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| 4 | Introduction to the TIFF Documentation |
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| 11 | Introduction to the TIFF Documentation |
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| 13 | |
| 14 | |
| 15 | <P> |
| 16 | The following definitions are used throughout this documentation. |
| 17 | They are consistent with the terminology used in the TIFF 6.0 specification. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | <DL> |
| 20 | <DT><I>Sample</I> |
| 21 | <DD>The unit of information stored in an image; often called a |
| 22 | channel elsewhere. Sample values are numbers, usually unsigned |
| 23 | integers, but possibly in some other format if the SampleFormat |
| 24 | tag is specified in a TIFF |
| 25 | <DT><I>Pixel</I> |
| 26 | <DD>A collection of one or more samples that go together. |
| 27 | <DT><I>Row</I> |
| 28 | <DD>An Nx1 rectangular collection of pixels. |
| 29 | <DT><I>Tile</I> |
| 30 | <DD>An NxM rectangular organization of data (or pixels). |
| 31 | <DT><I>Strip</I> |
| 32 | <DD>A tile whose width is the full image width. |
| 33 | <DT><I>Compression</I> |
| 34 | <DD>A scheme by which pixel or sample data are stored in |
| 35 | an encoded form, specifically with the intent of reducing the |
| 36 | storage cost. |
| 37 | <DT><I>Codec</I> |
| 38 | <DD>Software that implements the decoding and encoding algorithms |
| 39 | of a compression scheme. |
| 40 | </UL> |
| 41 | |
| 42 | <P> |
| 43 | In order to better understand how TIFF works (and consequently this |
| 44 | software) it is important to recognize the distinction between the |
| 45 | physical organization of image data as it is stored in a TIFF and how |
| 46 | the data is interpreted and manipulated as pixels in an image. TIFF |
| 47 | supports a wide variety of storage and data compression schemes that |
| 48 | can be used to optimize retrieval time and/or minimize storage space. |
| 49 | These on-disk formats are independent of the image characteristics; it |
| 50 | is the responsibility of the TIFF reader to process the on-disk storage |
| 51 | into an in-memory format suitable for an application. Furthermore, it |
| 52 | is the responsibility of the application to properly interpret the |
| 53 | visual characteristics of the image data. TIFF defines a framework for |
| 54 | specifying the on-disk storage format and image characteristics with |
| 55 | few restrictions. This permits significant complexity that can be |
| 56 | daunting. Good applications that handle TIFF work by handling as wide |
| 57 | a range of storage formats as possible, while constraining the |
| 58 | acceptable image characteristics to those that make sense for the |
| 59 | application. |
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| 61 | |
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| 64 | |
| 65 | Last updated: $Date: 1999/08/09 20:21:21 $ |
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