Need some MAC Graphics help

mime type: image/x-pict

[bobriggs]

My sister sent me some screen shots of a website attached in email. She's on a MAC. They're named with an extension .jpg but I can't get them to display with any graphics program that I have here on my Win PC.

Haven't asked her what program she used to save them yet - can't until late tonight, but I checked the message source and the mime type is image/x-pict. I'm just guessing that maybe she named the file incorrectly? If so, does anyone know what type of files these are?

PS, these were also in the email headers:
x-mac-creator="74747874";
x-mac-type="50494354"
Don't know if they're significant or not.

[idiotgirl]

Lots of times Mac users are so accustomed to not having to include the file extension on images they either don't, or misname them because they may have forgotten what the extension was. Often they'll include spaces and periods before where the extension would be - which tends to make PC's give up and not even try to read it.

If you have Photoshop or Illustrator it might be able to open it. Or not. It's a crap shoot there.

You could try making several copies of the file and assigning your best-guess extension i.e. the "What's behind Box #3?" approach. Could be a .pct (Mac), .bmp, .tif, .jpg, .psd, or any number of favorite flavors.

There's even the possibility the file was corrupted in transit. I sent some files using DSL and it corrupted them I think because the attachment loaded incompletely before it left my outbox.

Or call your sister tonight and just ask her ;)

[bobriggs]

Thanks, ig. There were 5, doubt they'd all be corrupted. But yes, I renamed them to several types and none would open.

Opened it up using windows debug to see what's in there. First 512 bytes are 0, followed by chunks of up to 64K bytes each. Saved a file in photoshop as a pict file, .pct or .pic, debugged it. Same format. So that's what it is. But on my photoshop I get this message:

Could not open c:\...\thepic.pct because the PICT is too complex to open on this computer. Photoshop Windows supports raster PICT files only.

The GIMP doesn't like it either. And Irfanview doesn't read that file type.

Oh well. I guess I'll get her to save it another way tonight.

[idiotgirl]

Hmm. Maybe an .eps (vector) file?

You could guess all day and not win a prize. Yup - I'd wait and call her.

Mac makes it so easy for Mac users - that people on Macs often forget there's another operating system out there. I get lots of Mystery Meat files from clients. Opening a file turns into a treasure hunt. 50% of the time I guess right. The rest of the time I call the client and plead for an answer.

[bobriggs]

They're definitely pict files. I would have saved a lot of time if I'd paid more attention to the mine type: image/x-pict.

I just don't have the software to open vector based pict image.

[idiotgirl]

Illustrator should open vector based .pic files because it is a vector oriented program.

Paint Shop Pro opens .pic (Mac pict files) but I don't know if vector .pics are included.

There may be some way to convert it to a .wmf if it truly is a vector-based image with simple lines like a logo.

[mivox]

Hehe... I never send PICTs to anyone. When dealing with the Windows world, I always assume if they don't have photoshop, gif and jpeg are the only safe bets. If the machine in question has some kind of professional graphics software, I'll hazard a TIFF now and then. If they have photoshop, I have no worries.

And all my image files have their proper extensions. Not all Mac users are incompetent file swappers. ;)

But for a pict... have you tried Graphic Converter? Tucows has a Windows version.

(edited by: mivox at 7:44 pm (gmt) on Jan. 3, 2002)

[tedster]

People have needed to do this since there were Macs and PCs, so there are several shareware/freeware utilites for converting Macintosh pict files to bmp files. Try a Google search for "pict bmp convert".

Also, Photoshop and other image editing software may open the file if you first change the extension to .pct

[EliteWeb]

Download QuickTime to view them.