5 ms·

Img2xls – Convert images to colored cells in an Excel spreadsheet

35 points by Dobiasd 11y ago

igallina 11y ago
where is this useful ?
- Dobiasd 11y ago
  Nowhere, that's the point. :)
- _lce0 11y ago
  > where is this useful ? wherever we want
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- Dobiasd 11y ago
  Because we can? :)
- eli 11y ago
  This site ain't called "Productivity News"
  - acron0 11y ago
    You know, actually, this is a fair point. I'm almost ashamed of myself for not being more open-minded. What's better than a hack to tickle a curiosity?
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      But surely it's still OK to ask where something is useful even if the response is "dunno, that's not why I did it".
bitwize 11y ago
Isn't the continued use of the Lenna image considered rape culture or somethjng nowadays?
- Dobiasd 11y ago
  Perhaps we should start to use more up-to-date images of her? :) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/
bcraven 11y ago
More than 3 colours? This isn't a patch on Matt Parker's RGB spreadsheet maker: http://www.think-maths.co.uk/spreadsheet http://www.think-maths.co.uk/spreadsheet
- Dobiasd 11y ago
  No, it uses up to 55 custom colors.
  - bcraven 11y ago
    Precisely, 55 is more than 3
fl0wenol 11y ago
This is a cute hack, but why? (Mostly because it doesn't take into consideration using text glyphs _inside_ each cell and a second color to add texture) Come on, let's go full libaa!
j_s 11y ago
Back in the day, one way to 'protect' images online was to table/div-ize them. This is apparently still a thing for email and web ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442041
atourgates 11y ago
I tried this out - but it looks like the images are squished. In a 600x422 image I tried, the columns were originally .03" in Excel. Adjusting them to .1" seemed to fix the perspective. I just want to alert people to a bug in this piece of software they'll doubtless be using in mission-critical applications.
- Dobiasd 11y ago
  Thanks. Up to now I only tested with Libre Office.
- Dobiasd 11y ago
  The bug is fixed now. ;) You can select the output format via command line.
xtrumanx 11y ago
Last time I came across this idea (2011) a I made my own version that rendered to html. Upload an image, place each pixel's rgb value in a 2d array, send it back to the client as a html table where each cell's background color is set to a pixel's rgb value. It comes out looking blocky and I couldn't figure out why. Here it is: http://excelimagemaker.apphb.com/ http://excelimagemaker.apphb.com/ Pretty sure Excel supports copy-pasting a table from the browser directly into Excel so you can do that too and just set each cell's height and width to 1px to see the image in Excel.

35 points by Dobiasd 11y ago

igallina 11y ago

where is this useful ?

Dobiasd 11y ago
Nowhere, that's the point. :)
_lce0 11y ago
> where is this useful ? wherever we want

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Dobiasd 11y ago
Because we can? :)
eli 11y ago
This site ain't called "Productivity News"
- acron0 11y ago
  You know, actually, this is a fair point. I'm almost ashamed of myself for not being more open-minded. What's better than a hack to tickle a curiosity?
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    But surely it's still OK to ask where something is useful even if the response is "dunno, that's not why I did it".

bitwize 11y ago

Isn't the continued use of the Lenna image considered rape culture or somethjng nowadays?

Dobiasd 11y ago
Perhaps we should start to use more up-to-date images of her? :) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/

bcraven 11y ago

More than 3 colours? This isn't a patch on Matt Parker's RGB spreadsheet maker: http://www.think-maths.co.uk/spreadsheet http://www.think-maths.co.uk/spreadsheet

Dobiasd 11y ago
No, it uses up to 55 custom colors.
- bcraven 11y ago
  Precisely, 55 is more than 3

fl0wenol 11y ago

This is a cute hack, but why? (Mostly because it doesn't take into consideration using text glyphs _inside_ each cell and a second color to add texture) Come on, let's go full libaa!

j_s 11y ago

Back in the day, one way to 'protect' images online was to table/div-ize them. This is apparently still a thing for email and web ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442041

atourgates 11y ago

I tried this out - but it looks like the images are squished. In a 600x422 image I tried, the columns were originally .03" in Excel. Adjusting them to .1" seemed to fix the perspective. I just want to alert people to a bug in this piece of software they'll doubtless be using in mission-critical applications.

Dobiasd 11y ago
Thanks. Up to now I only tested with Libre Office.
Dobiasd 11y ago
The bug is fixed now. ;) You can select the output format via command line.

xtrumanx 11y ago

Last time I came across this idea (2011) a I made my own version that rendered to html. Upload an image, place each pixel's rgb value in a 2d array, send it back to the client as a html table where each cell's background color is set to a pixel's rgb value. It comes out looking blocky and I couldn't figure out why. Here it is: http://excelimagemaker.apphb.com/ http://excelimagemaker.apphb.com/ Pretty sure Excel supports copy-pasting a table from the browser directly into Excel so you can do that too and just set each cell's height and width to 1px to see the image in Excel.