Archiving graphics

I have scanned a large number of old photographs. What is the best graphic file format for storing them for a long period of time. Some of my TIFF files have developed a black band acros them. Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Hello Photopal,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Are your tiff files written to a floppy disk or tape or CD or DVD? The black bands may indicate the media is deteriorating which would affect any file format.

I've heard that tiff is or at least was an ideal format for achiving digital photos.

Perhaps photopal is pulling our leg. Files (images) don't deteriorate over time if left unedited, no matter what the format is.

Good point Paul. That is why I was thinking it must be the media they are stored on rather than the format.

I wish I were pulling your leg. I scanned several hundred photographs into PhotoShop Elements 4.0 and saved them as TIFF files. They looked fine. A week or so later I looked at them and a couple of them had developed a black horizontal band across part of the photo. They were saved to the computer hard drive. Could this be a sofware problem, rather than a graphic problem? I also saved the photos to a DVD. These images are OK. Thanks for responding.

I'm sorry photopal, if files of any type are left untouched (barring a fault of the media they are stored on) they will not deteriorate. I'm afraid TIFF files do not degrade over time.

If you are genuinely seeing this behaviour, something is causing it and it's not the file format.

Paul

Were you using Photoshop Elements when you saw the black bands?

No, I went to the folder where the graphics were and saw them there.

Which program opens the images when you double-click them?

Microsoft Photo Editor.

Do you see black bands when a file open in Microsoft Photo Editor?

How do the files look when opened in Photoshop Elements?

I first noticed the black bands on the thumbnails. They are visible when the files is opened in Photoshops and Microsoft Photo Editor. I have tried to attach a jpeg conversion of one of the photos with a band.

You said you the files on a DVD are fine, is that correct?

Were the files originally scanned to your hard drive then burned to the DVD?

Would you be willing to attach one of the tiff files that shows the black band? I would look at the data bits within the file to see if there is corruption and possibly what may have caused it.

It 'might' be possible for a black band like that to appear on one photo due to data corruption at HDD sector level, but only software would apply that to every photo.
Something like batch watermarking that went wrong.

If the images are backed up to DVD, then replace those on the HDD.

From the jpg that was posted I'm thinking it may have been a scanner glitch.

I made a DVD copy of the photos shortly after scanning them. Those photos are OK. A few of them later changed in the computer. Let me put it in context. I have scanned about 900 photos as TIF files before donating the originals to a library. About a half dozen of them have developed the black bands. I tried to attach the TIFF file, it hadn't uploaded after 5 min. The attachment code doesn't include TIFF, and my files are about 5 Mbytes. Any suggestions? Could I e-mail it to you?

Having told us that the backup copies are fine, I discounted scanner problems.

You can email one to me bjt49 at hotmail.com

Right Steve, I was thinking or rather posting outloud so to speak; before thinking about all the available information.

For file types that are not listed in the Attachment manager, you can always zip them and upload the .zip
Though your 5mb tif likely will not be less than 500KB.

You can CC a copy to sledger [at] gmail.com if you wish to email to Bill and I.

Two heads might be better than one (though this wasn't the case with my mother-in-law :eek:)

I have emailed the photo with band and the same photo from the DVD without band. Please let me know if they arrive OK. If they don't, I'll ZIP them. Thanks.

Only the photo with band received at this time - thanks

I see one attachment to the email I received. I am saving it to my hard drive now for examination.

Sorry, I do see two attachments. The other link was at the bottom of the email.

Both links downloaded a file with black band.

The file was last edited in Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Windows on 2008:02:16 at 16:55:38
There is a huge block of NUL data below the Adobe tags in the file header.

Viruses can corrupt targeted file types.
Have you scanned your machine with an up to date and functioning AV application?


(only one file in my email Bill)

Interesting. I just checked the photo on the DVD again, and it doesn't have a band in the thumbnail or when loaded into Photoshop Elements. I Zipped and sent it again.

Photo 2 arriving now.. Sorry Dennis - I should be more patient :o

I use Norton anti-virus which I update regularly, and I scan the entire computer each week. Suggestions?

Are the files on the hard drive the original scan files or where they copied or moved to the folder they are in now?

Yes well the huge block of NUL data isn't present in both the second or the zipped files.
The black bar is not image data, it's where data was.

At least you have backups ;)

My only comment re Nortons (Symantec) is that I often remove many worms and trojans from customers PC's who's only protection has been to rely on purchased Norton Security Software.

But discussing this further would be off topic.

The point is well taken. I would not have you get off task. You've been very helpful. Thanks.:)

Dennis are the bands in the same area of each tiff?

As Steve said there is missing data in the first file you sent. All data between hex address d8ff0 and f4000 has been nulled out, basically it was erased.

The bands are not necessarily the same in each photo that has them. Some are wider, some narrower. They tend to be toward the top, but a couple are closer to the middle. One complicating factor is that the photos were scanned from album pages, so they were sometimes scanned upside down or at a 90 degree angle, then rotated. A couple of the photos have the bands at the bottom, but I can't be sure whether they were inverted when they were scanned without going into the album. I have seven out of about 750 photos that have the bands. Thanks for your interest.

Thanks Dennis. I was curious about where the bands were and if it was consistant. But appearantly it was more random.

Hi Dennis,

Your problem is indeed very strange. The scanner is ruled out since you have uncorrupted versions of the files that have black bands in them. This means that at some stage the file contents for these banded images has been changed.

If this was a generic problem with your computer you would also be complaining about computer crashes and the like, so it can't be that.

This leaves the software being used to view and edit files, a virus or a virus checker as culprits.

I haven't heard of tiff problems with the software that you are using and we know that the files are corrupt, not merely being displayed incorrectly, so it's nothing to do with any viewer software. I couldn't find reports of a tiff-borne virus, so it's unlikely that an anti-virus program has interfered with the files.

So, on the face of it it's a complete mystery. I did wonder if a USB based flash or hard drive might be responsible - sometimes people just unplug them before data has finished being written to them, but I'd expect far worse corruption than the black bands.

I'd be inclined to recover the damage files from DVD and keep a note about what software you use when editing them and see if it happens again. Keep a copy of your corrupted files somewhere so that you can see if the corruption problem is only related to specific files.

A real mystery. At first I thought you was a Troll, out to cause mischief, but that's not the case.

Maybe Sledger Holmes will crack the case..

One question that I did not see until a minute ago is regarding whether the corrupt files are originals or copies. They are originals in the folder where they were originally saved after they were scanned. I have copied them, and the copies show the same characteristics as the originals.
I still have several hundred photos to scan. I will scan them and pay more careful attention about how I handle each one. Thanks to everyone for your interest and help. :)

I was getting corrupt JPG files (at random intervals in random folders) on the last legs of my hard drive on my old Windows XP system. For me it was an hardware problem -- the drive was slowly failing (or rather: failing faster and faster). However, it wasn't THIS consistent (one specific folder and all files) and I was also getting intermittent system and application crashes, that were getting worse and worse (as mentioned by Paul).

If you have one set of files that are good (back-up CD/DVD) -- and the other (on your drive) is getting messed up... A virus corrupting the data? Looked for a virus targetting TIFFs and image files, but couldn't find one.

I tried to search for tiff+black+line+corrupt (and different versions there of) but didn't find anything more than the black line/band seens to be a common symptom of a corrupt TIFF file. In the the few pages I found, black lines at the top of the image was mentioned (find that a bit odd -- why only in the top-half of the image? :confused:)

In any case -- If someone wishes to Google further -- perhaps looking for black LINES/SECTIONS/ETC (not only "bands") might reveal something more.

Just tossing in a few thoughts.

Risto

i better hurry up and start getting out my brushes and pens in photoshop/illustrator. Alot of restoring to be done - my files are losing quality!!!

lol

:rolleyes: ...