Don’t Use PICT. Please.
ADS writes:
I have a quick question concerning .pict file formats… Do you know if any of the updates for make .pict file formats not supported? Reason I ask is we use a program to import ads into InDesign (PDF) and just recently, any ads that have a .pict file will not import.
You know that feeling you get when someone mentions your 5th grade teacher’s name? You know, that teacher you really hated, but had to deal with for a whole year?* That’s the feeling I had when I read this email.
I thought PICT was dead to me. I thought I’d never have to think about it again. But no, apparently some people still use it, and still have problems with it.
According to Adobe’s docs, PICT is still supported. In fact, they even insist that, “The Macintosh PICT (or Picture) format is widely used for Mac OS graphics and page-layout applications, and for transferring files between applications.” Which is a bizarre statement… it is not widely used. And anyone who does “widely use it” should be flogged with a noodle.
PICT is a dangerous file format. Object-oriented PICTs (from drawing programs) are time-bombs waiting to go off. Bitmapped PICTs are marginally better, but should certainly never be used to print on anything other than a desktop inkjet or laser printer. Do not use either of these for final output. They don’t color separate properly. They can have resolution problems.
What to use instead? For vector (type and drawings), use PDF. In a pinch, you can even use EPS. For bitmapped images, use PSD, or TIFF, or even JPG. But do everyone (especially yourself) a favor, and don’t use PICT. If someone sends you a PICT file, just say no. If your software spits out PICT, find some way to convert it to some other file format (try Illustrator or Photoshop or a half-dozen other utilities).
Excuse me, I have to go wash my hands just to get the stench of this file format off me.
*Hey, if my 5th grade teacher is still around and reading this: I wasn’t referring to you! I actually did like my 5th grade teacher a lot.
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Thanks for the post. We do not use .pict files anymore but there was a time here that we did. They were used because, at the time, it gave the best preview in… dare I say it… Quark!!
Occasionally, an old advertiser wants to run the ad they used 5 years ago and some of them do indeed use .pict images in them. It’s the headache that never goes away. I get error messages when the .pdf ad is being imported and then I have to go back to the original file, find the .pict, and change it to an appropriate format.
Thanks again!
Okay David! It is true of my 5th grade teacher…but not 4th or 6th!
I try to stay away from eps because it has been known to set off bells and flashing lights…”danger, Will Robinson, danger” at different times with printers, pdfs and other programs that I no longer frequent.
I try to stay with ai for vector and psd or tif for photohsop files. I start twitching when someone sends me a jpg but I start to feel much better after I have done a quick “save as” to tif.
Somewhere along the way I learned that staying as close as possible to the original format and staying away from lossy formats was best.
Did I over-learn that lesson or does it still generally apply?
Thanks,
Jenn
I don’t think there is any advantage in saving a jpg as a tiff when you get them. It would certainly be true if you were to open the jpg and make changes to it, then resaving it as a jpg format again would add more jpg artifacts, so saving as a TIFF then would make sense if you were making changes to the file. But opening the jpg and saving it as a tiff without making any changes won’t improve the image quality, I believe.
Just as opening an EPS in photoshop and saving it as a pdf will do nothing, because vector data, vector masks, vector type, vector shapes are automatically converted when you open it in photoshop. Certainly an EPS will output vectors as is to device that supports postscript, but as soon as you open it in photoshop it vectorises the pixels. So saving as a pdf once the vectors are pixelised will result in a pixel version of the original EPS.
So if someone sends you an EPS that needs to be edited in Photoshop you should probably ask them to send you PDF saved from Photoshop instead.
As for the Pict format, haven’t heard of it for years, but have repressed memories of having to deal with these nasties.
Oh fine I’ll stick with Scitex CT. ‘;)
I’m an old codger when it comes to DTP so I’m still saving everything in EPS rather than PDF and find it tough to be convinced otherwise.
And I still don’t get why a file saved in Illustrator as EPS places fine in ID3, but the same file saved as AI always has some margin around the outside. How is this even possible?
David, would you agree that the PICT format on the Mac has its just-as-bad equivalent in the WMF/EMF format for Windows? That’s my impression — they’re all really archaic, messy formats, which all we graphics folks should shun like the plague.
Only the (thankfully!) only recent occasion I had to confront Picts, not having any Roman legions handy, I round-tripped them through Photoshop to convert them to tiffs. I figure a tiff is better than a full-on battle, don’t y’know…
The only real problem with
'PICT'files is that they’re inherently tied to QuickDraw and all of its limitations. If you have a high-quality object-based'PICT'file from way back, you may be loathe to give it up for a bitmapped version.So, find the best Mac OS X application you can that can print the file the way you want, and print it to PDF. That will translate all the QuickDraw object drawing calls to PDF object drawing calls, and you should wind up with a vector (object)-based PDF with as much quality as the original. (The file may be huge, but you can deal with that via PDF optimization utilities.)
The later a version of the program you can find ,the better. In later versions, the developers will have honed their own
'PICT'-to-Quartz/PDF conversion, such as by replacing their own gradients with PDF gradient operators, and you’ll probably get better results.But this isn’t just an InDesign or prepress issue. Regardless of color separations, the deprecation of QuickDraw and its fading from technical life means those
'PICT'files have a limited useful life, and could stop rendering properly on new machines, new OS updates, or new application versions. Update them to a more modern format the very next time you use them.@Klaus – Sometimes I will save a file out as a wmf from Illustrator to be used in a slideshow for Powerpoint. Not everyone has illustrator or knows how to make a pdf presentation slideshow and I work with people that lecture at seminars and all they know is MS apps. So it’s nice to be able to give them clean enlargeable files that they can use in their slideshow presentation rather than large bitmap files and things like that.
>I?m an old codger when it comes to DTP so I?m still saving everything in EPS rather than PDF and find it tough to be convinced otherwise.
Then get with the times man!
Great comments here, folks! I agree with Eugene that opening a jpg and resaving as tiff doesn’t help at all, unless you’re going to be doing further editing/re-saving. Opening an EPS in Photoshop is dangerous only if it has vector objects in it; if it’s a bitmapped eps, then it’s fine.
In fact, this is a general point that really needs to be made: Both PICT and EPS can be bitmapped-only or vector-only, or vector-and-bitmap. You need to know what’s in there, or else you won’t get a good result if you convert it.
I would probably try to use Illustrator to convert vector picts and Photoshop to convert bitmapped picts.
@Klaus: I don’t think WMF is as unreliable as WMF, but I would avoid using them in ID anyway. As Eugene noted, they’re best saved for non-pro products, such as Office.
As for using EPS files, there was some good discussion here about that
What about using open formats like SVG?
SVG is currently a web type of image. I wouldn’t risk using it in a printing workflow. It’s bascially a vgml (vector graphic markup language) and I think it’s done with xml. Because of this it can contain scripting and animations and things like that. As far as I know it’s fine to save these as PDF as the pdf coding preserves all the vectors. As well as being a web graphic it would probably all RGB, so I’m not sure how that translates into CMYK? But as it’s xml it could contain weird things and require extra proofing, like scripts and animations etc. There is a SVG print format being worked on at the moment by W3C with Adobe and Corel and a few others but I’m not sure how far along that is?
I’m a little sketchy on the details, I’ll admit. But I think it’s best to save it as a PDF to avoid unforeseen headaches.
Re: WMFs
They’re horrible format for high end use with no support that I know of for bezier curves or CMYK. This means that when you convert a file to WMF all curves are converted to small line segments and CMYK colors are converted to RGB.
When you scale those files up the lack of bezier support becomes very apparent. FWIW, I find Illustrator’s capability to save as WMF insufficient even for Office apps leaving curves looking very jagged.
When I need a WMF I use CorelDRAW which does a much better job.
Hey Bob, that’s why when I make an file for MS office in Illustrator I make it roughly 2 or 3 times larger than it would be needed.
When it’s brought into MS office it needs to be scaled down to the right size. It’s very rare that anyone using MS Office would print or display their slideshows in anything larger than A4. So making the image A3 or A2 size in Illustrator then exporting to WMF definitely accounts for that.
And when have you met anyone that uses non-pro apps who are fussy how they’re print stuff prints anyway? (insert wink smiley)
I have a client…a very large international company with many subsidiaries that uses an automated system to insert the proper logos into Word and Powerpoint.
In order to work properly they can’t be scaled…CorelDRAW to the rescue!
> Then get with the times man!
I know, I know *groan*
I always resave JPEG files as TIFF. Why? I’m paranoid, and I don’t want to risk someone else working on those JPEGs without realizing that they may not be working with it at maximum quality. Better to just take that x factor out entirely.
Many newspapers use PICT for ad placeholders when pages (at least Quark ones) are set up in Layout 8000 (an ad placement/page scheduling program in common use to laydown newspapers). It creates a pict with the name, number etc of the ad. Of course, the real ad comes along later and the Pict was in a print suppressed frame anyway…
But PICT as a production file format. Not.
Thanks for the heads up, David. Even though the Help topic warns people not to use PICT files for anything but lo-res printing, we’re still sending a mixed message. I edited the topic to remove all praise of PICT files.
Bob Levine: The reason is that WMF is from 16-bit Windows GDI which did not support these features. Win32 invented EMFs which support all Win32 GDI features. Consider that 16-bit Windows is dead since long ago, EMFs should be used if possible instead of WMFs.
“According to Adobe?s docs, PICT is still supported. In fact, they even insist that, ?The Macintosh PICT (or Picture) format is widely used for Mac OS graphics and page-layout applications, and for transferring files between applications.? Which is a bizarre statement? it is not widely used. And anyone who does ?widely use it? should be flogged with a noodle.”
Well, it used to be true, under classic Mac OS and even early Carbon. But while PICTs are not that dangerous IMO, they has been deprecated along with QuickDraw since 10.4. 64-bit apps cannot render PICTs since they have no access to QuickDraw (the few 64-bit APIs that do render PICTs used a 32-bit pictd helper process to do so). If you open one under Preview in Snow Leopard, for example, you will be asked to open the app in 32-bit mode.