Is it possible to load .png files into DigitalMicrograph directly

Has anyone been successful in loading .png files directly into DM? I used the menu item 'Import Data..." and know the image size in pixels and tried all combinations but did not succeed. Any pointer will be very welcome.

PNG is not a supported file format by GMS and hence no script
command exists to read it neither.

A direct raw binary import will fail because of the Format specifications of PNG. It is not just a binary representation of a value array but encoded in a more complex manner.

However, the PNG file format is officially documented and one could in principle write an import class in the DM Scripting language, utilizing the raw-file reading in the Stream object and interpreting the values as per the file format definitions.

An alternative approach would be to rely on Python functionality and a suitable library, and then call the Python script within GMS either as a stand-along Python script or as a Python-call within a DM-script.

For completeness sake it should be mentioned that GMS supports GIF, JPG and BMP formats, and that either of them can be directly read by DM script as well:

NewImageDocumentFromFile("C:/temp/sample.bmp").ImageDocumentShow()
NewImageDocumentFromFile("C:/temp/sample.gif").ImageDocumentShow()
NewImageDocumentFromFile("C:/temp/sample.jpg").ImageDocumentShow()

Here is a description for the Python workaround, importing a grey value PNG.
(Color PNGs would need a bit of adaptation.)

STEP 1 - Prepare Python

I am assuming that Phyton for GMS has been installed by the installer with default settings.
In order to import PNG images into Python, an appropriate library is needed. I'm using Pillow

To install the Python library to be used in GMS, please follow the instructions found in detail in the F1 help documentation:

• Open Anaconda prompt with administrative privileges
• Switch to the GMS_VENV_PYTHON virtual environment using <br>activate GMS_VENV_PYTHON
• Install Pillow using<br>pip install Pillow

STEP 2 - Import via Python

After launching GMS, the following Python script should work, provided there is a grey-scale PNG image at given location:

import numpy
from PIL import Image
img = Image.open('C:/temp/sample2.png')
DM.CreateImage(numpy.array(img).copy()).ShowImage()

STEP 3 - Import via DM-Script with Python call

Provided the above works, one can also use a DM-Script that calls Python code to import the PNG image:

void ReadGreyPNG(string path)
{
	string PythonHelp
	PythonHelp += "import numpy"+"\n"
	PythonHelp += "from PIL import Image"+"\n"
	PythonHelp += "img = Image.open('"
	pythonHelp += path
	PythonHelp += "')"+"\n"
	PythonHelp += "DM.CreateImage(numpy.array(img).copy()).ShowImage()"
	ExecutePythonScriptString(PythonHelp)	
}
ReadGreyPNG("C:/temp/sample2.png")