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NEARBLACK(1)			      GDAL			    NEARBLACK(1)

NAME
     nearblack - Convert nearly black/white borders to black.

SYNOPSIS
	Usage: nearblack [--help] [--long-usage] [--help-general]
			 [-of <output_format>] [--quiet] [-co <NAME>=<VALUE>]...
			 [-o <output_file>]
			 [[-white]|[-color <c1,c2,c3...cn>]...]
			 [-nb <non_black_pixels>] [-near <dist>] [-setalpha] [-setmask]
			 [-alg floodfill|twopasses]
			 <input_file>

DESCRIPTION
     This  utility  will scan an image and try to set all pixels that are nearly
     or exactly black, white or one or more custom colors around the  collar  to
     black  or white. This is often used to "fix up" lossy compressed air photos
     so that color pixels can be treated as transparent when mosaicing. The out-
     put format must use lossless compression if either alpha band or mask  band
     is not set.

     TIP:
	Equivalent in new "gdal" command line interface:

	See gdal raster clean-collar.

     --help
	    Show this help message and exit

     --help-general
	    Gives a brief usage message for the generic GDAL commandline options
	    and exit.

     -q, --quiet
	    Suppress progress messages and other non-error output.

     -o <outfile>
	    The name of the output file to be created.

     -of <format>
	    Select  the  output format.  If not specified, the format is guessed
	    from the extension.  Use the short format name  (GTiff  for  GeoTIFF
	    for example).

     -co <NAME>=<VALUE>
	    Passes  a creation option to the output format driver.  Multiple -co
	    options may be listed. See Raster drivers format specific documenta-
	    tion for legal creation options for each format.

	    Only valid when creating a new file

     -white
	    Search for nearly white (255) pixels instead of nearly black pixels.

     -color <c1>,<c2>,<c3>...<cn>
	    Search for pixels near the specified color. May be specified  multi-
	    ple times.	When -color is specified, the pixels that are considered
	    as the collar are set to 0.

     -near <dist>
	    Select  how  far from black, white or custom colors the pixel values
	    can be and still considered near black, white or custom color.   De-
	    faults to 15.

     -nb <non_black_pixels>
	    number  of	consecutive non-black pixels that can be encountered be-
	    fore the giving up search inwards. Defaults to 2.

     -setalpha
	    Adds an alpha band if the output file is  specified  and  the  input
	    file has 3 bands, or sets the alpha band of the output file if it is
	    specified  and the input file has 4 bands, or sets the alpha band of
	    the input file if it has 4 bands and no output  file  is  specified.
	    The alpha band is set to 0 in the image collar and to 255 elsewhere.

     -setmask
	    Adds  a mask band to the output file, or adds a mask band to the in-
	    put file if it does not already have one and no output file is spec-
	    ified.  The mask band is set to 0 in the image  collar  and  to  255
	    elsewhere.

     -alg twopasses|floodfill
	    Added in version 3.8.

	    Selects the algorithm to apply.

	    twopasses  uses  a	top-to-bottom  pass  followed by a bottom-to-top
	    pass.  This is the only algorithm implemented before  GDAL	3.8.  It
	    may  miss with concave areas.  The algorithm processes the image one
	    scanline at a time.  A scan "in" is done  from  either  end  setting
	    pixels  to	black  or white until at least "non_black_pixels" pixels
	    that are more than "dist" gray levels away from black, white or cus-
	    tom colors have been encountered at which point the scan stops.  The
	    nearly black, white or custom color  pixels  are  set  to  black  or
	    white.  The  algorithm also scans from top to bottom and from bottom
	    to top to identify indentations in the top or bottom.

	    floodfill (added in GDAL 3.8) uses the Flood Fill algorithm and will
	    work with concave areas. It requires creating  a  temporary  dataset
	    and is slower than twopasses. When a non-zero value for -nb is used,
	    twopasses is actually called as an initial step of floodfill.

     <infile>
	    The  input	file.	Any  GDAL supported format, any number of bands,
	    normally 8bit Byte bands.

     The processing is all done in 8bit (Bytes).

     If the output file is omitted, the processed results will be  written  back
     to the input file - which must support update.

RETURN STATUS CODE
     The  program returns status code 0 in case of success, and non-zero in case
     of error (non-blocking errors emitted as warnings are considered as a  suc-
     cessful execution).

C API
     This utility is also callable from C with GDALNearblack().

AUTHOR
     Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam@pobox.com>

COPYRIGHT
     1998-2026

				  Jun 05, 2026			    NEARBLACK(1)

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