Converting Photo CD (.pcd) files

[bob_ternes]

I have been a user of Picture Publisher 10 for a few years on a Win98

machine. Recently after building a new machine and installing WinXP I

am not able to open and view .pcd (Kodak Photo CD) files with Picture

Publisher 10.

 

Also, WinXP Explorer does not seem to support the Thumbnail view

option of .pcd files like it did in Win98 (have no idea why)

 

So, since I can't view them in Explorer, or open them with PP10, I

decided to convert them all to hi resolution .jpgs or .tifs

 

I tried Irfanview, but when it converts it must use a peculiar look

up table or color space because all of the converted files are dark

and muddy. Completely unlike how Picture Publisher had handled them

in the past and also unlike how the Win98 Explorer thumbnails

appeared.

 

This isn't a difference between 2 different machines. If I take one

of the Irfan converted files to the old machine it looks completely

different than the Photo CD preview.

 

Does anyone have a solution for my problems or a suggestion on a

program that converts them accurately?

 

Converting one at a time is out of the question and I need a batch

converting program.

[ethan hansen]

Photoshop.

[maxz]

This page is a bit old but he has some information about blown highlights and different conversion utilities. Soms of them are free.

 

http://tedfelix.com/PhotoCD/PCDSoftware.html

 

Usually I recommend ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org) but he reports problems with it. The page is from 2000 though and a lot has happened with ImageMagick but I do not know if this issue has been fixed. I have not been able to find anything about this in the Changelog and have no .pcd-files to test with. Otherwise I find Imagemagick well suited to batch conversion.

[john_shriver]

Picture Window (or Picture Window Pro if you're using color management, which you should be), which has a very well implemented Photo-CD reader. The algebra is tricky, many PCD readers are botched. Even in expensive software...

 

I'd convert them to TIFFs.

 

http://www.dl-c.com

[muellerworld]

I'l second <a href="http://www.imagemagick.org">ImageMagick</a> for PCD conversions. I batch hundreds at a time and ImageMagick works wonderfully.

<p>

An example of the command to do the conversion for one file (from "Size 3" to JPG) is:

<blockquote>

<pre>

convert -interlace none "IMG0013.PCD[3]" image-13.3.jpg

</pre>

</blockquote>

Philip talks about it more in <a href="http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/images">Chapter 6 of his book</a>.