Degradation with r.in.tiff

Hello all

I have a TIFF image that I have converted to GRASS raster with the r.in.tiff
command from the SCS contributed software. Unfortunately when I display the
raster file in GRASS, the image has been degraded. An example of the
degradation can be seen at http://www.hpcc.nectec.or.th/GIS/tiff.html

The r.in.tiff command reported that the bits/sample of the original TIFF image
was 8. Also the original image had only 64 shades of gray requiring only 6
bits. My question is how did the image become so degraded if the r.in.tiff
command can easily handle 64 shades of gray? Or maybe the r.in.tiff command is
not the problem but the XDRIVER or d.mon is?

  Have you tried to set the colormode to float? In fixed colormode,
  you use a standard list of colors (computed from a 6x6x6 cube
  of red, green, and blue values) that is adequate for most
  purposes. This means that you only have 6 gret values, however.

  If you switch to float colormode, you get a new colormap
  that is optimized for the map being displayed, i.e. you should
  see all 64 grey values as different colours on the screen.
  The downside of this is that on normal 8bit/pixel graphics
  hardware, ALL screen windows change colours (often to something
  truely horrible) when you move into and out of the monitor window.

  Martin

  PS Oh, yes, the command name is d.colormode