Q32 version of Imagemagick for working with images in Octave ( a opensource version of Matlab)
or
Libvips
and the GUI for it “Nip2”
or
Gmic — NOT!!! the 8 bit gimp plugin but the 8,16,32 bit terminal tool

http://gmic.eu/index.shtml
or
Cinepaint

I need to be able to manipulate 16 bit images,

Nip2 is one of my main always use tools
http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=VIPS

6

Thanks for all those links, JohnVV.
Yes, I am definitely trying to do more with DEM’s. But I am having a hard time finding good terrain maps/height maps online. I thought you could just get them through Google Earth but it seems not.

Another use is that I am working in Substance Designer, and I am outputting 16 bit images. I want to be able to manipulate them (mostly basic ops like sharpen/blur/some color manipulation, etc.) Being able to work in 32 bit would be even better!

I’m looking for a good GUI-based tool.

EDIT: Could you explain more about these tools? I tried Nip2 and Gmic, but they appear to be CLI-based. I would need something GUI-based.

The 32 bit Imagemagick w/ Octave sounds interesting, but Octave appears to be a language?

Thank you if you are able to respond.

7

Sorry for going a bit off topic here, but where do you get your Cinepaint? I haven’t been able to compile successfully on Ubuntu for around 2 years. Currently on 14.04.

8

No worries. Not really off topic, anyway :slight_smile:

The homepage is cinepaint.org, but most of the links are dead.
The rest of the site appears to be here: http://www.cinepaint.org/more/

Download:
Are you not able to get any of these downloads to work?

I do wish they had a Windows version.

9

To build Cinepaint requires a very special CUSTOM version of GTK1
one that GTK developers custom created JUST for cinepaint

i use rpm based distros and it is in the fedora ,rhel and suse repos

alien should have no issues
it looks like debian removed it after “etch” do to the custom gtk1 requirement

you might want to do a search on the Ubuntu forum

or an older build script

but enough of ubuntu ( i do not use it . I just use Debian8 in a KVM )

nip2 IS A GUI to the vips image lib
it is like a cross between a spreadsheet and imagemagick
( to quote the developers )
There is a bit of a learning curve to this program

and Gmic is a 8 bit gimp plugin
AND / OR!!!
a terminal based image lib/program like “Imagemagick”

Gmic builds just fine using gcc 4.8
and is fairly well documented ( the code is almost as well documented as the apache server code )

Nip not so well documented but has a wiki and a blog

unfortunately “shopping” 16 bit images on linux is still a bit difficult
some versions of the very cheep photoshop home use versions will run in wine
( ie. the ones that auto come with a scanner for MS windows)

but for working on a whole image there are a ton of tools

— i have used cinepaint for 10 years, it is what i am used to using so …

have a look at
https://krita.org/
https://krita.org/download/krita-desktop/
( not good on 32 bit float data yet )

and from this link
https://krita.org/item/goodbye-photoshop-and-hello-krita-at-university-paris-8/

there is also a NEW project just at 1.0
“natron”
it is a Adobe aftereffects replacement
https://natron.inria.fr/natron-1-0-0-stable-released/

10

natron mimics ‘Nuke’
you can use Blackmagic’s Fusion compositor (also a Free version, supports 32bit depth)

11

Oh, yeah, that’s right! I forgot about Fusion and Natron. Good call. I’ll try those.

12

The last time Cinepaint compiled and ran on Ubuntu this patch was required:- http://lglinux.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/compiling-cinepaint-on-ubuntu-maverick.html

All the other versions I tried either failed to build or failed to run correctly. I still have a version running on 14.04 after upgrading from 12.04. I could try to copy that over, but I’m not sure how to correctly find all the symlinks that may have been created.

Converting an .rpm might work out though…

13

Hi organic,

Would this be of help?

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-find-symlink/

I’ve had a lot of luck asking questions here, on Linux Questions.org. People have been pretty helpful.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/how-to-find-symlink-565475/

I love Linux, but it is frustrating when things like that happen, especially if it’s a cool program that would help displace one of the commercial apps that’s taken over it’s market.
HTH