SCT to PGM Converter

SCT (Scitex Continuous Tone) is a high-end raster image format developed by Scitex Corporation for their prepress and color reproduction systems, with the HandShake format specification dating to 1988. Scitex, an Israeli company founded in 1968, was a pioneer in electronic prepress — their systems were used by major publishers, packaging companies, and advertising agencies to perform color separation, retouching, and page composition for high-quality print production. SCT files store images in CMYK color mode at 8 bits per channel (32 bits per pixel), with the color channels arranged in a band-interleaved-by-line format optimized for the scanline-based processing of Scitex's proprietary hardware. The format uses no compression, prioritizing direct access and processing speed over file size on the dedicated workstations where these files were used. SCT images were typically very large — high-resolution drum scans of transparencies and prints at resolutions of 300 dpi or higher for print-ready output. One advantage is print production heritage: SCT files represent some of the highest-quality digital prepress work of their era, scanned and color-corrected by expert operators on hardware that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, making them valuable primary sources for reprinting and archival of commercial print work from the 1980s and 1990s. Adobe Photoshop has long supported SCT files for import, and the format can also be read by ImageMagick, XnView, and other tools with prepress format support.