Monkeybread Software - DynaPDF Manual

DynaPDF Manual - Page 79

Color spaces

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Once the color space was created it can be set with SetExtColorSpace(). Colors of a DeviceN color

space should be set with SetFillColorEx() or SetStrokeColorEx() because these functions accept up to

32 color channels.

A DeviceN color space can be applied to text, vector graphics and images with a color depth of 1, 2,

4, or 8 bits, and in addition to images with up to 32 color channels using 8 bits per component. See

Color Spaces and Images below and CreateDeviceNColorSpace().

Color Spaces and Images

All color spaces can be used with text, vector graphics, and images. While the usage with text and

vector graphics requires no further considerations the usage with images is more complicated.

Prior versions of DynaPDF supported device color spaces only and due to this limitation images

were always converted to the nearest device color space that was active when inserting an image.

This default conversion is not optimal if the original image is defined in a device independent color

space. However, in certain circumstances it's a nice to have feature, especially when creating PDF/X-

1a compatible PDF files (this standard prohibits the usage of device independent color spaces).

To preserve backward compatibility the following default rules apply depending on the active

device color space (the color conversion rules can be modified, see below):

Active color space

Description

DeviceGray

Images defined in another color space are converted to DeviceGray. 1 bit images

are always left unchanged.

DeviceRGB

Images defined in a color space with 3 or more color components are converted

to DeviceRGB. 1 channel images are converted to DeviceGray. 1 bit images are

left unchanged.

DeviceCMYK

Images defined in a 3 channel color space are converted to DeviceCMYK. This

conversion is applied to preserve backward compatibility. 1 channel images are

converted to DeviceGray. 1 bit images are left unchanged.

Handling of non-device color spaces

Non-device color spaces can be used to replace an image color space with the active color space. The

active color space and the image color space must be compatible. For example, a Lab color space

cannot be replaced with a CalRGB color space because this would require a physical conversion of

the pixel data. The source and destination color space must contain the same number of color

components. If the active color space is not compatible to the image color space DynaPDF reports an

error and the image is not inserted.

The following rules apply only if the flag gfUseImageColorSpace is not set (default). See

SetGStateFlags() for further information.