Message-Id: <199901201540.IAA29708@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 10:37:00 -0500 From: "Wagner,Lynn" <mailto:wagnerl@OCLC.ORG> Subject: Re: unidentified image format/ TIFF ver. To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
I've got a similar question, in the TIFF realm: How can I confirm what version of TIFF Ihave, i.e. ver. 5.0 or 6.0? I see no reference to it in the TIFF tags and the WordPad trick didn't work either. Can anyone help?Thanks Lynn Wagner
>>Sometimes I am sent image files without any format identifiers. My PC
>>programs will not identify these automatically and won't open them.
>>Usually they are JPEGs or GIFs, so I rename them to one and/or the other
>>and can eventually open them. But sometimes I just can't guess. Is there
>>a way to find out what kind of image file I have when there is no
>>three-character suffix in the filename?
>>
>>R.Baron
>>mailto:rabaron@pipeline.com
>
As previously mentioned file like this are often generated on Macs where the "file-type" information is not stored in the filename suffix as it is with DOS/Windows. Often the quickest solution is to open the file in a simple text editor like WordPad. You'll need to set the "File of Type" field to "All Documents (*.*)" in the File..Open dialog box. Although the bulk of both GIF and JFIF files (what we normally refer to as JPEG files) will look like garbage, at or very near the top there will be a short text string indicating what the file type is: either GIF87a or GIF89a or JFIF. Other file formats often have similar text strings. You can check the details for a variety of formats either in a book of file formats (several exist) or on the web (search "Graphic File Formats" on Yahoo).
If you were really motivate you could write a script (in Word VBA or some such) to search groups of files for these strings and append the appropriate suffix. I wouldn't be surprised if some graphics utility already handles this task automatically but I can't say I've run into one (not that I've been looking).
Hope this helps, Sean Fox Academic Computing Coordinator Carleton College mailto:sfox@carleton.edu