1. Short DESCRIPTION. BMF program is lossless/near-lossless image compression utility.

It supports true colour, high colour, greyscale and paletted images compression. Compressed images are stored in own BMF file format which is naturally incompatible with any other image file format. BMF program is "image compressor", but not "archiver", so it warrants (in lossless mode) bit-by-bit equality of incoming and decompressed images, but not bit-by-bit equality of incoming and decompressed files. In other words, BMF file format is image format, like to GIF(sm), PNG or TIFF, but not archiver format like to ZIP, RAR etc. You can expect 10-50% storage saving, when You converts GIF or PNG files to BMF files. 2. Distribution CONTENTS. read_me.txt - this file; bmf_vers.txt - description of differences between versions; TestFile.bmf - test image; BMFViewW.exe - simple BMF file viewer; BMF.ini - example of configuration file; BMF.exe - main program converts TGA, BMP, RAS, GIF, PNM and RAW image files to BMF files and BMF files to TGA, BMP, PNM or RAW image files; 3. Usage NOTES. 1. Program uses SSE floating point, so it will not run on older processors; 2. Wildcards are allowed. 3. BMF file format supports many images in one file. 4. Raw images are interpreted in next manner: 8bpp - greyscale image, 16bpp - highcolor one, 24bpp - BGR one, 32bpp - BGRA one. 5. Some programs does not understand 1-, 2-, 4-bit TGA images, so these images stored the same as 8-bit images; 6. Command line for tightest compression: BMF -q9 [-s] *.bmp 7. Command line for fastest decompression: BMF -n -tga *.bmf 8. Command line for fastest compression of line-drawings and paletted images: BMF -f- [-s] *.bmp 9. Effects of -qX option. Test image set: 169 truecolour images with total size ~410MB. Fast mode Slow mode -qX Total ETime DTime Total ETime DTime 0 152509000 68.88 36.20 129378440 1341.95 1169.31 1 152287312 77.88 36.19 128402996 1441.75 1128.61 2 151501276 88.65 36.16 128372980 1568.45 1122.18 3 151231752 103.04 36.20 128342492 1725.61 1110.15 4 151183112 119.90 36.31 128176268 1976.89 1144.64 5 151074616 140.33 36.25 128171224 2188.74 1142.28 6 151016228 162.20 36.19 128171876 2409.47 1142.18 7 151255528 187.40 35.92 128030284 2606.61 1139.32 8 150255484 252.16 35.48 128027596 2791.26 1141.79 9 150225436 369.26 35.32 127962968 3612.20 1141.07 10. Image filters selection is time consuming operation, so, if You have large sequence of similar images, You can store filters configuration for first image with '-t1' option and use stored value for compression of following images with '-t2' option. All not-retouched greyscale photographic images are always compressed with the same filter. Demonstation of compression speedup with '-t' option for test image set (UCID v.2.0) consisting of 1338 truecolour photographic images with total size ~789MB, filters were selected for first image (ucid00001.bmp):

BMF BMF BMF BMF BMF BMF BMF BMF

-t0 -t2 -t0 -t2 -t0 -t2 -t0 -t2

*.bmp *.bmp -q9 *.bmp -q9 *.bmp -s *.bmp -s *.bmp -s -q9 *.bmp -s -q9 *.bmp

394264748 394182996 393428724 394041688 358264156 358248708 358235272 358248636

bytes, bytes, bytes, bytes, bytes, bytes, bytes, bytes,

215.69 144.40 717.37 209.10 5504.50 4217.19 9655.20 4416.02

sec. sec. sec. sec. sec. sec. sec. sec.

11. Near-lossless compression is more accurate and controllable against JPEG-like technique, every colour sample of decompressed image is guaranted to differ from corresponding sample of original image by up to user-defined error. Error values <= 3 provide visually lossless compression for the most of images. It is not recommended to use errors larger than 5, there exists better methods for such big errors. Paletted and high colour images can be compressed losslessly only, You can use near-lossless mode in conjuction with arhiving mode(/ra) at your own risk. 12. BMFViewW program treats 16-bit highcolor images as 15-bit ones (is it common practice?). 13. Windows Explorer configuration for BMFViewW: Run Explorer.exe Goto View->Options->File Types Make a new type, called "BMF Image" Set its MIME type to "image/bmf" Set the default extension to ".bmf" Set the "&Open" command to: ProgramPath\BMFViewW.exe O Set the "&Clip" command to: ProgramPath\BMFViewW.exe C Set the "&Extract to..." command to: ProgramPath\BMFViewW.exe E Leave DDE checkbox unchecked Close all dialogs and double-click on TestFile.bmf, test image(diagram) must be showed 4. As any program, this one has LIMITATIONS. GIF & TGA file format extensions are skipped during processing; TGA file format implementation supports 24-bit palettes only; BMP file format implementation corresponds Windows 3.0 BMP file format specification; BMP file palette alpha-channel(rgbReserved field) is skipped during processing; RAS file format implementation supports 0, 1, 2, 3 image types only and it does not supports RMT_RAW MapType; PNM files with comments disturb standard specification for PNM format and such files are not supported; Memory requirements for current implementation are 2*ImageSize + 3*ColourPlaneSize for compression, and ImageSize + CompressedImageSize + ColourPlaneSize for decompression; 5. When to MAIL. If You found bugs (they exists, no doubt), send me mail! In general, all remarks and suggestions are welcome. AUTHOR SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THIS SOFTWARE. YOU USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK. PERMISSION IS GRANTED FOR PERSONAL USE AND RESEARCH OR COMPARATIVE PURPOSES ONLY, NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE. YOU CAN REDISTRIBUTE THIS PACKAGE TO OTHER PERSONS FREELY (IN TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT) WITHOUT ANY CHANGES OR ADDITIONS. Dancy compression!

Dmitry Shkarin E-mail: dmitry.shkarin@mtu-net.ru