Multi page TIFF

My scanner software can create a multi page tiff file, i.e. I can scan 2 or more items and they appear in the file as separate “pages” when viewed. At least that is how it is supposed to work and does work that way in Preview. DT Pro however only displays the first page when I drag and drop the file in an RTF document. Any ideas on displaying more than the first page in DT Pro?

That’s just the default display of the text engine of Cocoa/Mac OS X for attached images. But if you add the TIFF to the database, then the next release will be able to display all pages.

I read what you wrote but I don’t understand. Add the TIFF how to the database? Will it just sit there until the next release before being usable?

Sorry for not being able to keep up with all the terms; I feel very overwhelmed with “Cocoa”, “Tiger”, “Panther”, etc. In other words, I’m probably in over my head!

You can open the TIFF files in an external application that will display multiple pages.

But since these files are image-only, DT Pro cannot capture text from them. To allow that, you might consider OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, such as ReadIRIS, that can convert the images to PDF+Text. Then you can search and analyze the text of the PDF files.

Believe it or not, everyone goes through a learning curve about computers and operating systems. You don’t have to become an expert about those things to make DT Pro useful. :slight_smile:

Don’t attach it to a rich text note, just drag & drop the image on DT’s Dock icon for example or use “File > Import…”. Then the image will be part of your database like all other contents (and thumbnailed).

Is DT 3.6.3 supposed to display all pages of a tiff?

It’s still single page in my case while all pages can be viewed in Preview.app

No, multipage TIFFs aren’t currently supported.
This may be supported in a future release, perhaps if there was more interest shown. (The last posts were 15 years ago.)

Is multipage TIFF an obsolete format?

I wouldn’t say it’s obsolete but it’s not very common outside some specific industries nowadays.

Well I would also be interested to display multiple tiff files. I didn’t even give it a thought that they might not be. Coming from ELOOffice and thinking of one day exporting my files to DT I‘d certainly be needing this feature.

Do you mean

  • more than one tiff file

or

  • one tiff file with several pages? I’d say that the latter is a tad unconventional (not to mention that tiff files nowadays are … well not so much in use anymore - why not convert them to PDF?)

Yes I was writing about tiff with multiple pages.

Thank you for the question.

Not that I’m an expert but tiff still remains vividly used in photography as a loose less file format from were you can easily convert to different formats. More so for storing than for sending.

Within ELOOffice that means that I can scan directly without having to convert and loose maybe valuable information. It also means that I can add variable sized documents within the same file. Something that usually is cumbersome with pdf.

I assume that you’re scanning textual documents, not photos? In that case, wouldn’t you be interested in the content of those files – why else putting them into DT?

If so, TIFF is quite pointless as a file format. In order for DT to be able to search the files, you have to OCR them. Which converts them to a PDF with a text layer.

You can of course store your TIFFs in DT. But than searching etc will not really work (except may be for some meta data like creation date, name etc).

Hm. My scanner does not give a damn about the size of the documents it processes. As long as I click on Next Page, it just continues to scan. At the end, it sends me a single PDF with as many pages as I scanned. Of course, every single page is A4, but who cares?

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TIFFs in the photography scene are generally single-page files and are indeed lossless while still having robust compression via LZW as needed. These were - and to some degree are - found in graphic arts and printing as well. (1-bit TIFFs for platemaking are very large!)

Support for multi-page TIFFs is generally uncommon. In fact, the method you’re referring to is quite old, was most often used in the printing industry, and was long ago superseded by PDF as a multipage format.

In passing, in case it’s of any interest, many years ago I scanned an important letter of sentimental value, bizarrely, as a multi-page TIFF. I came across the file last year and had some difficulty viewing it (and in fact could view only the first page). In the end I discovered Preview would view it and allow me to export the pages either as a pdf or as jpegs.

Preview can be surprisingly useful at times.

Stephen

Edit: deleted my alter ego.

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Indeed it can be.

:slight_smile:

Well style and looks do matter to some :blush:.

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Thanks so much Stephen!

What I had not realised was that DT, even though only showing the first page of my multi tiff file does indeed import the whole thing. I knew that preview can handle them and that it can be a useful tool for more such as highlighting etc. SO the only thing I needed to do was open my DT document with preview to see all of the pages.

Yes, I assume 23 years must be considered old nowadays :wink: at least digitaly speaking. I think I started to use ELOoffice around 1998. It then and now has a pdf/tiff-printer integrates so that files can be transformed easily if there is a need.

Indeed, that is quite old for sure. Strange how relative these things are :slight_smile: