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Archiver > SOG-UK > 1999-03 > 0920380840


From: Roy Stockdill <>
Subject: [SOG-UK-L] HELP re a Tiff file & Windows 98
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 08:20:40 -0500


CAN any of you folks who have recently upgraded to Windows 98, or bought a
new computer with Windows 98 already installed, help with a problem? I
would like to know, is the program called "Imaging" part of the Windows 98
package or a separate graphics/scanning program from a different manucturer
to Microsoft? The reason I ask is because...

Someone has sent me for the Journal of One-Name Studies some floppy discs
with TIFF files on them from scans done in Imaging, I have been unable to
open any of them, even though my Acorn Risc PC (with a second processor PC
card) can normally open and read/write just about anything. Surely TIFF is
a standard, universally compatible format which should open into any
graphics program? I have never had a problem opening one before. Yet,
though the directory display clearly shows these are TIFF files, I cannot
open them and I have tried at least 6 different programs, including Adobe
Photoshop, Paintbrush and Xara Studio in PC mode in Windows 95, and the
Acorn equivalent of Photoshop, Photodesk. When I try opening the files in
Adobe Photoshop, I get an error message saying "Your request cannot be
completed because the Tiff file contains an unsupported color space"
(whatever that is). All the other programs I have tried produce different
error messages - and the same thing happens with each of the 4 files.

Anyway, last night I had an inspiration and called on my next door
neighbour because I knew he has a new computer with Windows 98 on it. He
had Imaging on the computer and, sure enough, the files opened up perfectly
in it! What does this mean? Does it mean that the wretched Mr.
"Downright-bloody-greedy" Gates has perpetrated yet another con trick on
the gullible computer public by ensuring that things created in a Windows
98 program don't work in anything else, even though Tiff is, or should be,
a widely compatible file format? I phoned MS Support and they assured me
they had not done so. When I told them the files wouldn't open in Photoshop
they suggested it must be a problem with that program and that I call
Adobe. But the files won't open into any other program, either, except, as
I said, Imaging in Windows 98!

My neighbour is happy for me to use his computer to open up the files, then
try and export them in some other format that will work in Windows 95 - but
what??? I didn't have time last night to study the Help files in Imaging,
but does anyone who has used the program know if there is a way of
exporting files from it that will work in other programs? Any theories
(other than suggesting that I install Windows 98!)?

Roy Stockdill, Layout/design co-ordinator, The Journal of One-Name Studies
The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS)
Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:-
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystoc

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