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Any plans to improve TIF support?

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Any plans to improve TIF support? rpdayton 22 Nov 16:02
  Any plans to improve TIF support? Michael Schumacher 22 Nov 21:38
   Any plans to improve TIF support? rpdayton 23 Nov 15:00
    Any plans to improve TIF support? rpdayton 23 Nov 18:33
     Any plans to improve TIF support? Michael Schumacher 23 Nov 19:32
      Any plans to improve TIF support? rpdayton 23 Nov 21:54
       Any plans to improve TIF support? Rick Strong 24 Nov 03:53
       Any plans to improve TIF support? Liam R. E. Quin 24 Nov 06:32
2016-11-22 16:02:45 UTC (over 7 years ago)
postings
4

Any plans to improve TIF support?

Not sure if I should post this as a bug, thought I'd check here to see if maybe there is just a setting somewhere buried in a menu that I should change. I tried GIMP several years ago as a TIF viewer/handler, but it could never print tif files without critically crashing gimp. A few discussions revealed a flaw in the print routine; the "fix" was to add an error message that says "can't print" rather than letting gimp crash (well, didn't help me print, but I guess an error message is better than crashing and losing all my work, right?) Thought I'd try again to see if any improvements were ever made, but now it appears that printing only yields "not responding" folowed by fatal crash, and even trying save changes fails with "Cannot handle the size (either width or height) of the image." Is there a hidden setting somewhere that I have not been able to find, or is TIF simply not fully supported?

Windows 7 64 bit GIMP 2.8.18

Michael Schumacher
2016-11-22 21:38:28 UTC (over 7 years ago)

Any plans to improve TIF support?

On 11/22/2016 05:02 PM, rpdayton wrote:

Not sure if I should post this as a bug, thought I'd check here to see if maybe there is just a setting somewhere buried in a menu that I should change. I tried GIMP several years ago as a TIF viewer/handler, but it could never print tif files without critically crashing gimp.

As the file ceases to be a TIFF file in GIMP, it is quite curious if this only happened with TIFF files. Have you tried this with images imported from other file formats?

You should file it as a bug and attach a sample file.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD
2016-11-23 15:00:02 UTC (over 7 years ago)
postings
4

Any plans to improve TIF support?

As the file ceases to be a TIFF file in GIMP, it is quite curious if this only happened with TIFF files. Have you tried this with images imported from other file formats?

You should file it as a bug and attach a sample file.

Yes, only with tiff files.

Unfortunately, I cannot attach the files; the tiff files are from automotive, aerospace, and military sources, and I am not able to use gimp to edit out any branding in the title blocks. And since I have an nda with every source, I cannot share the files without at least removing the cage code, customer branding, etc.

More unfortunately, these industries all use tiff as the sole means of document storage and transmission, so anyone working in the supply chain in these industries must be able to have some method of viewing, marking, and printing files in this format.

I just figured that gimp would have added better support for these file types, as there is a pretty large number of people needing a good software solution for this. Don't get me wrong, it is great for jpgs and pngs and facebook pictures and touching up pictures from phones, it really is excellent for that. But it just doesn't stand up to more demanding tasks. Which is fine, I was just wanting to see if it had gotten better in the past few years.

Ah, well. Back to kinkos!

2016-11-23 18:33:13 UTC (over 7 years ago)
postings
4

Any plans to improve TIF support?

Yes, only with tiff files.

Unfortunately, I cannot attach the files; the tiff files are from automotive, aerospace, and military sources, and I am not able to use gimp to edit out any branding in the title blocks. And since I have an nda with every source, I cannot share the files without at least removing the cage code, customer branding, etc.

More unfortunately, these industries all use tiff as the sole means of document storage and transmission, so anyone working in the supply chain in these industries must be able to have some method of viewing, marking, and printing files in this format.

I just figured that gimp would have added better support for these file types, as there is a pretty large number of people needing a good software solution for this. Don't get me wrong, it is great for jpgs and pngs and facebook pictures and touching up pictures from phones, it really is excellent for that. But it just doesn't stand up to more demanding tasks. Which is fine, I was just wanting to see if it had gotten better in the past few years.

Ah, well. Back to kinkos!

Update
Filed a bug report, but was informed that it is different for files that are 50000 pixels or more in width. Ah, well.

Thanks for the assist anyway.

Michael Schumacher
2016-11-23 19:32:45 UTC (over 7 years ago)

Any plans to improve TIF support?

On 11/23/2016 07:33 PM, rpdayton wrote:

Update
Filed a bug report,

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=774941

but was informed that it is different for files that are 50000 pixels or more in width.

No, this is not what you were informed about.

The width and height of the files in pixels was asked for because the error message on export was very specifically pointing that out to be an issue.

A test performed to check if this size might not matter ("Does not seem to matter (it is any tif file)"), with a much smaller file (in terms of width and height, in pixels), did prove that you can export such files - so it is no problem with e.g. libtiff that would prevent you from exporting anything.

We're now at "Large files can't be printed or exported to TIFF". Note that these two actions do not necessarily have to be connected.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD
2016-11-23 21:54:37 UTC (over 7 years ago)
postings
4

Any plans to improve TIF support?

Perhaps I've mis-spoken.
Government contractors must follow a mil spec for digital storage of technical drawings. The common term is "blueprint," but that word is actually used specifically for the old ammonia-stenched physical paper dimensioned drawings. The modern-day term is "Drawing," and they are now generated by a CAD 3D modelling package. As such, they are dimensionally accurate, monochrome files, and can (in some cases) be used as a gauge to compare the physical part to by laying the part on the printed-out drawing. This means the drawings (the digital copy) is essentially a picture of the CAD drawing, stored at 1:1. This picture is a perfect candidate for a vector-specific file type, but the mil spec mandates that all dimensionally - accurate files be stored in a 1:1 losless format, specifically TIFF. So every component of every government-contracted piece of hardware has a TIF file for distribution. Every rivet on every fighter jet, every hinge pin on every vehicle door, and every pipe fitting in the Pentagon has a TIFF file, and they've digitized their libraries going back decades. Because the automotive and aerospace industries cross paths regularly, those industries have their own specs as well, including the commercial side of their business. So Ford, GMC, Chrysler, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, and so on, and their suppliers (All the way down to a hardware chain) also conduct their manufacturing contracting in TIFF. In the Automotive and Aerospace supply chain, the majority of these drawings are scaled at 48" height, and somewhere around 48" to 240" width depending on the component(s), and file sizes of 1-2 meg are pretty standard. I've never worked with TIFF files for any reason other than working with engineering drawings. A project manager at Kodak told me even they moved away from that format several years ago. I honestly cannot imagine the TIFF format is used for many other purposes. The first step is to create a 'reference' copy of the drawing file in a format that can be worked with more easily. Adding manufacturing notes, tabulated references to every dimension for inspection purposes, and so on - this is nearly impossible to do with the native TIFF format, but relatively simple with SVG or even PDF. We have an open account with our local Kinkos to do these file conversions for us, as it is cheaper than purchasing a bunch of seats of Adobe. GIMP generally worked well for me with most photographs, so I suggested it at work a few years ago as a way of reducing costs. Unfortunately, it was unable to print these drawings; it would crash. Rather than crashing, GIMP was updated to generate an error box. At the time, this was a deal breaker, and we did not investigate a corporate license. I tried again earlier this week, figuring that after several years, the printing functionality would have been updated. But now the error box does not appear, it just freezes. Trying to export the file into a more user-friendly format fails because of a size error. Maybe my view is biased; there are hundreds, if not thousands, of manufacturing and engineering companies in the Cincinnati - Indianapolis - Detroit triangle that support these industries, and they all live and die by their ability to work with these files. I assumed being able to support this file format would be only natural, as this appears to be a fairly major percentage of the files using this format. I do not want to create a new TIFF file. Good lord, I'd prefer they whole system change to just transmitting CAD data, but the mil-spec forces it to be the way it is. If GIMP has a 48K (or whatever the number is) upper limit on pixel count, that is fine, I'll withdraw the bug report, as it is not actually something broken, and I will try not to assume :)

Rick Strong
2016-11-24 03:53:57 UTC (over 7 years ago)

Any plans to improve TIF support?

I very much enjoyed the precise description of your problem and the reasons behind needing a good TIFF conversion. Tiff is also a very handy format for working on art or photographs in the graphic design field, which is my speciality.

You may be interested in an online conversion service called Zamzar, which I have used with success. They convert a huge number of formats. Check out the ZAMZAR FAQ. (Disclaimer: I have no connection to the company.) It may or may not meet your needs.

http://www.zamzar.com/

Rick Strong

-----Original Message----- From: rpdayton
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2016 4:54 PM To: gimp-user-list@gnome.org
Cc: notifications@gimpusers.com
Subject: [Gimp-user] Any plans to improve TIF support?

Perhaps I've mis-spoken. Government contractors must follow a mil spec for digital storage of technical
drawings.
[snip]

Liam R. E. Quin
2016-11-24 06:32:23 UTC (over 7 years ago)

Any plans to improve TIF support?

On Wed, 2016-11-23 at 22:54 +0100, rpdayton wrote:

[...]
If GIMP has a 48K (or whatever the number is) upper limit on pixel count, that
is fine, I'll withdraw the bug report, as it is not actually something broken, and I will try not to assume :)

It appears to be unrelated to TIFF images. Instead, GIMP can't print images larger than 32767 pixels on a side (presumably signed 16-bit, which is the coordinate system that PostScript uses).

I don't know whether ImageMagick can do this; it requires some careful programming that probably isn't seen as very widely applicable.

The most common uses of TIFF I know of are from the professional graphic design and imaging worlds, because TIFF was better for interchange in the 1980s and 1990s than most other formats. These days PNG is often better. But having said that, you could open any format image and GIMP still couldn't print it if it was bigger than 32767 pixels on any side. Scale the image down before printing, maybe?

Liam