Mac Photoshop question

ICBM

For those who know about this sort of thing...

Just looking through some old pics on my Mac and found a couple of folders full of ancient stuff that I did in Photodeluxe which was a freebie version of Photoshop 3 (at least ten years ago, it was in pre-OSX days anyway), and won't open with anything I have now, although I've transferred the files through about three Mac upgrades!

I don't particularly need or want a new version of Photoshop unless there's also a free basic version which I can't find - and which I'm not even sure would open them, although I could be wrong - so is there anything else out there which will? I don't want to spend money on it since I doubt there's anything really important there, but it might be nice to see some of them again.

Ta in advance!

ChrisMusic

Do you know which file format they were saved in?

randomhandclaps

Just download the trial version of Photoshop Elements.  Open the and save them as TIF/Jpegs - I'm assuming they are PSDs.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_elements&loc=us

ICBM

ChrisMusic said:

Do you know which file format they were saved in?

Photoshop 3.0. There's no file extension visible even in Get Info.

randomhandclaps said:

Just download the trial version of Photoshop Elements.  Open the and save them as TIF/Jpegs - I'm assuming they are PSDs.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_elements&loc=us

I'll give that a try. Thanks!

ChrisMusic

Good call @randomhandclaps

Sneaky old Mac OS, hiding basic stuff like extensions away so us numpties don't get confused.  Silly Apple.

Some info here may help

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-best-ways-to-open-a-psd-file-without-photoshop/

If not give me a PM and I may be able to help  

strumjoughlamps

They'll be .PDD files, should be a converter available

ICBM

ICBM said:

randomhandclaps said:

Just download the trial version of Photoshop Elements.  Open the and save them as TIF/Jpegs - I'm assuming they are PSDs.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_elements&loc=us

I'll give that a try. Thanks!

Adobe wanted me to register to download the trial version, so decided not to for now.

ChrisMusic said:

Good call @randomhandclaps

Sneaky old Mac OS, hiding basic stuff like extensions away so us numpties don't get confused.  Silly Apple.

Some info here may help

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-best-ways-to-open-a-psd-file-without-photoshop/

Brilliant! GIMP does it. Open in GIMP, copy, paste in Preview, save. (As .png.)

Sorted.

Many thanks .

ChrisMusic

Great news ICBM,

Not sure about .png though, you may want to check the quality.

I thought they were low quality files for minimising data bandwidth on the internet, could be wrong though.

Maybe something like JPEG if you want to conserve space, and definitely don't want to edit or manipulate again (as it looses data on each encoding / saving)

Better for posterity is TIFF, industry standard on any platform and the best way of future-proofing your files.

LZW encoding should be a-ok and is the lossless version IIRC

Lossless (normal / no compression) TIFF is usually a much bigger file size, but is the easiest to decode when Time Team dig your stuff up in a couple of centuries.

Hope that helps  

ICBM

ChrisMusic said:

Great news ICBM,

Not sure about .png though, you may want to check the quality.

I thought they were low quality files for minimising data bandwidth on the internet, could be wrong though.

Maybe something like JPEG if you want to conserve space, and definitely don't want to edit or manipulate again (as it looses data on each encoding / saving)

Better for posterity is TIFF, industry standard on any platform and the best way of future-proofing your files.

LZW encoding should be a-ok and is the lossless version IIRC

Lossless (normal / no compression) TIFF is usually a much bigger file size, but is the easiest to decode when Time Team dig your stuff up in a couple of centuries.

Hope that helps  

Thanks, yes.

.png seems OK - the files are slightly larger than jpg, and I can't see any difference in quality at full screen resolution which is all I need them for really. I did try a .jpg but it takes two more steps to save the file, which given the number I have to do is worth avoiding ,

hywelg

How many files do you need to convert?

I have an application called ThumbsPlus and it lists .pdd as a subtype of .psd. I assume therefore it can read the file format. The brilliant thing about this app is that it can batch process a list of files with all sorts of treatments during processing.

So two suggestions, see if the trial version will do a conversion for you, alternately, stick 'em in a Dropbox folder, send me the link and I'll convert them and put them back in Dropbox (copies obviously).

I also would assume Adobe Bridge CS5 would be able to do this batch conversion but numerous times i've tried to batch process, it never seems to work as expected so i gave up on it.

ICBM

hywelg said:

How many files do you need to convert?

A couple of hundred - or rather, I really need to go through them and decide which are *worth* keeping, so doing them one at a time really isn't a disadvantage. It's probably only an evening's work. Once done I can bin the old files and never worry about it again...

Until png becomes obsolete, anyway! That was the one thing that made me think jpg might be better - it's so universal it's very unlikely to disappear for a couple of decades or more.

hywelg

ICBM said:

 Once done I can bin the old files and never worry about it again...

Do em all, then decide at leisure. Even if you don't use the batch conversion ThumbsPlus is a very useful viewer, (you can thumbnail them at any size you like).

PNG8 is better for graphics (used to be gifs for this), PNG24 is quite a bit heavier than an equivalent quality .jpg in my experience, and more widely used. TIFF for archiving. Only other question, was there anything in the .pdd file which is PS specific, like an adjustment layer or such? In which case a conversion to .psd would be best.

ICBM

No idea, I doubt it though. As far as I remember they were just files that I scanned from actual film prints and saved in the photo app that came with the original iMac. I doubt I did anything to them. I'm not much of a photo type as you can tell .

I was only reminded of these old pics at all because I wanted to post one in the 'Live pics' thread... found a couple that I must have converted to jpg for web use back then, but seeing one of my old singers again made me want to dig out the rest . I'd even forgotten what format they were in until I tried to open one and an error message with 'Photoshop 3.0 is required for this file' came up.