GIG reference manual

Color Recovery

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Introduction

ColorRecovery is a combination of hard- and software tools that allows Hewlett-Packard workstations with 8 bit monitors to display images with (near) 24 bit image quality.

The necessary hardware is built-in with the graphics cards of the 8 bit HP workstations. By using a special kind of dithering algorithm, this hardware can make the dithered image look like a smooth 24 bit image, instead of the usual grainy dithered appearance.

Support of Color Recovery in 3DGO and GIGVIZ

Display of 24 bit images using ColorRecovery is supported by ELECTROGIG's showtiff and tifflip tools. Also the new Flipbook tool checks for ColorRecovery on 8 bit HP machines. It is not used for the display of the graphical user-interface, nor for the immediate display of the models (wireframe, flatshaded, raytraced or raysketched). To view an image with ColorRecovery, raytrace or raysketch the model, then view the image with get picture.

Obviously, ColorRecovery is not available on SGI and Sun workstations.