Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with tiff

Scoring special tickets at TIFF

Cyrie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:11:13 -0800

Does anyone know if members of the general public can buy/get tickets to "special presentations" of films at the Toronto International Film Festival? I have never been to TIFF, but I see that Whip It* is premiering at the fest in September as a special presentation. A couple of girlfriends and I would love to go, but none of us have been the fest before and we don't really know how it works. The ticket info page on the TIFF site is a bit unclear if the ticket packages let you include a special presentation showing. I get a feeling that the way it is being presented means that it's sort of an exclusive thing.

Anyone out there with more knowledge about how TIFF works that could lend any tips, or is this a lost cause and we should just plan our roller derby costume viewing for the wide release date?

*(the roller derby movie with Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore, shut up, it's going to be awesome)

Firefox, Adobe and tiffs, oh my!

pasici — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:11:02 -0800

How do I tell Firefox to use the Adobe Acrobat plug in to view tiff files? For my work, I get sent a lot of CD-ROMs that contain tiff files. I would like to set my Firefox settings so that I automatically open and view these tiff files with Firefox's Adobe Acrobat plug in, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to tell Firefox to do that using the Applications settings in the Tool/Options menu. The only option the Applications settings gives me is Adobe, not the plug in. It says I can browse for other applications, but I can't figure out how to browse for the plug ins. Any help immensely appreciated.

TIFF to PDF

[expletive deleted] — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:49:52 -0800

What is the best way to convert large batches of multi-page TIFFs to PDF? Currently, we are using a pdf printer that cannot process multiple files as a batch, nor, strangely, can it retain the file name of the document it is being printed from. I don't want to print thousands of documents to PDF one by one, and copy-pasting to keep the filename. A standalone program designed for batch processing would be ideal. I did find this program, but I couldn't find any reviews of this company's products, and I'm somewhat leery of installing their trial version at work.

Converting .pub to .tif

etc. — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:41:27 -0800

I need to send files to a print shop in tiff format. I know I've done it before, but can't seem to figure it out now: How do you convert a MS Publisher file to tiff format? Online resources suggest a "save as," but there is no tiff choice on the "save as" menu. Following the instructions in the Publisher "help" files only gets me a black-and-white tiff. The print shop people keep giving me suggestions via email, but they are clearly guessing, and their guesses aren't working.

Best Windows TIFF combiner?

yesno — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:46:52 -0800

What is the best Windows TIFF combiner? I was asked for advice on combining thousands of TIFFS (scans of documents in a legal discovery) into one, manageable file. I rarely use Windows, and the world of Windows software is vast and scary compared to my usual universe.

I don't know if TIFFs can be multi-page, but it probably seems like the resulting file would be overly large. Therefore, I'm looking for a program that can combine the TIFFs into PDFs in three different ways: One, into a non-OCR'd, image only PDF that is legible, but where the images aren't unreasonably large; Two, into an OCR'd image, where the text is "behind" the original image but you just see the original image in order to minimize the effect of any errors; and Three, into a purely OCR'd text document.

Need magic to convert PDF to Excel

bartleby — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:46:56 -0800

OCRfilter: any software that will take a PDF and convert it to Excel? I'm looking something that will take a PDF or a TIFF of an account statement or the like (columns of numbers) and convert it to Excel.

I know nothing's going to be even close to perfect, but even getting a csv file will al least save time to ke-key every single number into Excel. Clean up and tweaking can happen after the numbers themselves are in there.

Anyone use anything that does this?

Source for Stella ad?

greatgefilte — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:09:33 -0800

In Toronto, on the southeast corner of Bloor and Avenue Road/Queens Park, there's a Stella Artois/TIFF ad on a billboard that reads "Edited to perfection," with the image of a knife smoothing out the head of the beer. Anyone know which agency created the ad and/or how I would go about getting a copy (smaller, of course)?

Make my boss love me!

thatguyryan — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:51:09 -0800

I need to impress my non tech-savvy new boss, save her money, and open new business opportunities. Is there a free (perhaps open source) or inexpensive *easy to use* program for Win XP to convert DWG files to TIFF? I have found a few programs in the 60-85 dollar range. However I thought that someone here may have some recommendations or point to something I haven't seen. Thank you so much.

Image Header Manipulation

fluffycreature — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:22:04 -0800

EXIF IPTC &tc. - need method to read/write in programmatic way I am working on a project that will require the reading/writing of TIFF headers for 1000s of image files. This will be ongoing and I want to be able to touch the headers of TIFF files and someday RAW files. The EXIF and IPTC formats are of particular interest.

Anyone aware of programming modules for PERL or some other language that allows for this? I will combine information from databases to inject to the image file and read from them.

Thanks...

How to compress existing tiff files with lzw compression

Wild_Eep — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:01:52 -0800

What UNIX command-line tool can I used to convert tiff files to lzw-compressed tiff files. I have some 24bit color tiff files whose file size is "too large" for the project I'm working on. I need a command line (or PHP) tool that I can use to turn these uncompressed tiff files into compressed-via-lzw tiff files. I'm hoping for a 4x reduction in file size.

What say ye, MeFites?

How do I get a Background image (watermark) in MS Word 2003 to actually print as B&W (not GREEN)?

criticman — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:48:28 -0800

How do I get a Background image (watermark) in MS Word 2003 to actually print as B&W (not GREEN)? I have been going crazy trying to get grayscale image to actually print out as such when set as a Background image in MS Word 2003.

I am trying to produce a template for the employees here to use for when they print to PDF and email a document instead of printing it out directly to letterhead. They want it to look identical to the printed letterhead.

I replicated the dimensions and content of the header and footer without any issues. I even took our logo to the proper dimensions for use as a background.

I did a lot of testing and through adjusting the brightness levels in Photoshop, I got the logo to print (from Photoshop) to match that of the printed letterhead.

I then go into MS Word 2003, select Format -> Background -> Printed Watermark. I click Select Picture, select the image, hit OK, leave the scale at 100% and leave Washout unchecked (I tried with it checked and it does not fix the color issue nor does it take a non-faded logo to a soft enough fade.

When I print it to a color laser printer (the same one I printed to from Photoshop), the background image is a light green, not a faded B&W.

I then realized that even though I took it down to grayscale in Photoshop, when I reopened the .BMP bitmap file, it reverted to Indexed instead of grayscale. I then saved to TIF and JPG. The JPEG holds the grayscale when I reopen it in any other program, including Photoshop, so I selected it in Word as the background. Not surprisingly, when I printed it again from Word, it was green.

So, how can I force Word to maintain the colors of the background image (watermark) instead of taking it to an indexed or RGB color format that results in the green printing?

Creating web site from TIFs using ImageReady or Fireworks?

spock — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 06:56:31 -0800

I offered to help a professional photographer friend make his web site, but I don't normally do it like THIS: He is a Photoshop wizard and has created how he wants his pages to look using that. He gave me a CD full of pages as TIFs. Is there a quick/easy way to make sites from TIFs using ImageReady or Fireworks? Pointers, links, tutorials, ect. GREATLY appreciated. (I realize that this does not result in the optimal site, but the guy wants it to look like he wants it to look). (Not finding what I'm looking for with Google, for some reason.)

What (free) Windows program will convert a CMYK TIFF to a lossless CMYK JPEG2000?

krisjohn — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 23:14:54 -0800

What (free) Windows program will convert a CMYK TIFF to a lossless CMYK JPEG2000, assuming JPEG2000 can cope with CMYK? If possible, I'd like to avoid having to know how JPEG2000 works just to be able choose the right settings.

Scanning service for Blueprints (in Chicago)?

Steve_at_Linnwood — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 16:08:14 -0800

I have blueprints that I need scanned on to disc. (jpeg, tiff, something like that) Any ideas where to go? (In Chicagoland) The obvious answer to me was Kinkos, but they don't apparently have the equipment. HELP!

What to see at the Toronto Film Festival

dobbs — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 09:51:48 -0800

Selecting things to see at the Toronto Film Fest. Here's a list of films playing at TIFF. International MeFites and film nuts: have you seen/heard anything about any of them/the directors? What should a TIFF-goer see or avoid? If you're going to the Fest, what are you seeing? Got extra tickets you want to sell? Looking for ones to buy? Lets use the thread to maximize the event. {more} I wasn't expecting to be going this year and am very unprepared. I've scrounged up 16 tickets so far. Since it's way short of my usual industry/festival pass, I want to use them wisely and am therefore asking for suggestions. Thanks!

(If any MeFites work for TIFFG and can help finagle me a (non-free) Industry (pref) or Festival pass, I'd sure appreciate an email and my lips will be sealed and I'd exnay on anything but screenings.)

Differences between digital photo formats

Fupped Duck — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 05:34:28 -0800

[Digiphotography] Is there a difference between a digital photo taken in an lossless file format such as uncompressed TIFF vs. RAW Format?

Free software for manipulating TIFF images?

Jimbob — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:35:29 -0800

What's some good, preferably free software for manipulating TIFF images? [more inside] Some image analysis software I'm using is quite old and not so user friendly. It only works on images in TIFF format, and only in some very specific format of TIFF, otherwise it throws up "Tag errors". The Gimp appears unable to output TIFF images that satisfy it, but the Windows shareware program "Graphic Converter 2003" manages to generate appropriate files, albiet with a watermark that makes all image analysis futile. Although I may have to end up registering Graphic Converter, I'm wondering if there are any free tools for powerfully manipulating the TIFF image format?