PSP X2

[surfgeo]

Running PSPX2, i am a pro photographer and process thousands of images monthly for years, then suddenly for some reason when i save a photo as a .jpg it is not able to be read by windows image preview or MS Front Page. In windows explorer i can see all the attributes - it recognizes it as a jpg, and sees its size etc. i can copy the image to the clipboard and paste it in Front Page, but if i move the file to a folder and try to retrieve it from there it wont see it. i have emailed the image to a friend and he can not see it either, he can tell its a graphic file but very corrupt or something.

when i try to open in Paint, it says "not a valid bitmap file, or form,at is not currently supported".

lastly, all photos created before last night have no issues - so it cannot be my system, Front Page, etc, it must be PSP X2.

any thoughts out there????

david

[Tim Morrison]

I'm not sure whether you're saving using File > Save, or using File > Export > JPEG Optimizer, but I suspect that one or more of the options for saving JPGs has been changed to something non-standard. PSP is capable of saving JPEGs in many varieties, but some of these are rare and unusual types that other software might not understand.
With an image open (use a copy not an original), go to File > Export > JPEG Optimizer. You will notice a small button with a curved arrow icon which will reset the options to their defaults. I only have X3 on this laptop, but I think the dialog box is the same in X2. The button is on the right edge just over half way up.
You can also change the options by clicking the "Options" button on the "Save As" dialog box when saving a JPEG.
A couple of options could potentially cause problems -
The encoding type. Stick to Standard encoding. Progressive encoding causes problems in some viewers and browsers. The Save As options also offer "Lossless". Very few other programs will understand lossless JPGs... they are generally not supported and can be created in several different incompatible ways.
The "Chroma subsampling" type. PSP's default is "YCbCr 1x1 1x1 1x1 (none)". It gives the best results for fine detail and seems to be understood by all other software. The other, even more common method is "YCbCr 2x2 1x1 1x1". Don't use any of the other chroma subsampling types.

[Rupert Brun]

Do the files you can't open still have a .jpg file extension? I just tried saving a picture in "JPEG 2000" format from PSP X2 and got exaclty the symptoms you describe, the file has extension .jp2 but if you've told WIndows not to show extensions for known file types this wouldn't be obvious.

[Trev Bowden]

There was and still is a Lossless Encoding of Peg's and PSP does have this but its not completely supported across Image editors. Unfortunately it uses the same File Extension .jpg/.jpeg And its not the same as JP2