Exhibits - Jpegs vs Pdfs

[MMj 0]

Hello

 

My name is Mike Daugherty. I am new to the TMG community as of about a week ago. I am currently a registered user of version 6.09. In fact, I am also practically new to the genealogy community in general. But I have recently received 3 volumes of family information from my mother that have never been entered by our family in any sort of electronic format. After a couple of months of researching different genealogical products, I settled on TMG as the most suited to my needs. I have been eagerly reading posts in this forum ever since trying to pick up pointers about using this incredible program. The biggest problem I am having in learning to use TMG lies in the fact that it can do so many things in so many different ways. And for a novice genealogist like myself, sometimes it is difficult to decide just how I should do something. A case in point comes to mind regarding exhibits in TMG.

 

1. For the general run of paper-based exhibits, like copies of Family Group Sheets, birth certificates, baptismal certificates, obituary notices and the like, is it better to scan these items as jpegs or pdfs? My scanner can easily do either.

 

2. Is it better to store my exhibits within the PICS folder under the TMG application files, I should I store them in a separate location?

 

3. Is it better to attach them to the project or maintain them separately from the project?

 

4. If, at some later time I want to move all of my image files to some other location (say an external hard drive), how do I go about updating all of the tags in TMG as to the new location of the images.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. I expect that as time goes on I will have quite a bucket-full of questions about the best ways to use this database.

 

Thanks

Mike Daugherty

[John Cardinal 0]

1. I don't think there is a single right answer with regards to JPG vs. PDF. Personally, I prefer PNG for scanned documents. Generally speaking, PNG is a better choice than JPG for scanned documents, i.e., images that are mostly handwritten or typeset text. I don't see the value of using PDF for a single scanned page. PDF is good for documents that are a mix of scnned images of one kind or another mixed with text produced by another application. It's especially appropriate when you want to control how the resulting document prints.

 

2. I'd store your exhibits somewhere outside of the TMG application folder tree.

 

3. I recommend using external exhibits, i.e., the exhibits are left in files outside the TMG database. Adding images to the TMG database dramatically increases the size of the database, and that, in turn, means that your database backups take longer and produce larger files. In general, the smaller the backup file, the better.

 

4. It's possible to move external exhibits, buyt it isn't the easiest process. My "TMG Utility" program (see links below) has a Find and Replace feature that can help. In general, if you keep the same relative folder arrangement, and you move the whole tree, you can move the exhibits. Moving them willy-nilly to new locations is a recipe for frustration.

[MMj 0]

Hi John

 

Thanks for the information. I suspected that moving or renaming exhibits could be a painful process if it wasn't handled properly. I've been trying to work up a decent naming convention right from the start to (hopefully) cut down on later frustrations. Based upon your comment, I will probably place my images in a folder right on my root drive, since I feel pretty confident that I will have one of those regardless of whatever PC I am using TMG on down the road. I was initially inclined to put them in my My Documents folder, but the path to that can vary somewhat depending upon the operating system and which user you happen to be.

 

I went to your site and downloaded and installed your TMG utility program. I have been working in a database design environment for many years, and I can readily see the advantages of some of the functions in your utility. It looks quite powerful, and perhaps quite dangerous if used improperly. I'll be very sure to backup my project well before attempting to use it for anything (as you suggest).

 

What is the advantage of PNG files over other image formats? My scanner will quite happily save files in about a dozen different file formats, PNG being one of them. I gave it a quick look when I was testing document scans, and didn't use it, first because I don't know much about the format, and second because the file sizes were coming out 2 to 3 times larger than the same scan in JPEG, even when I set the JPEG to the highest quality. Since I could ultimately have several thousand images, I thought I might as well save the space, but I'm willing to rethink that if there is a decided advantage to using PNG.

 

Mike

[Alison 0]

What is the advantage of PNG files over other image formats? My scanner will quite happily save files in about a dozen different file formats, PNG being one of them. I gave it a quick look when I was testing document scans, and didn't use it, first because I don't know much about the format, and second because the file sizes were coming out 2 to 3 times larger than the same scan in JPEG, even when I set the JPEG to the highest quality. Since I could ultimately have several thousand images, I thought I might as well save the space, but I'm willing to rethink that if there is a decided advantage to using PNG.

 

Mike

The real difference is in the way that the images are compressed, and what information the computer decides to discard in the process. I don't remember all the details but in a rough outline, jpgs are smaller because you loose more information. When your talking about a picture this is usually information that the eye will happily assume is there anyway. The real difference is noticable when looking at handwriting or line drawings. The information the png compression discards is designed to not loose that single tiny little dot that might mark the difference between an i and a poorly written e. Similarly, TIFF files also work fairly well for B&W text, so you might try those as well, and to reduce your file size on any of these scans you can always set the scanner software to B&W if it is just text that you are scanning, that usually drops the size quite a bit.

 

In general, file sizes are a little bit tricky, I have a copy of photoshop and find if I scan into photoshop and then save the scan the size is smaller then if I just scan directly though windows, not to mention the image control you get with an image program. This may not be a viable option for the number of scans you plan to make, but I would suggest trying any imagining software you have already to see if that drops the size of the file.

[John Moran 0]

This PNG discussion brings to mind some reading and experimenting another genealogy program user and I did a few years ago. All implementations of PNG were not the same! Adobe Photoshop at the time was reported to be using an inferior compression method that coincidentally created PNG files that compared unfavorably in size with Adobe proprietary files at the time.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG#Comparison_with_TIFF

 

Photo Editors other than Adobe produced different varieties of PNG that were not necessarily of the same quality. A little searching on the subjuect of PNG file sizes and alpha channel might be in order.

 

As to putting a PDF wrapper on OCR files, those who use professional quality Adobe PDF generating programs may have options that users of Ghostscript based "pdf creators" do not have. Many of the free or inexpensive pdf creators will provide only jpg image compression, and there may be little control of even that.

 

From what I have read, Ghostscript developers were headed toward incorporating PNG a few years ago, so there might be a few inexpensive PDF creators that actually use a PNG version of Ghostscript.

 

But the Tiff format was apparently also upgraded in the last few years. When combined with limited PNG support in Microsoft browsers, widespread acceptance of PNG (at higher bit levels?) was set back for a while. Doesn't seem to matter much for b/w OCR, though.

 

FWIW

John M.

Edited July 25, 2006 by John Moran

[John Moran 0]

What happens if you wrap your OCR image files in a PDF file and then you want to unwrap them?

 

Hmm? Copy/Paste from Adobe Reader 7 will only take it to the Clipboard at screen resolution of 72/96/120 ppi at best!

 

You will need a PDF editor capable of working with the embedded image file type. Pdf995edit can extract jpg images at original compressed quality, but may not be capable of handling PNG files.

 

FWIW

John M.

[John Moran 0]

On the subject of embedding searchable keywords in various documents, it might not hurt to take a look at the current Wholly Genes PDF Writer. The Amyuni PDF writer in TMG 6.09 appears capable of embedding searchable metadata, including keywords, in both Adobe XMP and Microsoft fields.

 

The metadata in the Adobe fields is exposed in Adobe Reader 7.

 

The metadata in the fields from both Adobe and Microsoft is exposed by right clicking on the pdf file and selecting Properties. The properties metadata is exposed in a manner similar to the one used by Pixvue for digital image files.

 

The entire computer can be searched from Adobe Reader 7 for XMP metadata embedded in pdf files, as well as pdf content data.

 

Only the Pixvue Gallery folder, which must be created by the user, can be searched by Pixvue for XMP/IPTC metadata in image files. Other applications are available to perform similar searches of image metadata.

Edited August 1, 2006 by John Moran