[X Newbies] Managing Web Images

[Alex]

On Wednesday, Feb 4, 2004, at 18:47 Canada/Eastern, birgit rhoads wrote:

> [...] I tried to import into iPhoto without luck.  I dragged the 
> picture of Helen Hunt onto my desktop and still it would not open in 
> iPhoto. [...]

It's that recurring issue -- linking files and applications in OS X, on 
which I posted several messages.

JPEGs saved in Internet Explorer's scrapbook do, indeed, have the .jpg 
file name extension, therefore Finder and other applications assume 
they're JPEGs, and they try to handle them as JPEGs. But if you look at 
their type code, you discover it's not JPEG but WAFF (which stands for 
Microsoft's Web Archive File format). In other words, they're not 
straight JPEGs, but rather JPEGs wrapped in a special envelope. So it's 
no suprise that iPhoto or GraphicConverter can't open them -- these 
applications were not designed to open WAFFs, and don't recognize the 
format. (Photoshop Elements and Photoshop do, because they were 
designed to look for JPEG hidden inside some files.)

When you save the same picture from Explorer -- rather than placing it 
in the IE's scrapbook -- the WAFF wrapper is stripped, the file is a 
straight JPEG (actually, JFIF, to be precise) and any application that 
handles JPEG should be able to open it.

It's basically a little naughty-naughty on Explorer's part -- those 
files should have the file name extension .waf, not .jpg.

> Photoshop Elements 2 is a $99 application that I think you will find 
> far better than either iPhoto or Graphic Converter.

Photoshop Elements is a "super-lite" version of Adobe Photoshop, an 
image editor. As such, it's neither better nor worse that iPhoto -- 
which is not an image editor --  nor is it better than GraphicConverter 
(a powerful editor in its own right), which is primarily what the name 
says.

Buying PE for USD 99 is certainly not a good deal, because you can get 
it bundled with some printers or scanners for not much more.

f