[55] Where can I find Lenna and other images?

A bunch of standard images (lenna, baboon, cameraman, crowd, moon
etc..) are on ftp site eedsp.gatech.edu (130.207.226.2) in directory
/database/images. The images are in 256-level grayshades (256x256
pixels, 256 "colors").

[Note: the site ipl.rpi.edu mentioned below keeps changing. Images
stay there for a while then disappear. They are again available at
the time of writing (27 Dec 93).]

The site ipl.rpi.edu (128.113.14.50) has standard images in two
directories:
   ipl.rpi.edu:/pub/image/still/usc 
   ipl.rpi.edu:/pub/image/still/canon

(The directory /pub/image/sequence was taken offline because of
possible copyright problems, but has come back again. In particular,
Miss America is in subdirectories of /pub/image/sequence/missa.)

In each of those directories are the following directories:
   bgr     - 24 bit blue, green, red
   color   - 24 bit red, green, blue
   gray    - 8 bit grayscale uniform weighted
   gray601 - 8 bit grayscale CCIR-601 weighted

And in these directories are the actual images.  

For example, the popular lena image is in
   ipl.rpi.edu:/pub/image/still/usc/color/lena  # 24 bit RGB
   ipl.rpi.edu:/pub/image/still/usc/bgr/lena    # 24 bit BGR
   ipl.rpi.edu:/pub/image/still/usc/gray/lena   # 8 bit gray

All of the images are in Sun rasterfile format.  You can use the pbm
utilities to convert them to whatever format is most convenient.
[pbm is available in ftp.ee.lbl.gov:/pbmplus*.tar.Z].
Questions about the ipl archive should be sent to help@ipl.rpi.edu.


There are few gray-scale still images and some raw data of test results
available in directory nic.funet.fi:/pub/graphics/misc/test-images.
There are lots of .gif images in nic.funet.fi:/pub/pics.

Medical images can be found in decaf.stanford.edu:/pub/images/medical/mri,
eedsp.gatech.edu:/database/images/wchung/medical, and
omicron.cs.unc.edu:/pub/softlab/CHVRTD.


Rodney Peck <rodney@balltown.cma.com> is interested in some method
of establishing a canonical ftp database of images but does not have
the resources to provide an ftp site for that database. Send suggestions to
rodney@balltown.cma.com.


Beware: the same image often comes in many different forms, at
different resolutions, etc... The original lenna image is 512 wide,
512 high, 8 bits per pel, red, green and blue fields.  Gray-scale
versions of Lenna have been obtained in two different ways from the
original:
 (1) Using the green field as a gray-scale image, and
 (2) Doing an RGB->YUV transformation and saving the Y component.
Method (1) makes it easier to compare different people's results since
everyone's version should be the same using that method.  Method (2)
produces a more correct image.

For the curious: 'lena' or 'lenna' is a digitized Playboy centerfold,
from November 1972. (Lenna is the spelling in Playboy, Lena is the
Swedish spelling of the name.) Lena Soderberg (ne Sjooblom) was last
reported living in her native Sweden, happily married with three kids
and a job with the state liquor monopoly.  In 1988, she was
interviewed by some Swedish computer related publication, and she was
pleasantly amused by what had happened to her picture.  That was the
first she knew of the use of that picture in the computer business.

The editorial in the January 1992 issue of Optical Engineering (v. 31
no. 1) details how Playboy has finally caught on to the fact that
their copyright on Lenna Sjooblom's photo is being widely infringed.
It sounds as if you will have to get permission from Playboy to
publish it in the future.

The CCITT test images are available on nic.funet.fi in directory
pub/graphics/misc/test-images, files ccitt1.tif to ccitt8.tif.

Note on the CCITT test images, by Robert Estes <estes@eecs.ucdavis.edu>:

The ccitt files are in ipl.rpi.edu:/image-archive/bitmap/ccitt
(128.113.14.50). [Note from FAQ maintainer: this directory has
now disappeared; ipl.rpi.edu is a very volatile ftp site :-).]
They are named ccitt-n.ras.Z where n goes from 1 to 8.
Each file has an accompanying doc file called ccitt-n.ras.doc which
describes the image file. Here's the doc file for ccitt-1.ras:

Name ccitt-1.ras
Size 1728 x 2376 x 1
Type 1 bit standard format sun rasterfile 
Keywords binary standard image 1 bit fax
Description
One of eight images from the standard binary CCITT test image set.

This set is commonly used to compare binary image compression
techniques. The images are are 1728x2376 pixels.