One more TIFF question  
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ManConfusedByMouse





PostPosted: Windows Forms General, One more TIFF question Top

As long as i am being bothersome to everybody with TIFF questions, I was wondering if anyone has ever seen any code or docs which show the way as regards using extended tiff editing features. (If you haven't tried it, save a bitmap as a .tif file and open it with Windows Fax and Image Viewer (not sure that's the correct name of the default picture view with Windows XP, anyway, the shell program (originally by Kodak, i think) which a fresh out of the box system opens images with). Note the really cool set of extra 'features' that show up on the tool bar -- different kinds of "annotations" and diagramatic elements tthat can be placed on the image which do not become an intrinsic part of the image when it is saved (they must be data in the header of the tiff file)...They can be removed at any via the Fax & Image view tools at any subsequent time, (after save the file as well).

I expect that these stuff is documented in a RFC from the organization that supports TIFF, but I also expect that it would be hard to develop a working implementation from such a document. (in other words, I would like to find a shortcut from here to there...lazy, admittedly, but there is lots to do before the day is done, and, wouldn't it to the general edification of all to see some example code here



Windows Forms18  
 
 
Chris Vega





PostPosted: Windows Forms General, One more TIFF question Top

Hi,

I'm not an expert in TIFF file format, though I looked deeply in other image file formats before. But if you are looking for specification, normally you may find it in wotsit.org database.

Searching the site, I found this:
TIFF 6.0 Specification

Hope this helps a bit,

-chris

 
 
ManConfusedByMouse





PostPosted: Windows Forms General, One more TIFF question Top

Hey Chris,

thanks, I went to the site and checked out the available resources, which was interesting -- good to have a nice reference like this for every well known file format under the sun. You mentioned that you've gotten into graphics formats fairly deeply in the past; I was wondering if, in terms of the various visual formats (image formats in particular), if you've come across any formats that you think deserve more attention from developers because of some or other merits that they have I'd just be curious. [an issue of concern that i have at present is the "jpeg" question; its a very impressive scheme, technically, and the efficiency of the compression is just amazing, but it really is maybe a bad thing in the long run, -- I have not made a study of it, but isn't it inevitable that images stored in this format will eventually become completely degraded Maybe a very long time, (and maybe their are more important things to worry about). It comes up for me because I'm working on software that will handle high quality images, and the trade off between lossless formats like PNG or TIFF and JPG presents, is not, in my view, well solved at present. JPG is enormously more convenient in every way, but ...losses data! I

anyway, R


 
 
Chris Vega





PostPosted: Windows Forms General, One more TIFF question Top

Hi,

JPEG uses lossy compression scheme in which you can adjust the compression parameters in exchange for quality. The lesser the image is compressed, the better the quality of the image.

You can read more information about JPEG file format in the JPEG FAQ pages:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part1/
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part2/

About PNG, I think I've read somewhere before that PNG was developed to answer the need for a pattent-free image file format, since the LZW compression scheme was pattented by Unisys for the GIF file format.

Regards,

-chris

 
 
Chris Vega





PostPosted: Windows Forms General, One more TIFF question Top

Here's the history of PNG file format:
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pnghist.html

-chris

 
 
ManConfusedByMouse





PostPosted: Windows Forms General, One more TIFF question Top

Hey chris,

thanks, read with interest! I vaguely remember the big flap with Compuserve and GIFF, I think I felt some creepy paranoia at the time that I might have some GIF files on my system...would they come for me in the middle of the night