JPGs not displayed in Properties

[NL_Derek-GsBV5a]

In the RoboHelp Project Manager (version 7.01.001), you can double-click on an Image (or right-click and select Properties). If the image is a BMP a preview will be displayed; if it is a PNG you see the message "File format not supported". So far so good.

But some JPGs display OK, some give the message. A quick check suggests that it is the presence of camera properties in the JPG; depending on the tool used to crop and/or resize a photograph, the camera properties may be removed or retained, and RoboHelp seems to be unable to handle those JPGs with camera properties.

Has anyone else seen this? is it known to Adobe?

[Peter Grainge]

Did you mean JPG in the second paragraph? We've seen issues with PNGs that related to layers but not what you report.

Happy for you send me a couple of such files via my website and I will see what results I get?

[NL_Derek-GsBV5a]

The problem seems to be related to the EXIF data, used by digital cameras to record aperture, exposure and so on. Robohelp's preview in Image Properties, General tab, will not display JPG files with EXIF data.

Adobe have been notified but we do not know when a fix will be available.

Some image manipulation programs pass the EXIF data through untouched; some (older ones) may remove or corrupt the data. Microsoft Photo Editor (part of Office 2000) removes EXIF, Paint (part of Windows) passes EXIF data through, but if there is no EXIF entry Paint adds a small one.

This means that if you use Paint on JPEG images for Robohelp you will lose the preview facility. Also if you use any modern image manipulation program on photos from a digital camera you will probably have no preview.

There are tools which remove EXIF data; I did a quick test with PureJPEG from yafla.com and results were encouraging. But I don't intend to use freeware on a live project without further testing. Does anyone out there have recommendations for safely removing EXIF data?

[Peter Grainge]

Did I mention Attribute Magic Pro?