Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hello,

A file I just created with Photoshop gets an “image read error” in Qimage studio version 2010.208.

The size of the tif file is 496,135kb
The size of the psd file is 780,086kb

There are no alpha channels or layers stored in the files. I did a search on this and came up empty. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks

Justan,

The first thing that comes to mind is this screen on saving a TIFF.
See attached screen snap.
See that the items Pixel order and byte order especially, are set correctly.

Fred

Hi and thank you for the quick reply! 

The settings are as shown above. I also checked and have no alpha channels in use nor do I have any guides on, which I've found in the past to cause problems for qimage. But I'm thinking it is something along these lines.

I work with panos and have lots of them, many of which have substantially bigger files sizes that i've used as recently as today. One thing of note is that the source document, a tif file with layers, complained at one point about being at the 4GB limit for tiff files. Does Qimage have any problems with CS5 and anything that may be in a single layer tiff or psd file? This is probably too general a question but it's a place to start.

Baffled by this one....

Let's get a read!

Click HELP, then hold the SHIFT KEY down when you click Analyze Current Settings
Then we need the numbers that show up.

Fred

Start: 764 MB
Addl: 448 MB
Now: 256 MB

It’s definitely an odd one. I opened the file in cs3 and can print from there. Tried to save as a 1 layer tif and psd from cs3 and while the saves were successful, qimage still gives image read failure.

Justen,
Thank you for the report.


This is definitely insufficient resources of your computer.
You need to either get more memory into the equation or turn off a bunch of stuff that is hogging the memory.

Which Windows version are you running?
Some of the folks on here can advise you on tricks on certain Windows versions where you can squeeze more memory usage from Windows.
It's a switch in XP I believe.

I have no special high powered computer. Mine is well over 3 years old, with 4 gigs of Ram, running W7 and my readings are: See Screen snap attached.

So until we get some decent readings, we are not going to even look at the files.
Try typing MSCONFIG into the the Windows Command Prompt which will bring up a box. See second screen snap.
Your Antivirus program *does* need to load on startup, so leave those type of programs alone.
Then see third screen snap, and try to uncheck programs that do not need to run all the time.
For example, Photo Shop does not need to run and hog memory when not in use.  It will still open and run on demand as usual from the desktop icon.
Same for many others.
Then reboot.
Retry the resources test in Qimage.

Fred

Thanks again for this feedback. The computer is an XP box (x32) with 4gb of ram, of which about 3.5 g is identified by the system. The startup programs are minimal as it goes. The computer uses about 320 MB after boot, according to task manager. I did a reboot and the Qimage numbers were much higher but still it would not read the image.

This image is very wide. Photoshop measures it at 17195 x 3693 pixels, (12.31” x 57.31”). Does Qimage have any issues due to the image width?

Don’t know off hand if I've done a longer tif before but this is not even close to the largest tif file I work with by way of byte count. Qimage has no problem opening or working with images of a larger overall file sizes. I have 5 of them in the same directory as this one, which are between about 800 MB and 3.5 GB and Qimage works fine with those. This one is a comparatively small ~ 780 MB.

Justan,

Here is a link to a thread that helped me. Lots of great information.

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/what's-qimage-ultimate-max-image-size/msg9483/#msg9483

Hi,
But they or something else is using a large proportion of the memory. Have you actually run MSCONFIG as Fred suggested?
You could try using the 3GB switch for XP; that will increase the available memory. You'll have to Google for information about it.
No.
That is equivalent to 190503405 (17195 * 3693 * 3) for RGB) so even with your poor resources, it should be ok with Qimage. There's something else going on with that image by the sound of it, or
Sorry I can't offer any more suggestions.
Terry

Justan

Is there any way you can get a copy of the smallest file that shows Image Read Error sent to me?


Can you show a screen snap of the new revised memory readings, or can you remember it exactly?
I am referring to the HELP, Hold Shift, Analyze........

If I can get the file, that would help.
Right now, I am leaning toward insufficient resources....

BTW on a clean boot up with email and forum open I can count over 800 Mbs of memory in use. 320 seems awfully low. Are you sure you  have Show All Systems checked?

What were the new numbers that Qimage showed.?

Fred

Thanks once again for the feedback.

>There's something else going on with that image [file] by the sound of it.

That’s what I suspected. I decided to work up the file again rather that continue to screw with the problem. The newly created file prints through Qimage just fine.

I can only surmise from the obvious that that Qimage doesn't like something in the original file, even though Photoshop has no problem with it.

In the past I have come across instances where Qimage gave the image read error and that was due to something in the file Qimage didn’t like. One time it was alpha channels, another time it was a view guide. However, again, in this case, the files are 1 layer tif or psd files which contain neither alpha channel nor view guide enabled.

Anywho, again, my thanks for your feedback. Even with it’s occasional Quirks, it is a good printing utility. It would be better if things such as this didn't cause delays but I'm glad to resolve the problem after only a half a day of work.

You would expect PS to be able to read its own files containing non-standard stuff  ::)
It's unlikely to be Qimage quirks, why not Adobe quirks? They seem to have a habit of messing up images; there's been a recent thread here where CS5 was putting junk into jpeg headers and Mike, to satisfy his customers, has modified QU to filter it out.
Qimage is not merely a "good" printing utility, it is World Class with its unique method processing for printing including the interpolation algorithms - and all its other features.
No apologies for being an enthusiast  ;D
Terry

Justan,
I have to echo Terry's comments.
Qimage Ultimate tries to conform to the standard set throughout the world for Color Management and has set the bar for excellence much higher than your Photo Shop.
You must read this post from Mike Chaney to understand that "might does not make right".
Just because Photo Shop likes to portray itself as omnipotent you do not have to close your mind.
They make mistakes. You see the mistakes, and then blame the incompatibility of *their* peculiar and aberrant save routine on Qimage?

As you can see, and by what Terry tried to explain, in order to save many people from having color profile problems when saving or creating a file in PS, Mike made a work around fix.
As you can see from the post, it is likely that PS will fix *their* blunder, and it will be corrected in the CS6 and you will likely pay for that fix included in the price of CS6.

Please read: http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/qimage-exposes-photoshop-cs5-%2812-0-4%29-jpeg-corruption-bug/


Best to you
Fred

Not just Colour management but standard file types to: jpeg &tiff.
Terry

PS. If you think this post is unnecessary, I really only did it to get to 1500 posts and super hero status  ::)  ;D  8)

Hi Terry,

Thank you for your comments here and above.


Yes but what evidence is there that something is was non standard in the file?


> It's unlikely to be Qimage quirks, why not Adobe quirks?

This is a deflection.

> Qimage is not merely a "good" printing utility, it is World Class with its unique method processing for printing including the interpolation algorithms - and all its other features.
No apologies for being an enthusiast  ;D
Terry


I work with PS as my production tool of choice. I want support programs that get along with it. I'm sure you understand that if a support tool doesn’t do the job, it becomes an obstacle.

I like Qimage. I've been using it for all my photo printing for a few years now and would have problems printing without it.

There may have been something unique about the file that motivated the problem. But in the end, I'm after a solution. If PS can work with single layer tif of psd files, I’d expect Qimage to as well. It would be odd for someone to find that an unreasonable expectation.

Fred,

Thank you for your comments.

Many years ago I worked as a consultant to a company that made a product named Desqview. This was a multi-tasking operating system  that pre-dated Windows.

Desqview had to get along with a large number of other programs. This was a daunting technical challenge, to say the least. Their solution was to buy most programs (and get the program vendors to send to them, when possible) and see how the program might have problems with Desqview and then to solve the problems. They also had on-going contact with a number of program vendors, to show the vendors how they could make their programs not only get along but to take advantage of the OS. They were very successful with these approaches.

Qimage is in a similar situation to what I described above. I'm sympathetic to the potential issues that you as a developer must face, and acknowledged with my own hard earned money that Qimage is in fact do a good program. I have looked no further since purchasing the program and don’t intend to.

But still, Qimage would do an even greater job if this seemingly innocuous file would have printed as easily in Qimage as it did in Photoshop.

If you’d like to see the file, let me know where I can send it, but as stated, it’s rather large.

Respectfully,

Justan

I can tell by reply #4 above this is not a Qimage issue.  You only have 256MB of memory available to Windows.  You can't load a 500MB file if you only have 256MB of RAM.  Usually only old clunker XP computers have memory that low.  You said the image is 17195 x 3693 pixels.  That's only 190MB.  If your file size is truly 490MB, that means there's a lot of extraneous (probably unreadable) fluff in that file, stuff that is probably not standard and if you're geting 490MB for a 17195 x 3693 pixel image, it's definitely not flattened.  Have you tried saving as a max quality JPEG just to try that as a test?  Adobe hasn't "defiled" the JPEG format, adding non-standard options like they have the TIFF format... at least yet.  ;)

Edit: I had to edit this post to make more sense above because I missed some posts/history initially.

Mike