4 Replies Latest reply: Mar 6, 2012 4:43 PM by rrr_hhh RSS

    Cannot Open TIF file in LR3 but no problem in Photoshop CS5 or PE9 or any other software

    sirlampsalot Community Member

      Hi - I have a folder with about 300 tif files provided by someone else (I have no idea how they were produced). They use LZW compression and most of them are under 1mb in size.

       

      I can open them in Photoshop CS5, PE 9, Paintshop Pro, Irfanview, Picassa, etc. without any problems.

       

      When I try to import this folder LR3 gives the following message "The file appears to be unsupported or damaged".

      I have uploaded a sample file http://www3.sympatico.ca/david.broughton/sample.tif

       

      While I have worked around this by using Irfanview to do a batch conversion to jpg (the resulting files are successfully added to the catalog by LR3), I am hoping to understand this issue a little better to hopefully avoid it in the future.

       

      Any insights would be welcome.

       

      Thanks

        • 1. Re: Cannot Open TIF file in LR3 but no problem in Photoshop CS5 or PE9 or any other software
          ssprengel Community Member

          If you open these TIFs in Photoshop, you can’t do much with them, there, either.  The problem with the sample TIF is that it is 1-bit-per-pixel, like from a fax machine.  Lightroom understands RGB and Grayscale 8/16-bits-per-color-per-pixel.

           

           

          Instead of converting to JPG, convert them to a Grayscale TIF and perhaps then to RGB, depending on if you want to color them in LR, using Photoshop.  Once you have the process figured out, then you can automate it with Actions or perhaps the Batch Processor.  When converting to grayscale, you can decide whether to enlarge each dot to more than one pixel, which is useful if you want to blur the dots somewhat with further Photoshop processing to produce more of a continuous-tone image from the original black and white dots.  Without having a more continuous-tone image, LR isn’t going to be able to adjust them much, although you could still catalog them and crop them print them and resize them, if that’s all you’re wanting to do.

          • 2. Re: Cannot Open TIF file in LR3 but no problem in Photoshop CS5 or PE9 or any other software
            rrr_hhh Community Member

            I have a similar problem with TIFF files produced by Raw Therapee. They are 16 bits files. I could open them fine with Photoshop. But I noticed that they came with a special color profile named RTsRGB. In PS I got the profile mismatch dialogue and once that was answered and the files were saved with a new known color profile, I could open them with LR. May be that if I was able to find the RT profile and to put them in a folder where LR would look, the problem won't show up ?  Since I only occasionnally use Raw Therapee, it was not worth the trouble. But it would be nice to have confirmation that this unknown color profile was the source of trouble.

            • 3. Re: Cannot Open TIF file in LR3 but no problem in Photoshop CS5 or PE9 or any other software
              ssprengel Community Member

              The file should be called RT_sRGB.icm so you can search your hard-drive for that.

               

               

               

              If you cannot find it, then you can download one from the RAWTherapee Google Code repository.  Here is the branch for the RT color profiles.  After you click on the profile you want, you can see various bits of information about changes, but to download the file, itself, click the “View raw file” link at the lower right:

               

              http://code.google.com/p/rawtherapee/source/browse/rtdata/iccprofiles/output/

               

               

               

              Once you have the file, right-click on it in Windows Explorer and choose Install Profile, which should copy it to the standard location of:

               

              C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color

              • 4. Re: Cannot Open TIF file in LR3 but no problem in Photoshop CS5 or PE9 or any other software
                rrr_hhh Community Member

                Thank you for all this information concerning those profiles and the folders where they should be stored. It will be very helpful.

                 

                As a side note, I think that LR should be able to handle these profile mismatches like PS. It is something rather radical to tell that the file is damaged or corrupted, only because the profile was not found.Why not a warning and a choice to either apply some known profile, or not to open the file untill you have found the right profile.