ppmcaption(1)

NAME
ppmcaption - add text captions to PPM, PGM, or PBM images

SYNOPSIS
ppmcaption [-font bdf-file] [-scale float] [-blur int] [-opacity float] [-fg color] [-bg color] [-pos x y] [-left] [-right] [-center] [-text string]

DESCRIPTION
The ppmcaption program adds text to a PPM, PGM, or PBM image. Multiple blocks of text can be placed on the image, with varying fonts, font sizes, colors, and transparency.

OPTIONS
ppmcaption accepts the following options:

-font filename
    Specifies a BDF font file to load. If a default font was built in to the program at compile-time, the default is to use that. Otherwise this must be the name of a file in Adobe Binary Distribution Format that specifies a bitmap font, and it must be specified before the first -text argument. If there is a builtin font, you can reload it with -font builtin.

-scale float
    Scale the currently-selected font up or down by the given ratio, e.g., 0.5 divides the font size in half. When scaling down, the font will be nicely anti-aliased onto the background image. However, when scaling up (> 1.0), the font will get pixellated. Note that -scale operations are cumulative: for cleanest results, it's best to reload the font (with -font) before re-scaling.

-blur integer
    Add an N pixel halo around the currently selected font, so that it is visible on both light and dark backgrounds. The font will be in the current foreground color, and the halo in the background color. It tends to look better to scale then blur, rather than the other way around.

    Like -scale, -blur operations are cumulative. Note that large blur values are pretty slow.

-opacity float
    How transparent to draw the next block of text. 0.0 means invisible, 1.0 means solid.

-fg color
    Foreground color of next block of text. Default is black.

-bg color
    Background color (color of blur halo). Default is white. A small number of color names are supported ("black", "white", etc.) or hexadecimal triplets of the form "#RRGGBB" may be used.

-pos X Y
    Where to position the next block of text. Positive numbers are measured from the upper left of the image; Negative numbers are measured from the bottom right of the image. So "-10" means near the right (or bottom) edge, regardless of the image size.

-left
    The next block of text will be flush-left, that is, have its left edge at the current position (this is the default.)

-right
    The next block of text will be flush-right, that is, have its right edge at the current position.

-center
    The next block of text will be centered on top of the current position. Note that this only applies to the X position, not Y: multi-line text is also centered on X, but grows down.

-text string
    Place the given text in the image at the current position and in the current font. Newlines are allowed; tabs are not handled. If the text contains percent (%) characters, they are interpreted as for strftime(3), so you can easily put timestamps into images.

-time time_t
    This sets the time which will be formatted by percent directives in the -text arguments. It defaults to the current time, but you can make it be the write-date of the input file by saying -time file, or can set it to a specific time by specifying a number of seconds after the Epoch (Jan 1, 1970.)

SEE ALSO
ppm(5) strftime(3)

UPDATES
See http://www.jwz.org/ppmcaption/ for updates. You can find some common fonts in BDF form here: http://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.4/xc/fonts/bdf/100dpi/

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2001 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

AUTHOR
Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 22-May-2001