Brian, as usual, this very complete explanation answers my question and then some. Now I know how to proceed attaching records as Media files.
Barton in Brooklyn On Sat, Sep 05, 2015 at 12:31 AM, Brian L. Lightfoot wrote: A PDF is NOT an image. It is a proprietary file format from Adobe for a “container” that will contain encrypted text, images, spreadsheet data, and other types of data. Even if the PDF contains multiple images or nothing more than a single image, no one can see those images except through the use of a PDF reader program (free from Adobe or other 3rd party suppliers). As mentioned in some other posts, there are multiple ways of converting a PDF to that you can end up with standalone text files or standalone images files. If you use a PDF as a source media in Legacy, then the only thing that will show in any report you create or web pages you create is a reference to that certain PDF file which probably sits on your computer at home. If you use a “real image” file such as a JPEG, GIF, or TIFF image, then those images can be included with a report created by Legacy and can be seen by anyone viewing the report (either via an emailed report or a printed report), or they can be seen on web pages created by Legacy (provided the user uploads the web pages and the images files to a web server.) So if you plan on doing nothing other than keeping your Legacy family data right at home on a computer, then you or anyone you invite over to your house can easily view any PDF documents you may have attached to your sources. But if you have a friend that lives far away and you want to mail him/her a Legacy printed report about your ancestors, such a report can include the “real images” printed right in the report if you so choose but the PDF document will not be included as part of the report. Let’s say your friend is an elderly person that does not have a computer. He would be able to see all the “real images” printed on the report but would never be able to view the PDF file even if that PDF file had nothing in it other than one single image (such as the Death Certificate mentioned in your original post). Quite frankly, I personally do not see why Legacy even bothers with support of PDF files. I suppose a few years ago lots of users demanded it as it the thing to do but now with so many free choices of PDF converters which can create text files or “real images”, I should think it would be better if they converted any PDF document they come across and use only the real text or the real image. In my opinion, the allowed use of PDFs in Legacy is only so they can claim bragging rights that it supports PDF. But to me it’s sort of like Legacy also claiming they support these image file formats also: XPM-X, RAST, and TARGA (which they actually still continue to support !). But when was the last time you ever heard of anyone using any of those formats? I can remember using TARGA when I did digital image restoration on a Targa Machine but it was so long ago, I think it was when DOS was still king. HTH Brian in CA From: Barton Lewis [mailto:bartonle...@optonline.net] Sent: Friday, September 04, 2015 8:26 PM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] unsupported file format Brian, I am rereading this email string and am not sure of your preference when you say (in the 2nd message in the string from the top) “I somewhat support this question about using PDFs when the real image might be better/easier …” I take this to mean that you are advocating the jpeg over the pdf. What are the practical consequences of using the one over the other? I did not really get a clear sense of that from this discussion. Perhaps I am missing something. Isn’t any Media image something that’s just useful for viewing in the actual Legacy software? If you concert the Legacy file to a gedcom or you upload Legacy pages to the web, it doesn’t take the Media files with it, right? So does it make a difference if you upload a jpeg or a pdf? Thanks, Barton From: Brian L. Lightfoot [mailto:br...@the-lightfoots.com <mailto:br...@the-lightfoots.com> ] Sent: Tuesday, September 1, 2015 7:05 PM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com <mailto:legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com> Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] unsupported file format I’m assuming that you’ve read the other replies about the use of JPEGS vs. PDFs. A “real image” is loosely described as a photographic image or a digital representation of the image. Your PDF document (notice the keyword “document”) may contain text, images, or other digital objects. A PDF cannot be viewed except via the use of a PDF viewer, free from Adobe or other 3rd party choices. They are two completely different file formats. You CAN NOT simply rename your PDF file as a JPG. You would need to use a PDF utility program which can extract the internal images and save them in JPG format. Adobe’s full-fledged Acrobat program can do that easily but of course is a somewhat expensive program. I’m not sure if any 3rd party program for PDFs can extract images. If your scanner is like many flatbed scanners, it probably has 2 or 3 buttons on the front of it labeled “email, PDF, and maybe one named image”. You may wish to consider not using these buttons because they are designed to be extremely simplified and leave nothing up to the choice of the user. If you are sticking a document (such as a death certificate) in your scanner and just pressing the button labeled PDF, then it will work seemingly just fine but leaving you little to no choice about resolution, color or greyscale, cropping, etc. The PDF produced by your scanner will have problems when you try to integrate the PDF file with other software such a Word, Legacy, and many other programs which are designed to show a great deal of text that can be sprinkled with images and photos. Instead, try to use any stand-alone software that may have come with the scanner or any of the free 3rd party imaging software which support the WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) interface (almost all do). In other words, if your scanner is relatively new, it will be recognized by any of these imaging programs via Window’s WIA interface. From there you’ll be able to scan the death certificate at a choice of resolutions, greyscale option if you want it, and the resulting JPEG (or TIFF) image can be further edited to suit your fancy. Such a digital image can be easily dropped right into Legacy, or added to any word processing document or web page without the need for any special viewer. So the bottom line is this: your choice of using PDFs for images in not wrong. It’s just that it limits your abilities to use the PDF and possible future editing of the image itself. That’s where the “real image” makes life easier. Brian in CA After writing all that above, I noticed you mentioned “Neat Scanner”. I google it and then looked at the various models of Neat Scanners ranging from a sheet-fed desktop model to those rod-like mobile scanners. The sheet-fed desktop models do indeed have two buttons on them, labeled “Scan” and “PDF”. However, the specs for them indicate that they are TWAIN compliant which is the old Win98-Win2000 standard which was effectively replaced by the new API called WIA. The good news is that WIA did not abandon TWAIN so they should continue to work on at least Win7 systems. Drivers for Win8 or Win10 might be a crapshoot. The rod shaped mobile Neat scanner however does not list WIA or TWAIN in its specs but apparently uses their proprietary software called Neatworks. That alone does not leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling but perhaps yours is something different. And it looks like Neatworks scans everything as a PDF. From: BARTON LEWIS [mailto:bartonle...@optonline.net <mailto:bartonle...@optonline.net> ] Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2015 10:28 AM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com <mailto:legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com> Cc: Legacy Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] unsupported file format I am not sure what is meant by "real image." This is a death certificate that I scanned using my Neat scanner. I have previously attached PDFs as Media files without a problem. I will rescan or simply try to rename the file as a jpg -- I assume I can do this easily (not at my home computer now). For my edification, can someone explain why one should use a jpg as opposed to pdf if (as here) one would not want to edit or manipulate the image? Thank you. Barton Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://support.legacyfamilytree.com Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). 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