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 H5TOPNG(1)                        h5utils                        H5TOPNG(1)
 h5utils                                                             h5utils

                                March 9, 2002



 NAME
      h5topng - generate PNG images from 2d slices of HDF5 files

 SYNOPSIS
      h5topng [OPTION]... [HDF5FILE]...

 DESCRIPTION
      h5topng is a utility to generate images in PNG (Portable Network
      Graphics) format from two-dimensional slices of datasets in HDF5
      files.  It is designed for quick-and-dirty visualization of scientific
      data, and for batch processing thereof via shell scripts.

      HDF5 is a free, portable binary format and supporting library
      developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at
      the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  A single h5 file can
      contain multiple data sets; by default, h5topng takes the first
      dataset, but this can be changed via the -d option, or by using the
      syntax HDF5FILE:DATASET.

      For a three-dimensional data set, the xy slice at z index zero is
      extracted by default, but other slices can be extracted using the -xyz
      options.  Yet more options control things like the colormap and
      magnification.  Still, the most basic usage is something like 'h5topng
      foo.h5', which will output a file foo.png containing an image from the
      data in foo.h5.

 OPTIONS
      -h   Display help on the command-line options and usage.

      -V   Print the version number and copyright info for h5topng.

      -v   Verbose output.  This output includes the minimum and maximum
           values encountered in the data, which is useful to know for the
           -mM options.

      -o file
           Send PNG output to file rather than to the filename with .h5
           replaced with .png (the default).

      -x ix, -y iy, -z iz
           This tells h5topng to use a particular slice of a two- or three-
           dimensional dataset.  e.g.  -x causes a yz plane to be used at an
           x index of ix (where the indices run from zero to one less than
           the maximum index in that direction).  The default behaviour is
           equivalent to -z 0.  See also the -0 option to shift the origin
           of the slice coordinates to the dataset center.

      -0   Shift the origin of the slice coordinates to the dataset center,
           so that e.g. -0 -x 0 (or more compactly -0x0) returns the central



                                    - 1 -         Formatted:  April 19, 2024






 H5TOPNG(1)                        h5utils                        H5TOPNG(1)
 h5utils                                                             h5utils

                                March 9, 2002



           x plane of the dataset instead of the edge x plane.

      -X scalex, -Y scaley, -S scale
           Scale the x and y dimensions by scalex and scaley respectively.
           The -S option scales both x and y.  The default is to use scale
           factors of 1.0; i.e. the image has the same dimensions (in
           pixels) as the data.  Linear interpolation is used to fill in the
           pixels when the scale factors are not 1.0.

      -s skewangle
           Skew the image by skewangle (in degrees) to the left or right.
           The result is a parallelogram, with the leftover space in the
           (square) image filled with either black or white pixels,
           depending upon the color map.

      -T   Transpose the data (interchange the image axes).  By default, no
           transposition is done.

      -c colormap
           Use a color map colormap rather than the default gray color map
           (a grayscale ramp from white to black).  colormap is normally the
           name of one of the color maps provided with h5topng (in the
           /opt/h5utils/share/h5utils/colormaps directory), or can instead
           be the name of a color-map file.

           Three useful included color maps are hot (black-red-yellow-white,
           useful for intensity data), bluered (blue-white-red, useful for
           signed data), and hsv (a multi-color "rainbow").  If you use the
           bluered color map for signed data, you may also want to use the
           -Z option so that the center of the color scale (white)
           corresponds to zero.

           A color-map file is a sequence of whitespace-separated R G B A
           quadruples, where each value is in the range 0.0 to 1.0 and
           indicates the fraction of red/green/blue/alpha.  (An alpha of 0
           is transparent and of 1 is opaque.)  The colors in the color map
           are linearly interpolated as necessary to provide an 8-bit color
           palette.

      -r   Reverse the ordering of the color map.

      -Z   Center the color scale on the value zero in the data.

      -m min, -M max
           Normally, the bottom and top of the color map correspond to the
           minimum and maximum values in the data.  Using these options, you
           can make the bottom and top of the color map correspond to min
           and max instead.  Data values below or above this range will be
           treated as if they were min or max respectively.  See also the -Z



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 H5TOPNG(1)                        h5utils                        H5TOPNG(1)
 h5utils                                                             h5utils

                                March 9, 2002



           and -R options.

      -R   When multiple files are specified, set the bottom and top of the
           color maps according to the minimum and maximum over all the
           data.  This is useful to process many files using a consistent
           color scale, since otherwise the scale is set for each file
           individually.

      -C file, -b val
           Superimpose contour outlines from the first dataset in the file
           HDF5 file, which should have the same dimensions as the input
           dataset, on all of the output images.  You can use the syntax
           file:dataset to specify a particular dataset within the file.
           The contour outlines are around a value of val (defaults to
           middle of value range in file).

      -d name
           Use dataset name from the input files; otherwise, the first
           dataset from each file is used.  Alternatively, use the syntax
           HDF5FILE:DATASET, which allows you to specify a different dataset
           for each file.  You can use the h5ls command (included with hdf5)
           to find the names of datasets within a file.

 BUGS
      Send bug reports to S. G. Johnson, stevenj@alum.mit.edu.

 AUTHORS
      Written by Steven G. Johnson.  Copyright (c) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by
      the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.























                                    - 3 -         Formatted:  April 19, 2024