I’m working on an asset management tool that needs to extract data from various image formats. Here’s the formats I need to extract from:

• PSD (Photoshop)
• EPS (Various originations)
• AI (Illustrator)
• JPG
• PCD (Corel maybe?)
• PICT
• PPT (PowerPoint)
• TIFF

The information I need to extract:

• Creation date
• Color mode
• Horizontal resolution
• Vertical resolution
• Width
• Height
• Any embedded description (I imagine EXIF)
• A blob thumbnail to embed in my database from the source asset

I’m at a crossroads as some of the above I can extract with GD or ImageMagick, however neither tool will give me 100% of the data from 100% of the images (in fact, even together I can’t get all I need). Ideally, I would bypass the PHP/Server-Side scripting tools alltogether and bundle a scriptable Mac framework into a RealBasic desktop application. That’s what I’ve been trying out lately, but as I’ve never coded in RealBasic before, and don’t know much about things like Core Image I’m a little lost.

Anyone have any success with a project like this? Thankfully, I have 2.1 million assets that already have this information stored for me, so the above issue will only be for new assets imported (which I have pushed out a delay on any importing for a month).

Update September 03, 2008:

I have upgraded ImageMagick on my server and have succesfully converted several formats, leaving PICT as the only one that’s giving me fits.

• PSD (Photoshop) - Great!
• EPS (Various originations) - Pretty damn good
• AI (Illustrator) - Don’t need to convert at all
• JPG - Great!
• PCD (Corel maybe?) - Great!
• PICT - Very bad results (see below)
• PPT (PowerPoint) - Don’t need to convert (removing from new version)
• TIFF - Great!

Ok, so here’s what’s happening with the PICT files: When I run a basic convert (or mogrify) I’m getting a very small thumbnail version that appears to be inverted. I’ve attached two smaller (GraphicConverter adjusted) previews of the input and output using $ convert Corb_AFP_026.PICT Corb_AFP_026.jpg as the flag.

Input (a smaller version of the original)

Output

See how strange that is? I’m not sure what special flags I need to add to handle the PICT files. It appears that Preview can read the files without error, and GraphicConverter handles them fine as well. However, a simple convert does not, resulting in the output above.

Any suggestions?

Update 2 (same day):

Looks like PCD is now in the mix of piss-poor conversion. I’m having the same output issue as with the PICT files.

So I just started playing with QIK (the streaming video application for the iPhone*) and I have to say - this is an absolute godsend application!

The opportunity to stream live video from music events will be a huge benefit to OSNAP.net!

More to follow.

*more phones are supported, but I use the iPhone first-generation.

I’m testing out the iPhone Wordpress application.

It looks like there’s photo support, and unless I’m missing something there’s no rich-text or linking support.

Maybe there’s Markdown support I haven’t found. If not, that would be a nice addition as I could see myself using this tool a lot.

Mobile blogging, here I come!

Odd occurance for me: I bought a Western Digital 160GB external hard drive (the “Passport”) the other day to move files between my three laptops (2 mac G4 powerbooks and a Toshiba Satelite running Ubuntu 8.0.4), and all my Mac and PC towers (yeah, I’m a serious tech nerd with a problem).

At first I was very happy with this snappy little drive. On my original G4 PowerBook (a 700mghz), the USB 1.1 ports made for slow copies, but the drive operated like a champ. On the towers, everything moved along at a zippy pace. However, once I started to use my newer G4 PowerBook (a 1.5Ghz model, with USB 2), I noticed some problems.

The first time I plugged the Passport drive into my free USB port (the other is used by an external mouse), all was fine. I copied some files upstream and down. After that, I have been unable to mount the drive whatsoever. Just the “click, click” noise forever.

After reading some blog posts, support threads, and printed documentation, I’ve found that the G4 PowerBooks came with less-than-optimally powered USB ports - in some writers opinions, in order to better focus on FireWire. I suppose that would cause the constant clicking of a drive that doesn’t have the required power to fully mount; however, I did get away with using the drive once, for a day. Also, why would my older USB 1.1 enabled PowerBook be able to power the drive, yet my newer USB 2 PowerBook not?

Seems quite sad that I’m going to have to carry around a powered USB hub in order to use a pocket-sized drive. The whole purpose of the small drive was to have an easily portable - and yet large amount of file space - device.

I guess I’ll just have to wait another year until I can get a MacBook or MacBook Pro.