Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with jpg

Can deleted image data be recovered?

aerotive — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 08:41:26 -0800

Is it possible to recover portions of an image that have been cropped or cut away? And if so, how to prevent that? Every so often I will put a picture online with potentially sensitive info removed, things like receipts on a shopping site, or maybe an item with a serial number on ebay/craigslist.
I usually use a program called irfanview to cut/crop, here's an example of such an image:

http://imgur.com/d7Q1h

Can the text that was in the black bar be undeleted? I'm pretty confident the answer is no, but I want to be sure. (the sample text is random/not sensitive).

Thanks

Assemble JPGs into a PDF?

Egg Shen — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:10:09 -0800

I have a folder of JPG files. I want to create a PDF with one of those JPGs on each page. I don't want to spend any money. I am using a Windows computer. I know could insert each JPG into a Word document, followed by a page break, and then save the document as a PDF. But I'm hoping there is free software that will make it easier.

How to automatically degrade jpg quality to fit in a given space

Infernarl — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:44:37 -0800

How can I compress/resize thousands of jpgs to fit exactly into the space of a DVD automatically? I have about 10,000 scanned notebook pages saved as jpgs. The average size per file is 1.5mb and the average resolution in 2000px x 3000px. Is there some way to automatically compress the images so that they will all fit exactly on a DVD? The images are largely handwritten notebook pages. I am on a mac and I have Photoshop and Toast but would be willing to buy software to do exactly this thing. This is an ongoing project and the number of files will increase at some point (Think dvd version 1, version 1.1 etc). Ideally I would be able to compress/resize the images from the masters and produce a disk image that I could then burn on to multiple DVDs. These DVDs will then be given to people for viewing on regular home computers. The files are organized in to folders based on notebook volume with an average of 100 files per folder. What is the best way to do this?

Export a list of file names and "date picture taken"

sleevener — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:07:15 -0800

For a given folder full of images, I want to export a list of file names and corresponding "date picture taken" values. NOT "date created," NOT "date modified." I'd like the file in .csv or .txt format. Can the Windows command line do this? Failing that, some freeware EXIF-reader program? Thanks! By the way, this program claims to be able to export EXIF data as .txt or .xml, but I'm unable to figure out how. I haven't found any other programs that claim to do this.

Tra la la la la, la la la ouch

zadcat — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:50:10 -0800

What pixel dimensions are optimum for either a flat jpeg or PDF file meant to be circulated as a Christmas greeting card image, attached in email to a wide variety of recipients?

How can I view JPG comments on a Mac?

Joleta — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:51:15 -0800

How can I view the comments in my JPG files, on a Mac? I have a bunch of family photos (JPGs) that have interesting comments viewable on a PC when you right-click on a file and select Properties and then the Summary tab. I can view, change, create and save these comments on a PC, but I can't figure out how to view the comments on a Mac. The comments don't show up with "Get Info" or "Show Extended Photo Info" in iPhoto. I'm not interested in installing a different program to record/read JPG metadata. I want to be able to give any family member a disc of these JPGs and they would be able to access the comments, whether on a PC or a Mac.

If I were to redo all the comments as descriptions in iPhoto (under Get Info), would the comments "stick" to the JPG files when I burn them to a disc or would they only be visible in my iPhoto.

Linux OCR

yoyo_nyc — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:16:16 -0800

Linux script to parse all files in file tree and submit to a program? I use a file index program (xfriend) under linux and would like it to index my jpeg and other files.

How would a script (preferably python), look that scans all my files and, depending on the file type, submits the file to linux OCR cuneiform and spits out a *.txt file for each relevant file?

Is there a program (preferably free) that would allow me to shrink a ton of JPEG pictures at once?

AZNsupermarket — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:42:41 -0800

Is there a program (preferably free) that would allow me to shrink a ton of JPEG pictures at once? I constantly need to shrink a large number of high resolution JPEG files to under 1 MB every day for work. Right now I need to shrink each file one at a time, and this is very time consuming. Is there a program (preferably free) that would allow me to shrink all the JPEG pictures at once?

Saving hundreds of images from the internet manually

fire&wings — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:59:29 -0800

Simple, free mass image download program, specifics of situation within.. The website is a single html page. This page has several hundred text links which link directly to .jpg files. I basically need a program which will grab these jpg's in the background as simply as possible without me having to access and save the files manually. Basically paste in the main url and let it go?

I know such programs exist but my fairly clueless search terms dont seem to bring up a simple, free solution. Any recommendations?

Resources about how the details of image storage?

figTree — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:50:19 -0800

I need online resources that go delve into image storage theory without assuming I am an expert in programming. I have been to date working with images on a high level API scripting, and often wonder why certain operations are so tricky under the hood (converting between different byte storage, applying a color ramp, factors that affect how the image is displayed versus what data the image contains...) There are in fact many functions in various programs that do operations on images that output garbage or are hard to customize.

I have not found satisfactory learning resources about image storage algorithms, compressions, conversions, etc. I am especially looking for examples and comparisons in .tif , .jpg .gif, anything really. Also, i would not mind learning how to make my own extension for images (obviously not as fast or good, but it would be good to learn about).

any good resources for these types of questions? good forums? good books? thanks mf!

Help me rid my jpgs of this nasty color profile.

khelvan — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:14:32 -0800

How can I get rid of a custom color profile from my .jpgs without changing their color? Hello, I have a series of .jpgs I would like to stitch together into a time-lapse video. Unfortunately it seems my camera added a custom color profile to the .jpgs, and even though I was able to make the video my brilliant blues have turned into dull green/yellows. Even though image viewers see the picture correctly, during the encoding process the colors get messed up.

What options do I have in getting rid of the custom color profile (I'm not sure that is what it is, I was told that by someone)? I tried using imagemagick to convert to .png, but it still had the custom color profile causing it to look poorly in the video, so I'm not sure what to do next.

Thanks!

Auto-text for jpeg

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:43:35 -0800

Is there a straightforward way of adding text to a jpeg semi-automatically? I have a series of jpegs that are produced from a simulation that represent a system at various time intervals. I want to make a simple video by putting these together but I'm not sure how to add the time caption to each jpeg. There is no way of generating it within the program I am using. It is a series of 40 images, so I can do it manually but I'm interested to learn about any alternatives.

(I have access to photoshop, windows xp, mac osx and ubuntu)

Best practices for photo metadata?

DevilsAdvocate — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:14:09 -0800

Best practices for recording photo metadata? What I'd like to be able to do inside, plus many questions about what's possible today or likely to be possible in the future. Let's start with my ideal vision: I'd like to be able to record various metadata within image files, and have them automatically and correctly transferred to photo-sharing websites, apps, etc., that I might upload/import said images to. The basic idea is that I'd like to associate the metadata with each photo once, so if I upload them to Flickr today, and to Smugmug in six months, and a website or app which doesn't exist today two years from now, I only have to enter all the metadata once and don't have to re-enter it for each new website/app I'm using.

The particular information I'd like to be able to record includes:
*Time/Date, ideally including time zone, although the EXIF specification doesn't record time zone
*Location, from GPS data (lat./long./alt.)
*Title
*Caption (or call these two "short caption" and "long caption" or whatever you want; the point is that in some places a description of a few words is appropriate, for some several sentences may be; I'd like to be able to record both)
*Keywords, a.k.a. tags (but subject tags, a la Flickr, not to be confused with the metadata fields in general which are also sometimes called tags)
*Copyright statement
*License statement (e.g., a Creative Commons license)

I've seen this website and these guidelines. From the latter I gather there's three standards in at least moderate use, EXIF, IPTC-IIM, and XMP. I know websites such as Flickr and Smugmug currently read EXIF data and make use of some of the fields; are there any that read IPTC-IIM or XMP? Is this likely in the future? Is it worth even bothering to try to record metadata in IPTC-IIM or XMP? If so, any suggestions for tools to use (under Windows XP and/or Vista)? I have an EXIF editor, so I don't need recommendations for one of those, but if there are tools which allow one to edit EXIF plus one or both of the others, I'd be interested

Date/time and GPS data are already pretty well in place. Date/time is recorded in EXIF by the camera when I take the picture (except for not encoding a time zone), and I've managed to figure out how to geotag them in bulk in the EXIF data if I have a GPS log. And date/time and lat./long. are already used by Flickr and Smugmug. What about other fields (where the fields even exist)? Are titles, captions, license, etc., appropriately made use of, or do they just sit there, visible in the EXIF data but not applied further? What's the status in other websites or apps? Any ideas about what it's likely to be in the near future?

If there currently isn't a good/useful way to record some of this metadata in the image file itself, any recommendations for recording it elsewhere (in a separate file or files) so it would be relatively easy to add it to the image files if it became possible/useful in the future?

If it makes a difference, I only need to do this for JPG files. That's how they come off my point-and-shoot, so I don't have RAW files.

Any comments on the "big-picture" (heh) issues I've implicitly brought up here, or recommended reading on the topic, are welcome too even if I didn't specifically ask about them.

Updating my portfolio website and need help with web navigation, images, hosting and more.

mintchip — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:04:23 -0800

Updating my online portfolio and need help with web navigation, images, hosting and more. I would like to update my online writing portfolio, which is currently a blog hosted by Blogger. Each post is a thumbnail image along with some introductory copy. The thumbnails link to large jpg images
stored on Flikr. I want to spend a minimum of time updating my site, and I need to be able to make updates with ease. I have old versions of Photoshop and Dreamweaver at my disposal. Can you help me with these questions?

1. Navigation: On Blogger, new posts appear in date order rather than being organized by category. I am not happy with this navigation limitation. Is there any way around this without creating a whole new website independent of Blogger? I have been thinking about purchasing a domain name and then using an HTML template, but it would be easier if I didn’t have to do this. If I do need to move to a different site format, what would you recommend for a simple template and/or host?

2. Photo storage: My thumbnail images, which Blogger creates, link to Flikr photos. However, the type in these larger images isn't fully readable until the user clicks a second time (after clicking on the thumbnail), to enlarge the image to full size. I’m afraid some readers won’t do this. Is there a good solution to this? Where should I store my photos (if not on Flikr)?

3. Photo size and format: What are standard image sizes? If I abandon the blog format and create a new HTML site, how should I go about creating all of the JPGs I will need (full size, thumbnail)? What is the standard size for full size images and thumbnails and what do you recommend for a naming convention? Would PDF format be preferable? If so, what software should I use to create my PDFs, are there any standards to these, and where can I store them?

4. Should I allow people to download my writing samples, either as JPG or PDFs?

How to post cleanly one slide in a WP post?

bru — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:50:00 -0800

Is there a way to show single slides in WordPress without losing definition? I have been working on an online presentation with text and graphs on .ppt (just to be seen on computer screens).
I just want to be able to post a slide as an image in my WordPress blog so I can add text underneath if necessary.
I had tried before .ppt to .pdf to .jpg and I thought it looked good but obviously my test was not detailed enough: now with colored lines and 12pt text on the slide, I lose definition, colors are bleeding, artifacts everywhere.. the horror... the horror!

With slideshare, I have only 2 choices: small screen or full screen, with no option to display each slide separately.

Am I overlooking something basic or is there a solution I don't know about?
Note: I am not a coder but I can have something installed if necessary.

APS --> jpeg

plexi — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:34:04 -0800

Is there an online or mail service that will convert/process Advantix or APS film rolls to digital media?

Ho to make photoshop save photos?

-harlequin- — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:02:23 -0800

How can I save JPG images in Photoshop CS so that a digital camera can read them? Cheap crappy software can do this easily, but no matter what file settings I use in Photoshop, I've never been able to get any of my digital cameras to be able to read any JPG that was written by Photoshop - I have to load and re-save them with other piece of software to get them to work. Surely there is a way to make Photoshop save JPG files that cameras can read? My impression is that (naming conventions and so forth aside) there is a JPEG standard that most or nearly all cameras read, rather than every camera having it's own random special requirements.

I want a way to start saving files in that standard, because I'll be using a camera as an image storage/display device, and want to load the memory card with images and graphics in addition to photos it has taken, but right now, I have to individually process each file to do this, or the camera won't read it, and it's driving me nuts.
(I also don't want to save as RAW or TIFF)

Thanks!

Viewing very large images on a WM6 phone?

Jonathan Harford — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:59:49 -0800

How do I deal with a very large image (a map, actually) on my Windows Mobile 6 phone? I would love to be able to look at an NYC MTA map while underground (on the NYC MTA, naturally). But the picture viewer on my XV6900 complains about RAM (or is too slow to be useful) when I view my map JPG (or PNG, tried that too) at full resolution. Other imageviewers seem to have a similar problem. XnView has no memory or speed problems, but has a tendency to pixelate the map when viewed full-size.

Are there any (free/cheap) applications suitable for this task?

on the lookout for outlook help

anoirmarie — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:04:24 -0800

I'm having trouble embedding a link in a picture and emailing it from Outlook. Can anyone help me? I've tried several html codes that I've found, but I can't seem to get any to work. I want to send a picture in the body of an email that links to specific Youtube video. I'd prefer to email the video, but that doesn't seem possible. Please advise.

How can I make a rad Stop-Motion animation in Final Cut

andromache — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:31:33 -0800

How can I make a stop-motion animation in Final Cut Pro from a series of many photographs? Details inside. I have a bunch of pictures that I'd like run in time with Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King." I want to end up with a sort of stop-motion animation of these hundreds of pictures. Ideally, they'll play in time with the percussion (which speeds up--another headache).

When I drop a photo into my timeline, it automatically plays for 10 seconds, which is way too long given A. how many pix I want to show in a two-minute song and B. I want the project to have a filmic quality, and ten-second long frames don't give the illusion of motion. I can shorten their duration manually, but I'm dealing with more than a hundred shots here, but I'm guessing there's an easier way. So my question is:

How do I change my settings so that once I figure out how long (say, 14 frames) I want each picture to play, I can just drop a hundred or more of them into my timeline and they'll play for the proper duration?

Also, any tips on dealing with jpgs in FCP generally? I've played with them a bit in the program, but I've never done a project dealing exlusively with stills.

(My source files are over 100 jpgs, 1200x800px, and I need to end up with a 480x853 aspect ratio. I think I'll just have pillarboxing in my frame so as not to distort my images.)

Please ask for clarification if my query's not clear--I'll check the responses often. Thanks very much.

How do I best encode the intended audience of a photo inside a JPG file?How do I best encode the intended audience of a photo inside a JPG file?

hoverboards don't work on water — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:05:27 -0800

How do I best encode the intended audience of a photograph inside a JPG file? I have a collection of photos (about 30,000) which I would like to share. While I am happy for anyone to see most of them, there are some I only want to share with friends, some I only want to share with family, and some I want to remain private entirely - like Flickr's options.

As far as I can tell, there is no metadata standard for encoding intended audience, i.e. nothing like the IPTC or EXIF standards for encoding a caption, or the ISO speed.

My current plan is to use Digikam to simply tag photos "friends", "family", or "private", with none-of-the-above meaning everybody.

Is this the best way to do it?

How can I batch import JPEG album art into MP3s?

ilumos — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:59:17 -0800

How can I batch import album art into MP3s from JPEGs on my hard disk? Hi,

I've got a fairly extensive music collection (10,000~ tracks), and I would like to batch import album art, which I already have on my computer into the MP3's ID3 tag.

I know how to do it one by one in a few different programs, but it would be very laborious to add each and every album's art manually.

The art has the filename;

Artist - Album Title [Front].jpg

and resides in the same folder as the album.

Any help, or a point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

ilumos

insert page break into screen capture?

bbranden1 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:57:03 -0800

Printer filter: a Snagit screen capture of a web page yields an 8.5 x 22" (96dpi) document in Photoshop 7. What can I easily do (short of using Photoshop to break the one document into two 8.5 x 11" documents) in order to print it out as a two page document, thus keeping the same width? Photoshop, Snagit, and Windows Picture Viewer all want to print it all out on a single 8.5 x 11" page by shrinking the width and length, which makes the content nearly unreadable. Converting it to a PDF document yields the same result. So, what's a quick and easy way of inserting a page break where I want it into a screen capture (JPG or PNG format)? OS: Windows XP

Server-side image merge?

mwhybark — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:26:43 -0800

What are my options for including an auto-merged image file in the context of a website? Here's a quick description of the functionality I'm after:

A generic page layout which incorporates some corporate branding is assembled. The layout is then deployed over several domains and subdomains.

The key branding element is a corporate logo in the upper right and is used as a 'home' navigation element, just as Matt uses the Metafilter logos on these sites.

The logo, however, should render on demand and then remain as a server-side cached element, and the rendering should add either the fully-qualified domain for the specific site - or - a titling element which can be defined by an administrator.

In summary, the textual elements should be 'stamped' onto the logo image. Ideally the textual elements would appear to be a part of the design of the logo and adhere to professional type-design-and-display standards with arbitrary font definition, reasonable kerning, antialiasing, consistent baseline control, and so forth.

Flash-based solutions are acceptable, probably. Server-side solutions that rely on roll-your-own code to call ImageMagick are probably out; an off-the-shelf script that uses ImageMagick might be acceptable (I will need to verify that ImageMagick is available within the hosted environment). Java-based and Quicktime solutions are not acceptable.

Photoshop cannot open cr2 and jpg files in a single folder on an external harddrive

msbrauer — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:57:42 -0800

I can no longer open a number of raw and jpg files in a single folder on an external harddrive. What's going on? Is my harddrive about to die? Between some time last night and sometime this morning, a folder of pictures on my external harddrive has become almost entirely unusable. I'm using photoshop cs2 on windows xp.

The pictures are all .cr2 raw files from a canon 5d digital camera. My workflow involves tagging and color coding the pictures I want to tone and edit, and once I'm done with the editing, saving a new jpg with the same filename as the original with an additional identifier that it's an edited version. I spent a little while working on the folder (toning in photoshop and captioning in photo mechanic) and then left the harddrive alone and turned off for the night.

When I opened the folder in photomechanic today, a majority but not all of the files (both the cr2's and the jpg's) would not display. When I open the files in photoshop cs2, I get errors. For the cr2 files, photoshop says "could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document." For the jpg's: "could not complete your request because an unknown or invalid JPEG marker type is found."

Some jpeg's and cr2's in the folder work, and as near as I can tell, all other jpeg's and cr2's on the drive open without a hitch, as well. As such, I don't think this is not a problem related to my raw plugin. In some cases, the cr2 opens, but the edited version, a jpg, does not open.

There's a possibility that, last night, while working on the offending files, the drive quit responding (could not do the "safely remove hardware" thing) and had to be restarted.

Though I have backups of these files on dvd's, I'm still concerned. Is this a larger problem with my harddrive? Is it only a problem with these particular files that won't crop up elsewhere on the drive or my computer?

Is there a way to fix the offending files?