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Tech: photo format change?
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:28 AM Greg, yu presume a lot, yet some of what you offer is useful. Have the 35mm, have the tripod, have the close up lens, have taken my own photos of same, and, yes, paid for primo processing. Scanning them in, before all of that, was a quick and legitimate way to insure they were preserved somewhere and, also distributed to family, who were quite pleased. Bob, thank you for the publishing info. kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 05 Sep 03 - 11:44 PM KAT -
You need to READ the LOC entries above and below the site listed so that you understand...
1. Preservation Quality By the time you have your "originals" scanned ...and then scanned again for publication by a "book-company" your archive quality is SHOT!!
PLEASE....take a 15X magnifying glass (jewler's eye-piece,)to a "nice publication" photo - say "TIME Magazine" to your unaided eye it looks great...under the glass....it is crap....
While you have the "glass" in your hand....look at the screen of your computer monitor.....WHOOAA!!!! it is little three colored triangles.
Sincerely,
Take a photograph of a picture on your TV monitor and THEN view it after processing!!!!!UGGGHHHH! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 05 Sep 03 - 11:27 PM Ahh....I can't help it.... but {;(
You have waisted a lot of time.
Several suggestions for you....
1. You should have first consulted the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - American Memory Site - and their recommendations. Spend four hours determining the processes...measure TWICE...cut ONCE...
2. You WANT a format that will survive to the next mellenium!!! 3. Don't count the cost Just DO It!!!
Sincerely,
I fear that two years from now...this too....will be like your dreams of a vegitable garden.....just a "good thought." I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air....they fly so high....nearly reach the sky....then like my dreams.... they fade and die.... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Bob Bolton Date: 05 Sep 03 - 10:31 PM G'day Kat, Generally, publishers will happily settle for a TIFF scan at 300 dpi of the final printed image size. (That's not necessarily the same as the original photo print size.) As long as you haven't mucked up the contrast and density (i.e. - your scan looks good on screen ... and a standard print-out) then the printing shop has adequate resolution, and some reserve, for normal process printing ... and that's the way most modern small printing jobs are delivered. When I scan photographs of high interest, I normally save as TIFF (compressed). This uses a Run Line Compression (possible that referred to as RLE, above) and this is "lossless" but not always much of a compression. If I am sharing the photos by email, I create a sub-folder where I place mid-compression JPG cpoies (the settings vary according to different apps) reduced to a good screen size - (~) 800 x 600 pixels for full-screen display and 640 x 480 for caption photos or inserts into an e-mail. Use the JPGs to swap picture, but jealously guard your 300 dpi TIFFs (and carefully preserve the original prints/film!) Regards, Bob Bolton |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 05 Sep 03 - 03:59 PM Thanks, George, very much. Guest, I would refuse, unless I took them to them and stood there and watched as they copied them. No way would I leave them with them.:-) Thanks, kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: George Seto - af221@chebucto.ns.ca Date: 05 Sep 03 - 03:12 PM Perhaps you might check with some of these publishers and see if they have specific needs? I'll ask to see how a friend of mine did the pictures for his recent book. It was a small publisher in the area, and the pictures are like yours, irreplaceable. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: GUEST Date: 05 Sep 03 - 02:31 PM you could refuse their request. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 05 Sep 03 - 02:02 PM I just wanted to say thanks, again, to all of you for your help. I am finally getting to these. I've reread all of your advice and FWIW, I am saving each one of the original CPT scans as BITMAP uncompressed so that I do not lose any of the quality. My only concern now is if a publisher will want the original photos to shoot their own way for publication. I'm not at that stage, yet, but I have been wondering about this. As they are family heirlooms and our "one and onlys," anyone know how a pub. would handle that? Thanks, kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Feb 03 - 08:13 PM kat - Results you get from the "Fugi" will, of course, depend on how good your image files are. If the bits ain't there, no printer in the world can put them back in. When you get ready to have prints made, I'd suggest a "small order" until you see that your files have come through the conversions in good enough shape to justify the cost of "high resolution" printing. There are some pretty good "photo quality" printers available now, at quite reasonable prices (under $200, or even significantly less). As with so many good things though, the real cost comes after you get them home. The "photo quality" paper can approach $1 per sheet in "modestly large" sizes, and many of the "photo quality" printers have such small ink cartridges that a couple of 8x10 glossies (or a very few 5x7s) can eat $30 worth of ink. They can make very good prints, though. Cluin - In the ideal world, you'd like to have bitmaps for all your pictures, but if you get them from the web or from most consumer level cameras they're gonna come out as jpegs. In a lot of cases we're just stuck with that, as a starting point at least. The one rule that must be kept in mind when working with them is "NEVER save back in the original file," since you'll recompress and lose more information each time you do. There is a pretty "active commerce" in jpegs that are too big to be useful (or at least necessary) for screen display but are small enough to be sent around the web - and that do give very good images - at reasonable enlargements. The Photoshop "native" format (PSD) is, theoretically at least, "lossless," and for the amount of information it saves is very compact. I'm not sure that the same can be said about quite a few of the other "proprietary" formats, but fortunately I've eliminated quite a few of those other programs since I picked up on Photoshop Elements. Just wish I could afford the whole "real" Photoshop setup. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 07:04 PM Ah, thank you, both, very much! Some day I will be printing all of them, but for now am emailing thme to family. However, I am printing off a few, as examples, and want them to look as good as the originals. However, when it comes time for them to be published I may take them to a special copy shop and have them reproduced on their magic "Fugi" machine. Have you seen those? They use photographic paper and it is difficult to tell the original from the photocopy. kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Cluin Date: 13 Feb 03 - 06:38 PM General rule-of-thumb: when dealing with digital photo formats, JPEGs are for screen presentation, (or web and e-mail application) while larger, lossless bitmap formats like .bmp and .tif are for printing purposes (ditto for things like Corel and Photoshop formats, which also save mask and layer information--and even watermarks--created within the software; that's why those formats are so proprietory). |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Feb 03 - 06:21 PM Definitely convert to jpeg before you email stuff - unless the recipient is going to have to do a lot of work on the image and needs a "real" original. Photoshop has something of the same problem as a lot of programs, Corel included, in that it has a "default" proprietary file format that it tries to save everything in, and that is unreadable by everything else. Usually the default format is the "least lossy," so its a good way to save all of the picture info - but you need to also save a copy of anything worth keeping in a more generic format. BMP and the "plain vanilla" TIFF are about the most universal "low loss" formats. Files are huge, but you can still burn a bunch of them on a CD. Nearly all of the low loss formats are too large to be convenient for email or other web based uses. A good jpeg can give excellent results within reason. I've printed a very few ($$$$$) downloaded 200KB jpegs at 11x17 inches with only a little visible pixilation - and stuff in the 60KB range is often good up to 5x7 inches and passable at 8x10 or a little more. I've got a couple of 3MB jpegs that I may print someday just to see how good they are, but they use a lot of ink blown up enough to tell. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 06:03 PM Sorry, cluin, I should have made better note of that at the beginning. It's what came with the computer when we bought it and knew nothing. JohninKansas, thanks! I will look again, but some of what I've saved in Corel, before, did wind up with the bmp tag and are huge files. I usually only do jpeg for emailing. All of these photos were scanned in black and white, no colour, so that should be alright, right? Oh, and yes, I do have all of these backed up.*bg* I'll re-read what you've posted and check it out in my program some more. I much prefer Adobe but didn't know anything about it, then, plus the scanner would only let me scan to Corel for photos, at the time. Thanks, again! kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Bill D Date: 13 Feb 03 - 06:02 PM good advice, John...evem if you don't 'see' the difference easily, that step of saving to bitmap first can help preserve the most detail possible. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Feb 03 - 05:56 PM Rule Number 1: Always make backups of the original files in a safe place, and work ONLY from copies. But you knew that. Rule Number 2: Make your conversion to the "least lossy" format you can open. If you convert direct from your "unworkable" file format to .jpeg, you're at the mercy of the converter, and you may lose quite a bit of image data. If you can find a converter that will save the files in a "full data" format, like uncompressed .bmp or .tif, you have more to work with in Photoshop, and you'll have better control over the final result. BMP and TIF files can be huge, but you don't necessarily have to keep the intermediates. TIF files can be compressed, but the compression is relatively "lossless" unless you use one of the odd TIF formats (there were about 9 last time I looked). JPG compression removes additional data every time you save, even if you save to the same compression settings. If you can, you should try to make a "type-for-type" conversion. Corel used a lot of "vector graphic" file types, and if that's what you have you should look for a way to convert them to another "vector" format. If they're a bitmap, make the conversion to .bmp. Photoshop (or PS Elements) can open quite a few of either kind. Even for black and white pictures, if they were scanned as color you should probably try to convert them as color. Make the change to b/w or grayscale in Photoshop. You'll generally get better results. The .cpt format isn't listed in any of my graphics file data books, but they're mostly rather old. Of course, if it was a special-purpose format just for a specific proprietary program, that program may be the only "clean" way to open them, although there are a number of "converters" available. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Cluin Date: 13 Feb 03 - 04:43 PM Ah, PhotoHouse is not Photo-Paint. It's a more "user-friendly", hence less functional version. Not as many options or controls. Most of the advice I gave above won't apply then. Though you should be able to save as a JPEG. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 04:12 PM Bill, I will try it, but the only thing I saw for CPT under their Formats, was the 6.0 version, but as you say, the older program is bound to have the same components, just not as many, so it's worth a try. Ed, system info says it is Corel Photo House Version 1.10.071, then when I look into it further, it says the platform version is 4.0. Thanks, again. kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Bill D Date: 13 Feb 03 - 04:00 PM hmmm...XnView's list of formats page just says cpt...I would guess it would do them...Corel 6.0 may just mean more features, not serious format differences... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Ed. Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:57 PM What Corel program are you talking about, Kat? There are several. 1.1 of PhotoPaint was a DOS program... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:49 PM Oops, I may be in trouble. I noticed on both of those links, they list CPT 6.0 version. My version of Corel is 1.1...it's not been a high priority program, can you tell? Shoot, now what? I suppose I'll have to do them one at a time...aarrrgghhh! Thanks, anyway... kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Bill D Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:49 PM hmmmm...I will look again!...I looked in mine...I thought! (ah...in mine I see it says CPT "at your own risk" in the list of files at one place...but indeed it does list CPT as input in 'batch conversion' (in any case...IF you get XnView, you want version 1.50 minimal version then get the gconvert add-on...else you get WAY too much...like umpty-leven language files) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:44 PM wow, ya'll were busy posting and I missed you. Thanks, Bill! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:42 PM Interesting, cluin, thanks. When I went into Corel (an older version) and chose to save a CPT, I then checked the only jpeg available which was jpgBITMAP which then autmatically opted for the "standard jpg compression" and wouldn't let me chang it. If I chose to save as windowsTIF, then the default was "uncompressed" or an "RLE" option. I also checked image properties and apparently it automatically goes to grayscale because that is what showed up and I hadn't done anything. Thanks, again to both of you. I love learning at the Mudcat! kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: MMario Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:39 PM cpt is in my irfanview - and available as "input type" in the batch conversion menu. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: GUEST Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:38 PM and, I just noticed...they make a program JUST for converting..over 400 formats they say! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: GUEST,Bill D (cookie not set) Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:36 PM ...for once, Irfan won't do it...there is a free program which will...called XnView says it does all the Corel types...CPT is listed specifically...(an excellent general viewer, though I prefer the Irfanview interface for most things) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Cluin Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:33 PM Yes, compression refers to how much space can be saved by "loss of variety of information", basically. More compression means more grouping together of tones or colours close to each other as one colour. Less compression preserves more of the original. When you "save as" a .JPG file, Corel Photo-paint will call up a dialogue box where you choose a compression factor and (in later versions) a smoothing factor (which "smoothes out" some of the artifacts that can appear during JPEG compression, those little specks and spots with sort-of haloes around them you'll often see in very compressed JPEG images). To save further space, convert the black & white ones (not the sepiatone ones though) to 8-bit greyscale palette first. No need to waste space used by a 24 bit colour palette on greyscale images that only used the first few "colours" (which are really shades of grey). No picture quality will be lost by converting to the smaller palette and they will take up much less space and be easier on your computer memory too. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Cluin Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:25 PM Above all, don't save them as Encapsulated Postscript (.EPS) files. Corel has always been shite at handling EPS. Been misled that way by a few print firms who should've known(and, it turns out, DID know) better. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:23 PM Thanks, MMario, I will check it out. Cluin, they are very ancient photos:-) all black and white, one or two sepia. By compression, I am guessing you mean when I put them in a jpg format they take up less space on my hard-drive? What does "smoothing" refer to? Thanks very much, all of you, I appreciate it! kat |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Cluin Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:21 PM Or, if you are just looking to use them in Adobe Photoshop, you can resave them in Abobe Photoshop format (.PSD). That will be one of your options in the "Save As..." menu. Scroll down in the "File Format" box until you find it. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: MMario Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:19 PM irfanview is a downloadable conversion software. Their SPECIALITY is converting from one format to another. Freeware as far as I know irfanview.com |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Cluin Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:16 PM Nope ACDSee won't recognize the PHOTO-PAINT format. Do each one individually, I'd suggest. That way, you can specify the compression and smoothing factors to maximize your quality and compression. That will vary, depending on the values and colours of your pics. It'll take some time, agreed, but it's the best way. You can also resample each to your desired d.p.i. (whether you plan to print them or just display them on screen only. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:15 PM Um, guys? I may be more techie than when I got here 4+ years ago, but what in the heck are those? Please?**BG** T'anks! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: Clinton Hammond Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:10 PM Or ACDSee might as well... ;-) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: photo format change? From: MMario Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:09 PM 'irfanview' should be able to do a batch conversion from cpt to jpg |
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Subject: Tech: photo format change? From: katlaughing Date: 13 Feb 03 - 03:06 PM A few years ago, I scanned in heirloom photographs and saved them as jpegs in my Corel Photo program. Somehow, over the past year, the ones I thought were jpegs, and there were quite a few, are showing up as CPTs, which I guess is a format exclusive to Corel. When I open Adobe Photoshop and try to open a photo file ending in CPT, it tells me it can't. So I have to go into Corel, open the CPT file, save it to jpg, then go back to Adobe and open that one. Is there any faster way to save all of the CPT's to jpegs or do I have to go in there and do each one, indivudally? (gawd, I hope not!**bg**) Thanks a bunch! kat |
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