Re: "transition" blending adjacent blocks of gray

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 08:57:33AM -0400, John Culleton wrote:
> On Sunday 11 July 2010 19:52:20 Rob Owens wrote:
> > I'm new to the list and not an expert on image 
> terminology, so I
> > apologize if my post is confusing.
> >
> > How can I take a 100x100 light gray square, overlap it by 
> 20 pixels with
> > a 100x100 dark gray square, and have a smooth 
> transition between the two
> > shades of gray.  I don't want the 20x100 pixel transition to 
> be medium
> > gray, I want it to smoothly transistion from light to dark 
> gray.
> >
> > My ultimate goal:
> >
> > I'm trying to represent a matrix of numbers as an image.  
> The numbers
> > will be from 0 to 1, and each number will be represented 
> as a 100x100
> > square in a shade of gray.  The idea is that a person can 
> look at the
> > image and get an impression of the values in the matrix 
> by how light or
> > dark the image is.  I think hard transitions between 
> squares will be
> > distracting, so I'd like smooth transitions.
> >
> > Thanks for any advice you can give.
> >
> > -Rob
> 
> 
> For this kind of work I would use something like Gimp. 
> Blending one image or color into another is described in 
> books like "The Artist's Guide to Gimp Effects."  a command 
> line program like ImageMagick would be a bit clumsy for 
> this task since the user is essentially working blind. 
> 
> The user of Open Source software should have an array of 
> tools at hand, and not rely on one or two. I have on my 
> computer and use IM, Gimp, Scribus, TeX and GVim. I have 
> in reserve tools like Inkscape and Krita for tasks that may 
> come up in the future.  

Actually, I'm trying to work this into a script where the user would
only have to enter the matrix of numbers.  The script would then output
the image.  

This is a work-related project that is intended for use by project
managers.  The image is intended to be used in presentations, to make it
easier for management types to get a feel for project status w/o having
to digest a whole bunch of numerical analysis.

I know that it's possible to script the Gimp.  I'll research it a bit.
Do you think it's likely to be easier than scripting ImageMagick?

-Rob