csci5607/assignment-0/ASSIGNMENT.md

Assignment 0: Working with ASCII images

In this assignment, you are asked to write a program that creates an image in ASCII PPM format.

Your program should accept, as a command line argument, the name of a file containing an "image description" (consisting of one line of text specifying the image height and image width, optionally followed other lines of text specifying any additional parameters your program might use), and it should generate a valid ASCII PPM file as output. The name of the output file should end with the suffix .ppm. Your program should be capable of accepting different input files and producing different output files without needing to be recompiled.

You are free to use whatever means you like to define the contents of the output image. If you have time and are so inclined, you can earn extra credit by doing something creative. Possibilities include: hardcoding an interesting pattern, generating a procedural texture, generating an image of the Mandelbrot set, or reading an image from a file and applying an interesting filter or function such as line integral convolution. Whatever approach you choose, the code you turn in must be your own.

Detailed instructions

1. Please use the following syntax to define the image size in your input file:

   imsize   width  height
   

   where imsize is a keyword and width and height are integers.

2. Please use the following syntax to define your output image:

   P3
   
   # any comments you want to include
   
   width height
   
   255
   
   r(0,0) g(0,0) b(0,0) r(1,0) g(1,0) b(1,0) r(2,0) g(2,0) b(2,0) ...
   

Please note that in an ASCII PPM file, each pixel color is defined as an (r, g, b) triple, and the provided values are used to fill the image in row major order. Specifically, the first three entries represent the red, green and blue components of the color of the upper leftmost pixel in the image, the second three entries represent the color of the adjacent pixel to the right, and so on.

Your program will need to specify exactly one color triple for each pixel in your image. Try to keep the line length under 80 characters, or approximately 4-5 pixels per line. It’s also okay to put each color component on its own line too. Do not insert any other characters such as commas, etc. between any of the color values.

You can use the free program GIMP to view your image, to verify that it looks the way you intend it to. GIMP is a general-purpose image editing tool that can also be used to convert images from multiple other formats into ASCII PPM format (and vice versa).

What you should turn in

• a readme file that describes your what your program does
• all of your source code, clearly commented
• at least one ascii PPM image created by your program

We will plan to share the PPM images in class. If you would prefer that we not show your image, please let us know.

We will use this rubric: grading-criteria-0.pdf when grading your program. You are advised to check the rubric before beginning the assignment to fully understand how credit will be awarded.