Legacy ImageMagick Discussions Archive

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Running on WSL (Bash on Windows)
I'm using convert like this:

convert pic1.jpg -filter Box -resize 120x160 -define jpeg:q-table=/path/to/xml out.jpg

but the custom quantization table is not being used (and it seems like a different table is used *not* the default one).

I've tracked down the problem:

-define jpeg-qtable uses the standard jpeg library's jpeg_add_quant_table() function which scales the provided quantization table by the jpeg quality using the function: q value = round(provided_table_value * scale / 100).

There is no provision to define a verbatim quantization table.

The solution is to use the ImageMagick flag -quality 50. The jpeg library converts this to a value of 100 via the function jpeg_quality_scaling(). This value of 100 will be passed to jpeg_add_quant_table(), negating the effect of the scaling (see the scaling function I posted earlier). I have not yet tested this, but it should work in theory.

IMHO this should be mentioned in the documentation. The expectation when providing a quantization table is that it will be used verbatim.