Man1 - ppmpat.1

ppmpat - make a pretty PPM image

ppmpat {-gingham2*|-g2*} | {-gingham3*|-g3*} | -madras | -tartan | -poles | -squig | -camo | -anticamo [*-randomseed=*/integer/]

width height

You can abbreviate any option to its shortest unique prefix.

This program is part of *Netpbm*(1)

ppmpat produces a PPM of the specified width and height, with a pattern in it.

This program is mainly to demonstrate use of the ppmdraw routines, a simple but powerful drawing library. See the ppmdraw.h include file for more info on using these routines. Still, some of the patterns can be rather pretty. If you have a color workstation, something like ppmpat -squig 300 300 | pnmquant 128 should generate a nice background.

Some of these patterns have large numbers of colors, so if you want a simpler pattern, use pnmquant on the output.

The options specify various pattern types:

-gingham2

A gingham check pattern. Can be tiled.

-gingham3

A slightly more complicated gingham. Can be tiled.

-madras

A madras plaid. Can be tiled.

-tartan

A tartan plaid. Can be tiled.

-poles

Color gradients centered on randomly-placed poles.

-squig

Squiggley tubular pattern. Can be tiled.

-camo

Camouflage pattern.

-anticamo

Anti-camouflage pattern - like -camo, but ultra-bright colors.

*-randomseed=*/integer/

This is the seed for the random number generator that generates the pixels.

Use this to ensure you get the same image on separate invocations.

By default, ppmpat uses a seed derived from the time of day and process ID, which gives you fairly uncorrelated results in multiple invocations.

This option was new in Netpbm 10.61 (December 2012).

Some of the patterns are from ’Designer’s Guide to Color 3’ by Jeanne Allen.

*pnmtile*(1) , *pnmquant*(1) , *ppmmake*(1) , *ppmrainbow*(1) , *pamgradient*(1) , *ppm*(5)

Copyright (C) 1989 by Jef Poskanzer.