PNG Read strangeness

[Neil Pate]

Hi All,

 

I am getting some strange behaviour when using LV to read a PNG file.

 

For reasons I cannot explain I get coloured pixels where I do not expect them. The attachment shows what I expect versus what LV is giving me. I have tried playing around with the transparency threshold input as a last resort but this does not seem to have too much effect.

 

Any ideas? Any other tricks for reading a PNG file?

 

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Neil Pate

[weigsi]

Hi Neil,

 

have you already checked the resolution of the "original" png file vs. the imaq ones? For me looks like a scaling operation has occured?

 

Cheers Chris

[hooovahh]

I think I know this one but I could be wrong.  LabVIEW can't handle alpha layer information, so I suspect those pixels are something like 1% opacity which doesn't show up in a viewer as easily.

 

I've seen this where I had a pixel that was black but at a low opacity.  When you use the native LabVIEW read it just bumps that up to 100% and then there are black pixels when there wasn't before.  I remember seeing some code a while ago that would actually set a threshold and set the pixels to the background color if they were below this level.  I just tested this on some PNGs with alpha layers and I didn't quite get the output I expected so maybe this isn't your issue.

 

Still you might want to load up the PNG in an image control that does support alpha layers better.  Here is some code I did a while ago to demonstrate alpha layers, and native zooming using the picture box.

 

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/NET-picturebox-convert-to-LabView-image/m-p/3125944#M897890

 

Is it possible to post the PNG image by the way?

[Neil Pate]

Chris, both images are the same size, the picture from the left is from paint .net, the one on the right are just the pixels represented by colourboxes.

 

hooovahh, I think you are right. I actually found code on my PC very similar to what you linked to, and I tried this and it works perfectly.

 

By the way, I also give credit and thanks to the author of the VI I found on my PC that I downloaded from lavag some time ago, it is called GDI Resize.vi

 

So my conclusion is that something strange is happening in the PNG Read VI. I think I have peeked into it before and it is just a LabVIEW.exe function call wrapped?

[Neil Pate]

Here is the PNG

[hooovahh]

Yeah much of what I learned about .Net picture boxes, image resizing, z-layering, and transparencies in LabVIEW, stems from that one GDI Resize VI that I think started from here.

 

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Net-image-resize-how-to-convert-to-format-labview-can-use/m-p/2199022#M704093

 

That spiked my curiosity and I've written several image library tools since then, which have been used in a few tools like my ribbon interface, that I never completed.

 

Say one other thing I didn't think about, is that there is a vi.lib tool for turning a PNG stream of data, into LabVIEW data.  I think it is just a DLL call in the background but it might load the PNG in a slightly different way.  It is found at this path.

 

<vi.lib>\wsapi\VIs\PNG Data to LV Image.vi"

[Neil Pate]

Yeah much of what I learned about .Net picture boxes, image resizing, z-layering, and transparencies in LabVIEW, stems from that one GDI Resize VI that I think started from here.

 

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Net-image-resize-how-to-convert-to-format-labview-can-use/m-p/2199022#M704093

 

That spiked my curiosity and I've written several image library tools since then, which have been used in a few tools like my ribbon interface, that I never completed.

 

Say one other thing I didn't think about, is that there is a vi.lib tool for turning a PNG stream of data, into LabVIEW data.  I think it is just a DLL call in the background but it might load the PNG in a slightly different way.  It is found at this path.

 

<vi.lib>\wsapi\VIs\PNG Data to LV Image.vi"

 

Ah yes, that is the same VI "GDI Resize" I am using now (Thanks Darin.K). Internally that VI does use the PNG Data to Lv Image.

 

That solution works perfectly, I get a pixel perfect representation of my PNG file.