View a Mac image on a PC?

[Robor]

I'm at a site where a Dr has Emailed a .sit file (the Dr is using a Mac notebook) full of images to a person running WinXP Pro. I extracted the .sit file with StuffIt but all I see is 22 files named Picture 1 through Picture 22. There's no extension on any of the files. I tried adding a .jpg .jpeg .gif .tiff to the end but all I get is errors when trying to view with them Microsoft Photo Editor.

Maybe I'm wrong but shouldn't there be an extension on a Mac image file?

 

[groovin]

macs dont always have extensions on their files... better to just ask the sender what format the files are in. perhaps there are somethign funky like eps or psd that MS PE cant read.

 

[Robor]

Thanks for the reply groovin. Unfortunately the Dr was offsite at a conference so I couldn't ask him today.

 

[jhu]

a good image program can identify the type of file by reading the header in the file. try the gimp. photoshop would probably work too.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: jhu
a good image program can identify the type of file by reading the header in the file. try the gimp. photoshop would probably work too.

Yep. You need a program that identifies mime types and doesn't use file names as a indication of their contents. The three letter extension is usefull to a certain extent, but it's a throw back to the bad-old Dos days.

That is assuming that the file archive didn't get corrupted. Maybe try a different unarchive program?

 

[Nothinman]

Too bad MS doesn't include a command like 'file', it's extremely useful.

$file Debian-background.png
Debian-background.png: PNG image data, 1600 x 1200, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced

 

[redbeard1]

A Mac uses a resource fork to know what a file is and how it is supposed to be opened. With those pictures, if he would go an extra step and save them with a extension, like .jpg, then a windows box could read it with no fooling around. If he can let you know what they were originally (jpg, tif) then you could just add that extension to the file in Windows and it should open normally.

ACDSee used to be able to read any file and see if there was a picture in it, and then display it.

 

[hopejr]

they are probably pdf files. When I take a screenshot on my mac, it calls it Picture 1, etc, and they are all pdf. So you could try opening them in Adobe Reader and it might work.

Edit: just realised that they did have extensions, just hidden in finder.

 

[Robor]

I did try adding a .jpg, .gif, and .tif to them. None of those worked when I tried opening them with Microsoft Photo Editor. I didn't try .pdf though. I'll have to try that next time I'm at the site.

Thanks guys! :thumbsup: