
    Thanks for downloading Lee J Haywood's SliMer application.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.



    INTRODUCTION

	SliMer (from "slice and merge") is an application which takes
	slices of lots of same-sized photographs and stitches them
	back together to form a new image - this is the most basic
	form of Computational Photography.

	If all of the photographs were taken with the camera in a
	fixed position, then the slices will line up but each will be
	from a different time.  So the resulting image will be a sort
	of composite time-lapse.  A suitable set of photographs might
	cover a sunrise/sunset, i.e. the transition between day and
	night.

	To see the process in action, run the Run_me script on the
	test images provided.  (If you open the 4 images in the
	TestPhotos directory individually, you'll see that they
	represent a transition from day to night).  This will create
	4 images with slicing taking place horizontally and
	vertically, forwards and in reverse.

    USAGE

	To run SliMer you need to provide command line parameters
	which must begin with the name of a directory in which the
	source photographs can be found followed by the name of the
	output file.

	The source photographs must have an extension of '.jpg' and
	all have the same resolution.  They will be sorted into name
	order.  The output file will always be a 24-bit BMP file and
	so you should give it an extension of '.bmp'.

	The Run_me script shows 4 examples of how the program can be
	invoked...

	slimer TestPhotos Test_HF.bmp
	slimer TestPhotos Test_HR.bmp H R
	slimer TestPhotos Test_VF.bmp V
	slimer TestPhotos Test_VR.bmp V R

	Here the first command loads all of the JPEG images in the
	test directory (TestPhotos) and slices them horizontally (the
	default direction) to create a new image called Test_HF.bmp.

	The second command explicitly specifies a horizontal
	direction but instructs SliMer to generate the result in
	reverse.  Similarly, the third/fourth commands create images
	with vertical slices with the result generated both forwards
	and in reverse.

	You can also tell SliMer to exclude some of the source
	photographs by specifying a skip value and (optionally) a
	count.  For example, if you have 1,522 images and only wish
	to slice the first 1,024 images you might do so like this.

	slimer MySunset Start.bmp H F 0 1024

	This skips none of the photographs (0) but stops loading them
	after the first 1,024.  Alternatively, you might wish to
	process the final 1,024 photographs at the end like this.

	slimer MySunset End.bmp H F 498

	This skips the first 498 photographs (1522-1024).  If you
	wanted to exclude the last 5 photographs but still process
	1,024 from near the end, you'd do it like this.

	slimer MySunset LastFew.bmp H F 493 1024

	Note that you always have to specify a horizontal (H) or
	vertical (V) slicing and also a forwards (F) or reverse (R)
	direction, before indicating a skip/count.

	END

