User M an ual for K akadu’s “kdu_sho w” Tool
(last updated for v ersion v 4.5)
David Taubman , UNSW
March 30, 2005
1 Basic Operations
1.1 Opening and Clos ing Files
TheFilemenumaybeusedtoopenandclosefiles. Alternatively, you may
find the “o” accelerator key useful for opening files quickly. Opening a new file
automatically closes any existing open file. You can supply the name of a file
to “kdu-show” on the command line, in which case that file will be opened on
start up and its dimensions will guide the initial size of the view window.
The “kdu-show” tool can open JP2 files, JPX files, un wrapped JPEG2000
codestreams and even Motion JPEG2000 (MJ2) video files.
1.2 P anning, Zoom and Re-orien ting
The “kdu-show” tool started out as a sophisticated demonstration application to
showcase some of Kakadu’s capabilities for incremental decompression of large
images, based on spatial regions of interest (view ports), as well as Kakadu’s
ability to decompress images in a geometrically transformed domain. In fact,
Kakadu’s codestream management architecture has always allowed compressed
JPEG2000 images to be accessed as though they had been compressed as smaller
image, rotated and/or cropped versions of themselves. As a result, the core
“kdu-show” features have always been those of panning, zooming, rotating and
flippingaviewportintothecompressedimage.
Panning ma y be accomplished via the scroll-bars, or using the arrow keys.
The PageUP and PageDown keys may also be used for panning. The image may
also be dragged around with the mouse while the left mouse button is depressed
and the shift key held down.
Zooming may be accomplished via the View menu, toolbar buttons, or with
the “z” (zoom in) and “ctrl-z” (zoom out) accelerators. By default, zooming is
cen tred about the middle of the current viewport, but you may define an alter-
nate focus box using the method described belo w. Zooming out is accomplished
using the multi-resolution attributes of the discrete wav elet transform (DWT).
As such, the degree to which you can zoom out is limited by the number of
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