title: Octave: How to load grayscale images in double format?
body: <p>I am using the imread function in Octave to load an image:</p>
  
  <pre><code>image = imread ("data/images/image1.jpg")(:);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is apparently loading the image as a matrix of integers with values 0-255.</p>
  
  <p>I want to load it as matrix of doubles with values 0.0-1.0.  I can convert it like this.</p>
  
  <pre><code>doubleImage = double(image) / 255.0;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, converting it is pretty slow, especially for a lot of images.  Is there any way to load the image directly as a matrix of doubles?</p>