Re: Zipping image files

From: Tim Au Yeung (ytau@UCALGARY.CA)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 10:58:04 CST

  • Next message: Anthony Troncale: "Re: Zipping image files"

    Message-Id: <200201291658.g0TGwVg12606@sitelicense.arizona.edu>
    Date:         Tue, 29 Jan 2002 09:58:04 -0700
    From: Tim Au Yeung <mailto:ytau@UCALGARY.CA>
    Subject:      Re: Zipping image files
    To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
    

    <pre> As a couple of other people pointed out, both TIFF and the ZIP format use a non-lossy compression format -- your gains will be minimal at best if you're using a compressed TIFF. I can, however, see one argument of when using ZIP on TIFF files might make sense:

    If all of your files are uncompressed TIFF (regardless of type; bitonal, greyscale, colour, etc.), then for archiving purposes, you only need to emulate two applications: one for decoding an uncompressed TIFF and one for unzipping instead of having an application that has to handle multple compression algorithms. This could simplify archiving -- I believe there's an open-source version of ZIP (gzip) and the general TIFF format is a published spec. so both could be implemented in new platforms in the future relatively easily. Using proprietary algorithms (as could be bundled into TIFF -- the spec. really doesn't care what compression algorithm you use) might have implications from an archiving perspective.

    Tim
    --------- Tim Au Yeung Manager, Digitization Initiatives Information Resources University of Calgary

    ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Adams" <mailto:David.Adams@NATLIB.GOVT.NZ> To: <mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 12:41 PM Subject: Zipping image files

    >
    > Does anyone know if there is any form of change to digital image files by
    using WinZIP or 'zipping' applications?
    >
    > I am interested to know if this will have an affect on TIFF files that are
    to be used for long term preservation.

    </pre>



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