Hello, everyone.
My wife has a couple of Kodak photo CDs (quite old, course) that have the images saved in .pcd format. We’d like to convert the images to another format that can be stored and viewed on our computers – and maybe printed.
I’ve searched the forums here and elsewhere and find references to ImageMagick. I look in Yast Software Management on this Leap 42.2 laptop on which I’m typing and it indicates that I do have ImageMagick installed, but I can’t find it in the Application Menu. (If it’s supposed to be in the Multimedia tab that one strangely is grayed out and nothing happens if I click on it.)
Further, if I open a konsole and type ImageMagick I get a message telling me in essence it’s not a command I can use. (I assume this means it’s not really installed despite what Yast Software Management may tell me.)
So, first question is why is Yast telling me ImageMagick is installed yet it doesn’t appear in the Applications Menu and won’t launch from a command line?
Second, how do I get ImageMagick to launch?
Third, is ImageMagick the best way to convert .pcd images to another format? We need something EASY to use – without compiling anything from source and that sort of thing.
Go to yast software management and search imagemagic look in the files list tab (bottom right) that will show you the commands available use man command to see how to use. Note these command are pretty feature rich and may take a bit to fully understand
Thanks, but where is ImageMagick? From my original post it’s clear I can’t figure how to launch it either from the command line or from the Application Launcher Menu.
bosdad
Did you do what gogalthorpe suggested? Looking in the file list using YaST? That would probably have given you the commands, thus apparently, no you didn’t. That is up to you, but when gogathorpe tries to help you, why didn’t you report back that you didn’t with some explanation like “i do not understand you”, or “what is YaST”, or “I only see … and …, which one to use” whatever the reason is?
As it is now, you only repeat what you have said earlier and then all discussion and thus helping will go into a dead alley :).
Do you have these pictures in your computer?
Imagemagick is a bit difficult, start with the> display> hold down the right> And choose the options
Try Gimp> File> export as> and choose the export format
Wow, that’s just an unfriendly and unhelpful response.:X Rather than chastising me you might have carefully read my original post and tried to help with my questions.
I asked three questions in my original post. None were answered. Note that I did mention Yast was telling me that imagemagick was installed, so I do understand what Yast is.
I did look where gogalthorp suggested and found many files with information and commands. The readme.txt and quickstart.txt files were particularly information-rich and included a great deal of information that not only went over my head but also was way beyond my needs (e.g., all the features and capabilities listed in the readme.txt).
As I wrote in my original post I also asked if imagemagick was the right thing to use for my intended purpose – to get .pcd images off a Kodak photo CD and onto my computer for conversion into another format such as .jpg. Clearly I was unsure if imagemagick was right for my purposes.
I was looking for something EASY to use. For example, I now use winff to convert videos – it’s a simple, straight forward GUI. I was hoping imagemagick was similar but apparently it is not.
So if you can suggest another program, GUI based preferably, that would be greatly appreciated. If not, so be it.
Have a really nice day, and please try not to be so acerbic with your future replies. Nobody likes to be s**t on, especially when they’re grasping for information
but…
I still think that ImageMagic is your best bet
the command line tool is called magic and you could write a simple shell script for pcd to jpg or png conversion
for example execute this in a shell inside your photo cd (press shift+F4 in dolphin)
ImageMagic should convert all pcd files to jpeg’s and put them in a folder in your home, if you read the imagemagic manual you can see it has a lot of features you can tweak
I haven’t tested the above as I haven’t seen a photo CD in years but it should work
Many thanks for this reply. It’s a lot to digest. Let me take a day or two to look at the URLs and then I’ll get back to you with some questions about the command line instructions you’ve suggested.
bosdad
My apologies for not being clearer in the previous reply.
Yes, the images are on my computer. The problem now is finding a program that recognizes the .pcd format and will convert the images to .jpg or another format that my computer does recognize.
One of your replies shows a GUI version of ImageMagick. Where can I get that for Linux? Or do you get that Gui only by running the various commands goglethorp suggested in the file tab of ImageMagick in Yast?
Imagemagick works fine, I tried to transform a jpeg file into pcd and return.
Follow the advice of malcolmlewis if you want to do it fast.
Or if you want to use gui start it from command terminal> display> right click on the gui> open> look up the double click directory> click on the .pcd file> save> format> choose> save end
Malcolm, my simple thank you is utterly insufficient. But thank you, Malcolm. This is exactly the help I needed (simple, direct, and addressed my specific need without my getting frazzled by the multitude of parameters for ImageMagick options that we’ll never use). The specific command you provided will allow my wife to extract years of memories from Kodak photo CDs.
I did read through many of the files goglethorp suggested including
/usr/share/man/man1/convert.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/import.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/mogrify.1.gz
But having gone through that material and others I still would not have the understanding of the elements to have pulled them together and placed them in order for the sublime command you provided.
Many thanks to everyone who tried to help this penguin who can move around on a command line and execute the simplest of actions, but who’s also rather lacking when it comes to understanding such multi-element command line instructions.
