The image command replaces part of the original image with the image given as an argument. Since the image given as an argument has only a single channel, the part replaced in the original image is only replaced on one channel as well (in this case the luminance channel).
Here, you copy a smaller image into a larger image. But the smaller dimension is not in width or height (which are identical), but in number of channels. But the idea is the same: you copy a table of values into a larger table of values.
The call to j[0] [1] is actually equivalent to j[0] [1],0,0,0,0 (as the default values for the other arguments are 0). If you want to copy your single-channel image in the a channel for instance, rather than on the L channel, then you would have to write j[0] [1],0,0,0,1.
That’s the value defined in [sprite_mask] for which the opacity of the drawing will be 100%. Usually, its value is chosen to be 1 (default) or 255 (when dealing with alpha channels from RGBA images for instance).
Ah, so the ‘c’ in the ref doc stands for the channel to replace in the copy-to or target image.
So I can assume that the x,y,z,c parms all apply to the target image.
Therefore j[0] [1],100,150,0,0 means to copy from image ‘1’ to image ‘0’ but use as the upper left hand corner for image ‘0’ the x,y position 100,150. Is this a correct read on my part?
In this situation I understand the channel aspect: the source has only a single channel so will target a specific channel in the destination. From this I take it that the ‘c’ operation only works with a grayscale image as input, yes?
I am actually referring to opacity in general as it is typically [0,1] in G’MIC lingo but [0,255] in GUI-oriented apps like GIMP and Krita, which causes some confusion. A max parameter might help (or make things even more confusing ).
When the opacity argument is just a scalar, I think it’s better to have a fixed range for the opacity ([0,1] is good enough). In the case of an opacity mask, it would be not convenient nor efficient to be forced to renormalize it before being used, that’s why there is this extra argument for command image.
Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of a 2 channel image. But lets say I have a 3 channel image and I want to copy channel 3 from the source to channel 2 in the target. The image statement seems to lack the flexibility to do that since you only get to specify a single value for channel and that value is for the target channel - but there is no parm to specify the source image channel.
My guess is that I’d have to take the source, split the channels out and then do an individual image statement for each channel to be drawn.
The usage and applications of image aren’t obvious. I don’t use it myself because of that. Perhaps it needs a good old tutorial @grosgood, or at least, a few more examples @David_Tschumperle.
Examples but not necessarily the cases. G’MIC doesn’t care about what the channels are. Well, it depends on what the particular command wants…
Yes, that’s correct. Examples are what I intended to show. You could have 27 channels image in G’MIC though applications most likely aren’t going to understand that. 5 channels is treated as CMYKA, and 4 channels is treated as RGBA in general. 3 Channels is treated as RGB. When you go into 6 channels or more, there’s no interpretation in GIMP or Krita.
Well that’s one important point in G’MIC , you are able to manage ‘images’ (aka multi-dimensional arrays of numbers) that have four dimensions : width, height, depth and number of channels (aka spectrum), with any possible values for each of these dimensions. You decide what meaning you give to each of these dimensions. And most of the commands are able to deal with these 4-dimensional arrays of numbers.
In that case, indeed, you need a pre-processing step that create the exact array of values you want to copy from the source to the target. This implies some kind of “crop”, and this can be achieved for instance with commands crop, or channels, or resize, or even shared which is adapted in the case you want to copy some channels of the source to the target.
Several solutions exist, just pick the easiest one
Yes, that could be done like this too, using command split c :
$ gmic target_RGB.jpg source_RGB.jpg split. c j[0] [3],0,0,0,1 keep[0]
for instance will copy the Blue channel of the target into the Green channel of the source.
But this can be done also like this:
Well all I can say is that this is wonderful. Using the command help I’ve received here I’ve been able to write a DOS BAT of G’MIC commands to fully process a single image set which is itself called by a Python script which will run the BAT once for each image set listed in an input file. This is so much more efficient than doing each manually in Photoshop.
Thank you for taking so much time to help a newbie like myself out on this.
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, you are able to manage ‘images’ (aka multi-dimensional arrays of numbers) that have four dimensions : width, height, depth and number of channels (aka 
Someday. 