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I want to print an 8bit sRGB PNG image on an Epson TM-T88v receipt printer. The printer needs a 4bit grayscale PNG file to print it correctly.

As I'm using PHP with ImageMagick, I'm not sure which commands are needed to convert the image.

If I use ImageMagick's "identify" and "convert" on the linux console on the 8bit input image I get following output:

test.png PNG 128x128 128x128+0+0 8-bit sRGB 1.78KB 0.000u 0:00.000

I've tried... 

convert test.png -depth 4 -colorspace gray test-4bit.png

which gives me still an 8bit image instead of 4bit

test-4bit.png PNG 128x128 128x128+0+0 8-bit sRGB 2.58KB 0.000u 0:00.000

Any suggestions?

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  • I tried magick source.png -colorspace gray -depth 4 destination.png using ImageMagick 7.0.7-28 Q16 x64 2018-03-25 and it seems to work.
    – Endy Tjahjono
    Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 4:23

1 Answer 1

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No idea why but identify seems to always assume sRGB. Your image should actually be grayscale. If you use the -verbose option it will report the correct color space.

For the bit-depth you need to explicitly set the color-type and bit-depth for the PNG encoder by using -define.

This should work:

convert test.png -depth 4 -colorspace gray -define png:color-type=0 -define png:bit-depth=4 test-4bit-gray.png
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  • Seems to work, thank you! One question: identify -verbose tells me "color: 12".... shouldn't a 4bit per pixel image have 4² = 16 colors?
    – Toni
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 14:01
  • @ninsky no idea sorry.. my limited tests now give me colors: 16
    – Cai
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 14:03
  • Just converted another image: "colors" means "used colors" in context of the identified image (not "maximum color space")... so it's ok
    – Toni
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 14:10

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