Exporting field contents - images to be opened in Photoshop

[aislinn]

Hi there!

I have received an .fp5 database containing loads of images. Since I do not have a version below FM 8.5, it has now been converted to .fp7.

The pictures need to be used in a book (the database was provided to me by the author). According to the author, he entered the images in high quality jpg-format. However, when I now try to export the images to work on (scripted), I am encountering some problems.

- When I add no file extension to the pic name, the file type is not recognized.

- When I add a .jpg-extension, the file can be opened in Preview but not in Adobe Photoshop (error: unknown or invalid JPEG marker is found). Similar errors with extensions .png, .psd, ...

- When I add a .pct-extension, the file can be opened in preview and in Photoshop, but it opens as a low resolution pic (72 dpi), whereas for print a minimum of 300 dpi is required. This could be changed manually but may result in a loss of quality.

All suggestions are welcome!

Can anyone shed some light as to how Filemaker actually stores images? I cannot find any useful info on this.

[comment]

When you control-click into the container field, and choose 'Export Field Contents…' - what is the file extension as suggested by Filemaker?

Also - on what platform is the author?

Edited November 9, 2008 by Guest

[aislinn]

When you control-click into the container field, and choose 'Export Field Contents…' - what is the file extension as suggested by Filemaker?

When I manually tested, it suggested the .pct file extension. Found this strange as author claims to have inserted them as .jpg.

Also - on what platform is the author?

Apparently, he's also running on Mac, don't know which version though.

[comment]

Anything is possible here. I think it would be more productive to ask the author to send you the original images directly, rather than trying to figure out what exactly happened and how to undo it (if at all possible).

[aislinn]

Thanks for your feedback! That seems to be the most straightforward solution to me as well.

I was just trying to figure out what went wrong and where so I could advise him for possible future projects.

[comment]

Well, that should be simple enough: don't stick the results of your hard work into places where you're not sure what happens to them. That applies equally to Filemaker container (when embedded as image) as it does to the JPEG format.

[Vaughan]

From memory, FMP 6 and earlier internally stores images as PICT format (which is suggested by the .pct extension).

Other file formats like jpegs were internally converted to PICT in the database.

[comment]

I don't think that's universally true. But there are JPEGs and there are JPEGs, and there was this 'Store compatible' thing, so who knows what happened… Perhaps the images were pasted instead of inserted.