Displaying 24-bit Images on PCs

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Folks,

I spoke a bit too soon the other day in a reply
to Liam about 24-bit color displays. As it happens,
that annoying little bug in which 24-bit images
are routed through the color tables if color
decomposition is OFF is still with us in IDL 5.2.1.

This means that to display a 24-bit image properly
on a PC you must either have the gray scale color
table loaded (colortable 0), or you must have
color decomposition ON (Device, Decomposed=1).

It is a gigantic inconvenience to have to check for 
this each and every time you display an image, but
short of using my TVIMAGE program (which *does*
check), that's about the size of it. Of course,
you only have to check on PCs, so that will cut
your checking at least in half, I guess. :-)

Anyway, I already have my IDL 5.3 beta bug report
filled out. I'm just waiting for the darn software
to arrive so I can send it in. :-(

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
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