Windows 2003 Server and ImageMagick TIFF Support

cinderelmo · December 2nd, 2008, 04:53 PM

I've hit a wall with my installation of the latest version of PhotoPost - and I'm 99.9% done. To complete it I absolutely need to have the ability to use TIFF images and thus I absolutely need to have ImageMagick installed properly. As anyone who has followed this path knows, there is a dearth of information here as to how to get TIFF support successfully on a Windows box.

Photpost 6.2
ImageMagick-6.4.6-8-Q16-windows-dll.exe
PHP 5.2.6
MySQL 5.0.67

I have no problems uploading PNG, JPG, GIF, etc., but TIF images still aren't working properly.

I've done a lot of research here and I think I've eliminated all the simple solutions. When I upload a TIFF image (uncompressed) to the system, it will upload the full version (as expected), create a medium image (as expected), and a thumb (as expected). The problem is that it doesn't seem to want to convert these reduced TIFF images into JPGs so that they can be viewed on a web browser. The net result is that my gallery shows only the red X denoting broken images. I get no error messages of any kind, even with Photopost's debug option turned on in the admin panel. If I look at properties of these broken images, it shows the proper path to the relevant directories in photopost (ie medium/thumbs/etc.) but they are the paths to the TIFF files.

I've done some command line testing and I can use the convert and mogrify commands on TIFF images with no problem. I can convert a tiff image into a jpg image. I can see that the tiff delegate is loaded by doing "convert -list configure" at the command line.

In short, I feel confident that everything is working properly except for whatever function of Photopost's upload feature which instructs the system to convert the tiff images to jpgs so they are web-viewable. I'm assuming when this is working I will see thumbnails as jpgs for tiff images, but as I've never seen it work I don't really know what to expect.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

Chuck S · December 3rd, 2008, 10:39 AM

Please post urls here to your gallery with these images. I am not sure the software is suppose to convert the actual tif to a jpg at least I never remember this.

cinderelmo · December 3rd, 2008, 01:42 PM

My installation is on an internal network.

I guess my next question is - has anyone used Photopost to upload TIFF images, and if so, how are they displayed in the software? A web browser cannot display a native tiff image...

Chuck S · December 3rd, 2008, 05:54 PM

I have not tried this in many years myself but they use to display.

cinderelmo · December 3rd, 2008, 11:15 PM

I've spent considerable time trying to get TIFFs to work on my installation with no luck. Is there any way I can get confirmation that TIFFs can in fact be used with Photopost and how they are viewable on a browser if they are? Many thanks.

Michael P · December 4th, 2008, 11:39 AM

I'm not aware that we do anything to try and convert TIF images into JPGs; that would have to be something that would have to be coded into image-inc.php to handle.

cinderelmo · December 4th, 2008, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael P

I'm not aware that we do anything to try and convert TIF images into JPGs; that would have to be something that would have to be coded into image-inc.php to handle.

Can you please explain how TIFF support works then? If a TIFF image is put into the system, exactly how does it show up in a browser? Can you show me an example of someone using Photopost with tiff images? Others have referenced tiff images on this forum so I know they are using them.

Thanks for your time.

cinderelmo · December 8th, 2008, 03:27 PM

I hate to be a pest, but I have a client waiting for me to answer this. It should be an easy question. If Photopost supports TIF images, how are they displayed in Photopost since browsers cannot display TIFs? Is there a demo here on the site which shows TIFs in the system? Has this been tested anywhere?

Thanks.

Chuck S · December 8th, 2008, 05:14 PM

I beleive from what I see they are displayed as tifs but Michael would need to answer that. Was it that older browsers could display tif's and newer ones can not? I seem to remember personally along time ago I was able to display tif's in a browser using photopost but that was a while ago.

cinderelmo · December 9th, 2008, 08:52 AM

Thanks Chuck. If you could ping Michael to check this thread I would appreciate it. Before I spend more time and money to troubleshoot my end I need to have 100% confirmation how TIFs function in the system. I'd really like to see someone with tif images in their installation of photopost. That would answer the question immediately.

Thanks again for the help.

cinderelmo · December 11th, 2008, 01:35 PM

Michael? Anyone? Surely someone is using TIFs with this program and can explain how it shows up. No browser that I'm aware of natively supports tiff images which is why a working example of this is so important to solving this mystery for me.

cinderelmo · December 15th, 2008, 04:45 PM

I hate to keep popping in here to ask, but I've got a client asking me every day about this and I'm dead in the water until I see confirmation as to how tifs are displayed in this software. Any help would be appreciated.

Chuck S · December 15th, 2008, 05:32 PM

I have emailed Michael this thread for him to respond since he is the actual developer for that software product. All I can state is that tif files are uploaded and treated like any other image that I see.

basically if you cant process tif's all you need to do is take it out of the allowable image types. I know on like 99.5% of installs most do not do tiff's since not all Imagemagick installs support that and GD2 does not allow tif.

Michael P · December 15th, 2008, 05:43 PM

We don't have any special handling to TIFFs; images may be processed by IM, but that doesnt mean it changes the filetype. As I said above, a change would have to be made to support converting one filetype to another for display purposes.

cinderelmo · December 16th, 2008, 01:45 PM

I appreciate you guys trying to help, but I think this is being over complicated. I don't want to turn off tif support because that is the ONLY image type I'm using...so I have to make it work. Photopost supposedly supports tif images and I just want to see a working example of a tif image being displayed in the software. Even if you do it successfully on your internal network - I just want someone to verify conclusively that tifs display in a browser using this software.

Otherwise, what I'm hearing is that Photopost handles tiff images internally, but it does not display them except with broken x's since by all indications tiff images will not display natively in any browser.

cinderelmo · December 23rd, 2008, 02:24 PM

All I want for Christmas is to see a working example of a TIFF image uploaded and displaying properly using this software.

Chuck S · December 23rd, 2008, 04:03 PM

To my knowledge Michael has answered your question in that we do not rename tif files as jpeg's

cinderelmo · December 24th, 2008, 12:02 PM

I don't know why I didn't try this weeks ago. Leaving the server as is, I installed Gallery 2.3 to see how it handles tiff images. I configured it to use my install of ImageMagick (with tiff module) and it worked flawlessly. It creates jpg thumbnails of TIFF images exactly as I need and simultaneously creates a link where you can download the unaltered original tiff image. I really tried to use Photopost, but I can't waste anymore time getting it to work as it should.