Inserting tiff files in VPE document

[nc1264]

I'm having problems when trying to insert tiff-files into VPE. Some are inserted without any problems but most of them are not. VPE does show a picture placeholder on some of the pages but the content is not present.

Is there a reason for some tiff's to fail. In the manual I have seen the following:
TIFF 6.0 (2 / 16 / 256 / HiColor / True Color
LZW, PackBits, Fax G3, Fax G4, Tiled Images, Multipage, RGBA, CMYK, RGB and Grayvalue with 16 Bits/Sample)

Is this the reason why the images are failing?

[IDEAL Software Support]

You must make sure that the format of your TIFF files is supported by VPE. There are also programs which write TIFF files with corrupted file structures.

What version of VPE are you using? You can try the current v4.0, it contains a newer and better TIFF library.

Regards
Thorsten Radde
IDEAL Software GmbH

[nc1264]

Thorsten,

I had noticed that there were differences between them. Some in size and some in background (transparent). Even when I did that to some of the other images I couldn't get it to work.
In order to resolve this I have changed the format of the images from tiff to png and that works a lot better in VPE.

I did notice that when you include these images in the VPE file (we are still using 3.5 Enterprise) that each image adds 3Mb to the filesize. The images are under 100Kb so that a little bit disturbing. I read that you have changed this behavior in 4.0. In the end we need to make a pdf file and that file is still small in size so this is not really an issue.

Thanks!

[IDEAL Software Support]

Please see this article: http://idealsoftware.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=445

It explains why v3.x VPE document files with embedded images can become huge in size: images are stored as uncompressed bitmaps in VPE document files. In addition a bitmap is embedded as often in the file as it appears in the document.

VPE v4.0 has been reworked and images are embedded with their original compressed data. Furthermore BMP, WMF and EMF are zlib compressed by VPE to save space. In addition a bitmap is embedded only once, regardless of how many times it appears in the document.

The TIF importer of VPE v3.x is already very good and fault tolerant. So we can not confirm your generalization that "many TIF files" do not work. It should read "many of your TIF files" do not work.

With what software are those files created? Please send a sample file to our support e-mail address (don't forget "VPE" in the subject). We want to see why v3.50 can not import it and if v4.0 can do.

Regards
Thorsten Radde
IDEAL Software GmbH

[nc1264]

Thorsten,

I will send you the examples of the files, I have switched all of them to png and the problem has been resolved. Don't put too much effort into this.

I have seen that some are compressed and some are not. I don't have the proper tools to check the content of the tiff in order to determine if there is a pattern to it.

Thanks,
Ron

[IDEAL Software Support]

The TIF images you sent me are LZW compressed. This compression algorithm was patented by Unisys until July 2004. Older versions of VPE did not allow to import or export such images unless you specified the flag PIC_ALLOW_LZW to the Picture() method. By using this flag you indicated that you had a license agreement with Unisys to use their patented technology. This was well documented in the manuals and helpfiles of older versions of VPE (including v3.50).

Starting with VPE v3.60 - which was released at the end of 2004 - the flag was no longer required, because the patent had expired.

This is a very good example, which demonstrates that software patents are only good for the big software companies, which exchange their patent portfolios. Small and medium sized software companies can neither afford to pay patent licenses nor - and even more worse - are they capable of researching any and every technology or algorithm, if it might violate a patent.

Regarding LZW, this compression algorithm was used in TIF (and many other software) for about ten years before Unisys started to claim their patent rights. At that time LZW compressed TIF files were widely used in the market.

Regards
Thorsten Radde
IDEAL Software GmbH

[nc1264]

Thorsten,

I also noticed that some were compressed with LZW. The note in the manual did not catch my attention. As mentioned earlier, I have saved the tiff's as png's and the problem has been resolved.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Ron