Adding Photo Cds

[BobR]

I'm trying to give my trail version of Lightroom a full workout to decide whether to buy, I've managed to deal with three different digital cameras of varying ages so far, and now I'm trying to stick in a Photo CD (from 1997) and am totally stuck.

It just does not seem to know what it is, and web searches bring up nothing.

 

[Brad Snyder]

I'm pretty sure LR doesn't support the .pcd format used on Kodak Photo CDs.

It's possible that Photoshop does. (At least it used to.)

Google "pcd conversion" to find several commercial and shareware converters that can translate pcd's to a LR capable format such as jpg or tif. I couldn't locate a free converter in a quick search. Maybe you'll have better luck.

 

[BobR]

I did a quick test and PS CS2 is able to import/convert, but I admit that I have no idea which settings are the right ones.

So I imported with the highest settings, saved as a PSD and, yes, I can import that into lightroom. But it's a painfull way to do it, so maybe a third party batch process is worth looking for.

I wonder why LR does not do it natively.

 

[Brad Snyder]

That's a slippery slope. Import one oddball file type, you'd have to import 'em all. LR was primarily specifically designed as a tool to work with camera output. I believe the design team has chosen the most widely used camera export RGB file type, JPG, and also included TIF for its lossless capabilities, and PSD for max compatability with PhotoShop.

The major efforts at compatability are, of course, directed at RAW file types, which are everchanging as the camera mfgr's release ever improving equipment.

We individually may not agree with those choices, but you wondered "Why not?" IMHO, that's probably why not.

 

[BobR]

Yeah I guess at this point I'm looking at Lightroom as a giant indexing program for my images (not just Photos), which is obviously not it's primary use. I started looking, because Bridge was giving me problems.

It's just that I found that it's performance, and different ways of searching, far exceed anything else I have looked at. Also the ability to select a group of images and make a web page for a client to select, saves me considerable time from my old way. I would consider buying it just for those features, I have not even looked at the Develop module.

I have piles of old images, 35mm negatives, scans, and the Photo Cds, that I would consider sticking in.

 

[BobR]

I found a very interesting page on Photo Cds - claiming a flaw exists in Photo Cds

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

Based on that I found that Irfan View (free) - which I would not of even thought of trying reads them and seems to support batch conversion

I did an experiment, convert an image with Photoshop into a PSD, and convert using IrvanView into a tiff. Compare them side by side in Photoshop, and there are significant differences.

So the optimal correct solution maybe be more complicated that I thought.

 

[Richard Earney]

It was mooted in the ACR U2U board that Adobe might be able to add PhotoCD to DNG, but I don't think that is going to happen after all.

I converted mine using ImageMagick recently they made 144MB 16bit files. And that is the last I will use of that particular proprietary format!

As time goes by fewer bits of software will support it, so convert now while you still can!

 

[BobR]

Yes, I downloaded ImageMagick last night. At least I caught this now. I had no idea that PhotoCDs were no longer made, and thought I had a nice set of backups of old photos.

It does show the fragile life of digital media. In most cases, I have enough old parts around that I could retrieve most things, including 5.25" diskettes and old MFM disk drives. But since they are using a propriety encoding it makes the risk greater.

Funny, a couple of years ago, I found an undeveloped roll of film that I took when I was a kid around 45 years ago. Got the pics back the next day, since 62' BW film had a much longer lifespan than anything digital.

 

[Richard Earney]

There are already Raw formats that are not supported by the original manufacturers. So longevity of file formats is a crucial issue. It is why companies like Canon and Nikon should get on board with DNG or OpenRaw, but they seem keen to go along another path.

PhotoCD was just another of those formats that bit the dust.