Browser Problems Caused by Photoshop 7 JPEG images

Presumably you have notified Adobe of this. It's their problem. It's an example of vendors going out on the bleeding edge to the detriment of their users.

Man, I tore apart my machine looking for what caused this. Wow, who would have thunk it? Someone needs to plug this hole quick.

This problem was brought to my attention by another photonet user trying to view my images that were saved in PS 7. I'm using a Macintosh so I never noticed a problem. Last night I tried all current Macintosh browsers, IE, Netscape, OmmiWeb, iCab, Navigator, Mozilla and Opera, and they all worked fine. No problems at all. So it seems to be a IE/Windows issue. You might want to headline "Attention Macintosh users" to make our small group aware of the problem so we can change our images. By the way Adobe's PS 7 Guide does say that PS 7 JPGs are not supported by some older browsers.

Would a simple workaround be to just not use IE. Mozilla is free...

It's always a good idea to use "save for the web" when well... saving for the web. Aside from these conflicts, leaving out EXIF data will reduce your file a few KB.

YIKES!!

I'm not sure I agree that it's Adobe's fault, if it's true that they've correctly implemented the standard in question.

Speaking as a software engineer, my view is that all software should fail gracefully. There is no excuse for the browser to just hang. If it doesn't know what to do with certain data, certain fields, certain headers, certain tags, etc, it should pop up an error message, preferably with some information to the user about what it was trying to do when it failed. Obviously older browsers can't be expected to support standards implemented after they were released, but I'd be very surprised if the JPEG standard doesn't have some way for a browser to only use those features of the JPEG standard extant when the browser was written. So my guess is that this is yet another example of sloppiness on microsoft's part and it is they who have to come up with a fix.

If you run the image through jpegtran -copy none it might get rid of the extra header data and fix the problem.

Since some people have noted that their images seem to lose quality after upload and Phil G talks about imagemagick elsewhere on the site I would assume that image magick gets used during the file upload. Throw jpegtran into the loop before image magick and it might fix the problem

Thanks for the answer to my headache. IE 6.0 on XP Pro. My Netscape 7.0 works fine.

Thanks for clearing-up that issue. BTW i'm also one of those people mentioned thathas noticed that my images seem to go down in quality after upoading them onto Photo.net, although I wasn't aware of the imagemagick software mentioned. I don't really like this when it happens and would prefer to have greater control over the over-all image quality.

Now that I think of it...

In the past if you downloaded a photo from photo.net you would get a message that the ICC profile was missing when you would open it up in photoshop. I believe the thumbnail preview would also be missing from the header.

I just tried doing the same and noticed that it has both the ICC profile as well as the thumbnail preview.

My guess is that jpegtran or a similar utility was used in the past but recently taken out of the workflow for whatever reason.

It may not be adobe photoshop 7. I just read something that led me to believe it might be image magick. It seemed to confirm that jpegtrans would resolve the problem.

Tom, I don't think jpegtran has been even been in the processing flow for uploaded photos. Nor does it seem that the +profiles option in "ImageMagick" has ever been used to remove profile information. I am in the process of upgrading ImageMagick to a version where we can remove the profile information. This will include ICC profiles. Does anyone think this will impact the colors when displayed in a browser? I don't think browsers pay any attention to profiles, assuming that it is sRGB. Is this a correct assumption?

It may not have been jpegtrans but something was removing the profile info and thumbnail preview. I remember that when I would upload an image then want to make a change I would get the profile message and not see the preview in photoshop.

I believe the majority of browsers on windows based systems don't use the jpeg profile and default to sRGB.

I would suggest playing around with jpegtran to see if it fixes it. I don't have ps7 so I can't test it myself. jpegtran should also get rid of the profiles, thumbnails, comments, etc., which will also save a bit of disk space.

Three things...

1. "jpegtran -copy none" should strip all unneeded data from JPEGs.

2. If you could replace ImageMagick with jpegtran completely, that would eliminate the increase in JPEG artifact that people notice. These are caused by decompressing then recompressing the JPEG file. The main feature of jpegtran is that it performs all of its operation by manipulating the compressed JPEG data directly, introducing no further artifacts. There is an "-optimize" option, and it should probably be used with the "-maxmemory" option, but it ImageMagick is used to change the compression ratio, then it cannot do it.

   Of course, the smaller version of the images will have to go through decompression/recompression, but if it could be avoided for the full sized image, that would already be a good thing.

3. I agree with Peter Nelson. Adobe innovates the proper way, in a standard compliant way, and Internet Explorer just pukes on perfectly valid files for no good reason. Here, Mozilla on Linux works just fine.

Thank you for this posting. I recently tried to attach some PS7 jpegs to an outlook e-mail, and they could not be read. I expect this is the same problem. People on the Adobe forum thought I was nuts. I am glad I still have PS5 loaded on my Mac. I will save jpegs with it for the time being.

I just read an article in Shutterbug (Sept 2002) about PS 7. They were quite critical on the new default setting and profile handling. They also indicated that browser software doesnt support profiles anyway, which I think answers a question above. BTW, I am using Netscape 7.0 (which I like, and is free) on Win 98 and havent run into any problems. It is a really big download but for a few bucks they'll send you a CD instead.

D-

I almost didn't click on this since I don't use PS 7 and didn't think it affected me. Glad I did. This particular problem has been driving me absolutely batty. Thanks for figuring out the cause. Hope the solution soon follows. :)

One of these days, Adobe is going to test a new version of Photoshop BEFORE they release it.<br>I can't remember a version of PS since 2.5 that didn't have a major bug in it.<p>While they're at it, could they fix the bug in the image rotation algorithm too?

William Smith:Last night I tried all current Macintosh browsers, IE, Netscape, OmmiWeb, iCab, Navigator, Mozilla and Opera, and they all worked fine. No problems at all. So it seems to be a IE/Windows issue. Scott Bulger: Thanks for the answer to my headache. IE 6.0 on XP Pro. My Netscape 7.0 works fine.

Because WinIE is the only browser that seems to puke on these images, and WinIE is used by over 90% of the web-surfing public, Peter Nelson is right, it's up to Microsoft to fix it.

Brian Mottershead asked: I don't think browsers pay any attention to profiles, assuming that it is sRGB. Is this a correct assumption? Dane Schnal replied: ...browser software doesnt support profiles anyway, which I think answers a question above.

The Mac version (currently 5.2) of Internet Explorer has used ICC profiles to control image display since 3.0. And some of us also use hardware-calibrated color monitors that rely on custom ICC profiles.

One other observation. I had a photo.net user comment that his browser was exhibiting these problems while trying to view my portfolio. I reproduced it on two Windows machines as you have observed. However, the same user and the two machines I tried can view images on my off photo.net site without the problem. Why does the problem seem to occur only on photo.net, or does it exist with all PS7 images and we just got lucky? I also use Mac and have not had the problem on any of the machines I use.

William Smith: I visited your test image (994015) and it causes the problem for me on IE6 / Win2K Server. But the Technical Details states that it was "Saved for Web..." on a Macintosh. Is this correct?

Some interesting additional information.

The photo.net web server has been returning JPEG images as content-type "image/jpg". When I change this to "image/jpeg" the offending PS 7 files, like William Smith's, are then OK and don't break IE 6. If I strip out the profile information, they work regardless of whether the content-type is "image/jpg" or "image/jpeg".

My theory is that "image/jpeg" is correct and "image/jpg" is not. When IE6 is told the content-type is "image/jpg", it decides that it doesn't know what that content-type is and goes off to try to guess the content-type. If the file doesn't have any profile information, it correctly guesses the type is "image/jpeg" and displays the image. If the file has the Photoshop 7 profile information, then it gets confused and goes into a loop. Do any computer geeks out there have any comments on this theory?

Yes Brian that is correct.

I am in the process of upgrading ImageMagick to a version where we can remove the profile information. This will include ICC profiles. Does anyone think this will impact the colors when displayed in a browser? I don't think browsers pay any attention to profiles, assuming that it is sRGB. Is this a correct assumption?

It will impact how the images in my gallery are shown. Any files I've uploaded to Photo.net have the EktaSpace PS 5 profile from Joseph Holmes embedded. Mac users don't have this problem because IE for the Macintosh correctly honors and displays embedded ICC profiles. Windows users with browsers other than IE aren't affected because their browsers correctly disregard the metadata that IE is trying to parse.

I spend a lot of time making sure my images will appear on paper as closely as I've intended and seen on screen, yet my images are viewed by many more people on the web, where I have very little control over how my images appear - at least for Windows users.

Despite paying a lot of lip service to people who want real, system level color management on the desktop, Microsoft has yet to implement this technology for the method which people use most often to view images on computers. This is one of the reasons I still use a Mac. Windows machines are perfectly usable for many things, but Microsoft's focus isn't on people who take system level color management seriously - and that includes web browsers.

It's interesting that people see this as Adobe's fault. From the troubleshooting that's been done so far, the conclusion would seem to be that it's the Microsoft browser (and the Microsoft browser only) cannot correctly handle expected and completely benign metadata.

Doug, I was not aware that browsers on the Mac honored color profiles in JPEG images. When you take advantage of this and put images up on the Web in any other color space than sRGB, your viewers with color-calibrated monitors and Macs may be getting what you consider optimal color reproduction, while everybody else will be seeing something quite different, which may or not be acceptable. On the other hand, if you put your image into the sRGB color space, everybody will see it more or less the same (depending on their monitors) and you can adjust the color balance, etc, in your editing software until this is acceptable.

As for whose fault this problem is. There is grounds for saying that it is Microsoft's problem, in that apparently the JPEG files being generated by PS 7 are conforming files under the JPEG specifications. Adobe can argue that it is not their problem if other applications can't handle these, since the other applications are erroneous. On their web site, they say that the problem is limited to "older browsers", but this does not appear to be the case, as it affects recent versions of Internet Explorer, the most prevalent browser (like it or not), and many other applications.

On the other hand, it is common in computing for specifications to have little-used and somewhat unsupported features, and when vendors are interested in interoperability with other vendors' applications, they normally should take the trouble to test when they make a change to the way they are using a specification, even if legalistically, the new mode of operation is "consistent" with the spec. In other words, there is the specification that was produced by the standards committee, and the "de facto" specification, reflecting how the various vendors have interpreted and applied it. And the "de facto" specification is normally the more important one.

In this case, the PS 7 JPEG's are not just breaking Internet Explorer, but many other applications, including Quark. So, there is grounds for arguing that Adobe has been a little cavalier about this change, and while they can hide behind the spec, their customers may be a little more cautious about trusting them regarding interoperability on their future releases. And some customers may delay moving to PS 7, because its benefits don't justify the interoperability problems.

photo.net will probably be able to come up with a workaround to this problem, but if we couldn't we would have no recourse but to ban or ghetto-ize Photoshop 7 images (despite them being "valid"), since they break the browser employed by the majority of visitors to our site.

So, in the end, Adobe may be "right", but in the end it will be small comfort to their users, and ultimately small comfort to them.

Speaking as a software engineer, my view is that all software should fail gracefully.

This is true....and I hope I buy your software somebody if you stay with that philosophy. The problem is that the app has to be aware that it's failing and that data being loaded into it is either corrupted, or simply can't be read correctly. In the case of a file format that's unknown to the browser, IE probably just takes a quick look at the header format (like most paint programs) and swallows the rest of the file if it feels it's kosher - bang. If you make a browser less liberal in determining file formats it will reject too many file types and cause too many comlaints and revision upgrades. IE tries to eat anything...including screwball MP3 variants as well. This is supposed to be a browser, not image manipulation software.

I'll give you another more entertaining example. Older versions of Word Perfect, when exporting file formats to Word DOC format and contained lot of negative indents nested within tables would not only crash Word97, but bring down Win95/98 as well when opened. Do you torque down the app making it fussier about file formats, or leave it more open to accepting unknown file types?

Because WinIE is the only browser that seems to puke on these images, and WinIE is used by over 90% of the web-surfing public, Peter Nelson is right, it's up to Microsoft to fix it.

What a crock - "You will use our workflow and no other"......that's Adobe's creed. Considering all the other software packages I'm using produce JPEGs that IE doesn't have a problem with maybe Adobe should fix their mess. If there's one company that's even more arrogant and oblivious to other platforms and software than Microsoft, it's Adobe. The one other file format in my experience that is notorious for killing IE is, hmm, .PDF docs. IE isn't the only app having an issue with the extraneous header data, and Adobe's habit of turning on all the profile header info by default is really bad thinking, or just plain deliberate.

And some of us also use hardware-calibrated color monitors that rely on custom ICC profiles.

.....And 99% of the Internet public doesn't, so what makes you special? If you require ICC profiles and are adept as using them, then you should have the intellectual capacity to manually enable Profile embedding in Photoshop rather than having it switched on by default.

Scott Easton writes: "IE tries to eat anything...including screwball MP3 variants as well. This is supposed to be a browser, not image manipulation software."

Exactly why I think IE *should* be revised to handle commonplace files, such as Photoshop 7 created JPEGs. Photoshop *is* the industry standard, just as IE on Windows is a "default" by population alone.

If Adobe had defied JPEG standards, I'd be all over them in a flash, but Adobe's JPEGs are fully standards compliant.

This time it's IE's turn.

Maybe this is the first step for Microsoft to bring an image editing program. We we'll be soooo lucky if this comes

Why can IE for Macintosh handle PS 7 files but IE for Windows can not? I belive they are both made my Microsoft. Maybe the programers in the IE/Windows unit should ask the programers in the IE/Macintosh unit how it is done - after all they both work for the same company. Maybe they can port IE/Mac over to Windows.

Its not just jpeg files dude. the other day I had highlighted most of the text on the subsription page to copy/paste it into my notes so that I would have the address so that I could send my payment for subscribing to photo.net. All seemed to work normally until I tried to paste it into my notes in MS Word. My system hung, and all I could do was shut down at the main. When I restarted it took my machine 10 minutes to load windows. I ran scans for viruses, and windows checks, but everything seemed to be normal. My machine is pretty new, and I keep it upgraded and always keep it tuned. I do a lot of research and imaging with it.Si it was something here. I had just gone on line and Photo.net was the first place I went, I performed this action on the page after singning in.

Scott Eaton wrote:And 99% of the Internet public doesn't, so what makes you special? If you require ICC profiles and are adept as using them, then you should have the intellectual capacity to manually enable Profile embedding in Photoshop rather than having it switched on by default.

I'm going to ignore your arrogant, contemptuous tone and suggest that you consider the intent of my statement, which may not have been clear (and for that, I apologize). If we're trying to evaluate the tonality and colour of an image, we want to have as much relevant information about that image as possible. If the data isn't there, it's difficult or impossible to reconstruct it. If it's there, then we can use it to display the image as its creator intended. Falling back on sRGB or no profile is a lowest-common-denominator approach that may work for casual browser display, but it's philosophically no different from asking everyone to shoot with mediocre glass or inconsistent film. So I stand by my original statements. And if you want to go ahead and spout attitude instead of recognizing where the likely blame lies in this case, you're certainly entitled to be a Microsoft shill. As I and others have stated, IE for the Mac has no problems displaying these images -- why does IE for Windows puke on them? Microsoft should go and fix IE -- which, being so tightly integrated into Windows, is a big part of Trustworthy Computing *snicker*

>Why can IE for Macintosh handle PS 7 files but IE for Windows can not? >I belive they are both made my Microsoft.

Even though MS writes both the Mac and Win version of IE (version 5.2 on Mac and now v6 on Win), I understand the origins of their code base is completely different. Remember, MS has the MBU (Macintosh Business Unit) which develops all the Mac versions of their software. So while the interface and features on both seem very similar, the underlying rendering engines are two completely different source code.

I too would like to reiterate that I have also experienced problems with PhotoShop 7 JPEG image visibility when sent by e-mail as attachments through Microsoft Outlook 2000 (vers. 9.0.0.4527). My e-mail recipient reported that the file had the correct size allocation for the attachment but could not be read or viewed. Even multiple images within .zip archives were not visible. All images could be viewed locally with my Internet Explorer browser (vers. 6.0.2600.0000) without any problem. I will also notify Adobe of the problem.

"I will also notify Adobe of the proble". I assume that you also notified Microsoft of the problem. Did either Adobe or Microsoft get back to you?

So while the interface and features on both seem very similar, the underlying rendering engines are two completely different source code

If memory serves, http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/ie.htm rel="nofollow">Microsoft originally licensed Spyglass Mosaic to be the basis for the original Internet Explorer. http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/mosaic.htm rel="nofollow">Mosaic was written for both Mac and Windows. The source has obviously forked in many significant ways, and it's possible (perhaps even likely) that there's so much divergence that they may as well have been written from totally different source trees, but if there's a fundamental deficit in Windows ICM 2.0 that prevents WinIE (and other Win apps) from correctly handling ICC profiles in valid JPEGs, perhaps MS should put their money http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/icm/icm_2wmo.htm rel="nofollow">where their mouth is and do some actual innovation instead of paying lip service to system-level colour management; after all, they had no problems having Apple develop TrueType for them. As for Adobe mangling PDF, well, PDF supposedly means Portable Document Format, so wouldn't it be absurd from a business perspective if Adobe deliberately made it so that PDFs would break in WinIE, as Scott Eaton disingenuously asserts above -- the very browser used by >90% of web surfers? Where's the business logic in that? If I can read numbers correctly, Adobe's annual revenue is chump change compared to Microsoft's. Which company again has US$40 billion in the bank, has been convicted as a predatory monopolist, and issues numerous critical security bulletins for defects dating back to 1996? Please note -- we're not dealing with personal opinions now, but well-substantiated legal facts.

No company can write perfect code, but which company seems to be the likely culprit in this case, and needs to fix THEIR apps?

Apologies -- the correct URL for the info in my post above should've been

http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/About_Windows_ICM2_0.html

I think we should bombard MS with requests to produce a patch for the present IE or a better browser. They could do this easily, I am sure. I have an old netscape browser on my pc with Win 98, and the Netscape works. Mozzilla seems to work fine for people with none of the hang ups that IE (newer versions included) seem to have. I am not very computer literate, but this one seems obvious, since other browsers seem able to handle these JPEG photos.

I think we should bombard MS with requests to produce a patch for the present IE or a better browser. They could do this easily, I am sure.

We can bombard MS with requests all we want, but MS has NO incentive whatsoever to improve or fix WinIE. When they have over 90% of browser share with a product that they give away for free and make absolutely no money on, what business driver is there to spend money on fixing defects, since they already have a near-absolute monopoly not only in browsers, but also on desktop operating systems? This is exactly why monopolies are bad, yet many people can't seem to fathom this simple fact. The solution is as obvious as it is unpalatable to the millions of people who (mistakenly) think there are no viable alternatives to MS products -- tell MS, in the only way MS can understand: switch to a non-MS browser, and better yet, to a non-MS operating system.

We can bombard MS with requests all we want, but MS has NO incentive whatsoever to improve or fix WinIE.

Of course they do. If their JPG reading components aren't working with valid JPGs, they will fix them. If they don't fix them, people might just switch to other browsers and MS would truly hate that - even more than it might hate devoting a few hours of developer time to fixing the problem. MS has fixed many bugs in IE before, and there's no reason they won't fix this one too. Besides, if the problem becomes too widespread, they'll be flooded with people complaining about IE "Crashing" or "Locking up" when visiting certain pages (pages with PS7 JPGs). While those of us in-the-know might get a kick out of what we imagine the politics between Adobe and MS are, the simple fact is that the vast majority of IE users don't know a thing about Photoshop and could care less what the reason for IE locking up is. They just want the friggin thing to work. MS is not in the business of pissing off their customer base. (no really, they're not) Of course, if Adobe is actually the one at fault, we could expect MS to come down on them with demands for a fix. -c

Of course you can always give MS an incentive to fix IE. Just send a very polite note that IE hangs and you are switching to Mozilla. Indicate that you would be happy to reconsider IE in the future and request that they notify you when the problem is fixed....

Even if microsoft fixes the problem it's not the end of the story. Everyone would still need to upgrade their browsers and a lot of people don't do that.

Well... if people here have been complaining about IE being crap, and wishing MS would fix this bug.. I'm sure they'll download any patch available to them since it will be smaller to download than a 15+ MB download of an entire new browser such as Netscape 7.

As well, since IE 6 was officially released alongside WinXP, in the 2nd/3rd quarter of 2001, versus Adobe PS 7's February 24, 2002 release; Adobe should be responsible for the stability of their product over the "already in place" IE 6 from Windows.

Sure there products are in Beta phases before, but IE 6 was designed earlier, and you can't expect an older product to support the newer releases and increased standards. Therefore, Adobe should have been aware of what was brewing in MS's halls.

Regarding IE for Mac versus Windows, well, similar GUI, but different guts, and 2 different teams implenting features that were on the list... differences in development occurs, sadly. Some features are more inate to Mac, while some are more for Windows.

Again, MS will surely send a patch update on the subject sooner than later. They're probably due for another step up to something like ver 6.5.

Hell, Netscape 6.0's form submission was error prone, and so was several other of it's features, hence, 6.2 came out with major fixes. Microsoft listens to it's users, and will try to kill it's competition - For once, in recent times, NS 7 has an upper hand over Windows' IE. MS needs the competition, bring it back to reality.

Just I wish companies could make more standards and follow them closely. Just like the DOM in web development.. anyways... not going into that.

My theory is that "image/jpeg" is correct and "image/jpg" is not. [...] Do any computer geeks out there have any comments on this theory?

You are right, Mr. Mottershead. "image/jpeg" is the official IANA designation. I've never seen "image/jpg" in any RFC. See RFC 1700 (a.k.a. STD 2) (or the newer online database), "MEDIA TYPES" section, for the total list of valid values. For where it all started, see RFC 1521, part 7.5.

I've been dealing with this sort of stuff at work for the past few months, so I just happened to know where it was.

Users that upgrade.... They don't do it as much as you think. The vast majority of users on this site may not even be aware of the problem. Here are some statistics from about the last 35,000 unique visitors to my site. They are comparable to other sites I've worked on.

Top OS's:

1. Windows 98 16,594 48.00 2. Windows 2000 10,907 31.55 3. Windows ME 3,754 10.86 4. Windows NT 1,159 3.35 5. Macintosh 1,031 2.98 6. Windows 95 900 2.60

Top Browser Versions:

1. MSIE 6.0 12,374 35.80 2. MSIE 5.0 11,120 32.17 3. MSIE 5.5 6,009 17.39 4. MSIE 5.5 (AOL) 752 2.18 5. Netscape 4.7 744 2.15 6. MSIE 6.0 (AOL) 709 2.05 7. MSIE 4.0 665 1.92 8. Netscape 6.0 410 1.19

There's the way things ought to be and the way things are. Sitting talking about how things ought to be and laying blame is fine if you're sitting around pounding a few beers but it doesn't help the problem the site is having. It seems like Brian's trying to work on the problem.

While I'm throwing out statistics, let me add this bit. Out of all the sites I've worked on, the the most popular screen resolution was 800x600. If it wasn't the top resolution it was a very close second. This site seems to be designing a lot of the new pages with a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768 in mind, or unmindful of screen resolution. On occassions where I browse photo.net on a computer whose resolution is set at 800x600 I find it frustrating to constantly have to scroll horizontally to view certain pages.

1. 800 x 600 pixels 19,373 56.01 2. 1024 x 768 pixels 11,825 34.18 3. 1280 x 1024 pixels 1,007 2.91 4. 640 x 480 pixels 763 2.21 5. 1152 x 864 pixels 724 2.09

Since these numbers correspond to other data I've seen I believe it's safe to infer that photo.net's numbers would be somewhere along those lines but with slightly better systems because of the nature of the site.

One more rant. Can we get soft returns working on comments on photos and in the forums as well?

I hadn't contacted Microsoft or Adobe about this problem because I didn't expect to make much progress, and anyway as Tom has pointed out even if there is a fix for the current browsers or PS7, we still have to workaround this problem for the older and unpatched browsers and the PS7 JPEG's that have already been created or that will continue to be created by unpatched Photoshop 7's.

I was therefore quite impressed when we were contacted today by the Microsoft IE engineering team, which had learned of this post, asking for more information about the problem, which they seemed motivated to verify and fix. I'm "working with" them at the moment. (In the computer industry, "working with" is an impressive-sounding way of saying that you are exchanging some emails.)

Jon, it seems you are right; "image/jpg" is not in any RFC or spec.

However, a quick google search finds literally hundreds of references to image/jpg as if it were a valid MIME type, and a further quick read of these articles reveals many that refer to "image/jpg" and not to "image/jpeg" at all. Our server was set up to identify JPEG's as "image/jpg" until I changed it recently. How did "image/jpg" become so common?

Folks,

Does anyone know if the 7.01 patch or other patches fixes the problem? The 7.01 patch is supposed to fix the white-point color cast in jpegs.

Thanks!

Steve

PS 7.01 doesn't solve the problem. My images that others couldn't see were saved in PS 7.01, Macintosh.

It sounds like both companies did something wrong. Microsoft wrote a browser that couldn't handle legal Jpeg's. Adobe should know that Internet Explorer is one of the most used applications and they should have written software that works with it.

>>>> We have searched the Microsoft web site for Internet Explorer workarounds or patches for this problem, and we have not been able to find any. IE 5 and 6 on Windows 2K, and IE 6 on Windows XP are some of the version/platform combinations that are impacted, but there are likely others.

I use Win IE 5.00 and haven't seen this problem with it. JPEG's I write from Photoshop 7.01 (at it's default settings without using Save for Web) display normally, and I haven't had trouble with any of the images here on photo.net, or anywhere else. I'm using Win2K, SP3.

Attached is a 266k file I wrote with PS7, could someone tell me if it causes this problem?

Works fine with NT4.0 and IE 5.5. I wonder if the problem is with the Macintosh version of PS 7 only? I know my images from Macintosh PS 7 could not be seen. Would someone put up another image from Windows PS 7 to check this out.

A couple quick comments:

1. While the 'jpg' mimetype may not be explicitly specified, JPEG itself is fully described by ISO 10918 (if I recall correctly). Among other things, the standard specifies that a compliant decoder MUST ignore and parse past any JPEG marker that it does not know how to handle. The whole point of that language is that compliant encoders can embed whatever extra data they want in a file provided they use proper JPEG marker syntax, without hosing compliant legacy decoders. In other words, what Adobe did is perfectly legal per the standard, and Microsoft's decoder is _required_ to handle it or it is not a JPEG decoder (i.e. it is not a decoder that implements the JPEG standard).

2. I've written two JPEG decoders in my career, and neither of them have any trouble with images written by PS 7, whether from Mac or Windows.

Bottom line: Adobe looks OK here, Microsoft screwed up.

Although the code causing the system to hang comes from Adobe, the browser should be designed not to choke! It's definitely a problem with the browser, and photo.net needs a solution urgently. I only visit photo.net when I am about to turn my computer off, since it hangs more than half the time I visit (IE 6 with Windows ME). This is an escalating problem, a huge waste of time, and a big downside to the site. Could the site truncate images to delete the offending problem? Is there an automatic way to notify those who are inadvertently uploading culprit images?

<i> Because WinIE is the only browser that seems to puke on these images, and WinIE is used by over 90% of the web-surfing public, Peter Nelson is right, it's up to Microsoft to fix it. </i> <p> Somehow your conclusion is diametrically opposed to your observation. While it certainly would be nice if MS met the full jpeg standard and nicer still if it failed gracefully, in the real world MS IE is the 400 pound gorilla. Adobe has all the incentive in the world to fix this problem, and Microsoft very little. If every user of Photoshop in the world got ticked at MS and stopped using IE, their market share would go from 90% to about 89.99%.

KW Smith -- I get your picture with my IE 6.0.2800.1106. I have done a critical update 4 days ago; and, it was on the browser. But what all the information on the details of the update meant was beyond my understanding. If MS has done a patch, how in the world do we get people to update?

in the real world MS IE is the 400 pound gorilla. Adobe has all the incentive in the world to fix this problem, and Microsoft very little.

And if you had bothered to read my later posts, perhaps you would not have attempted your apologia. To quote verbatim from my own post:

MS has NO incentive whatsoever to improve or fix WinIE. When they have over 90% of browser share with a product that they give away for free and make absolutely no money on, what business driver is there to spend money on fixing defects

I may be misreading your tone, but in the context of your post, your statement that in the real world MS IE is the 400 pound gorilla is morally equivalent to saying "might makes right" -- exactly the situation the MS antitrust trial tried (unsuccessfully) to address. Meanwhile, WinIE has >90% market share because it is integrated into Windows, and most people do not seem to care enough to do anything about the issue of predatory monopoly, so they go and rant about Adobe being the villain when, as Patrick Chase noted above: I've written two JPEG decoders in my career, and neither of them have any trouble with images written by PS 7, whether from Mac or Windows. Bottom line: Adobe looks OK here, Microsoft screwed up.

I mean, what is so untenable about switching to, say, Mozilla, until WinIE has been fixed? Last time I checked, we could still choose to use a web browser other than IE, and WinXP Service Pack 1 is designed to make switching easier (as a token concession to the Feds). Oh wait, let me guess -- it's easier to say "It's Adobe's problem, let them fix it" rather than switch browsers. Thanks, and have a nice day helping a convicted predatory monopolist continue in its cavalier ways.

Y'know, Mark C. may have a point, after all... I'm probably being paranoid, but the issue of de facto vs. official standards has got me thinking -- what if MS intends to "embrace and extend" JPEG or other imaging formats? Now that MS browsers have more than 95% market share (thanks to our own complicity), MS can compel companies like Adobe to make their products conform to MS-defined "standards" -- presumably in the "public" interest, to avoid nasty problems like the one this site is experiencing. Photo.net (and other popular photography sites) would seem to have no choice but to ban Photoshop 7 JPEGs outright because of the overwhelming majority of WinIE users. MS wins -- yet again -- and Adobe loses (even if it "fixes" Photoshop). Here's one for the conspiracy theorists: pretty soon, we may be treated to an industrial-strength Photoshop workalike (Picture-It Ultra, able to read/write even the most complex Photoshop files, but with draconian DRM built in a la Corona -- MS MPEG4, anyone? -- XP Media Center Edition, and Palladium), from none other than our favorite SW behemoth. Goodbye Photoshop, goodbye Gimp, hello MS digital watermarking that communicates with your hard drive, CPU, and newfangled security hardware. Goodbye fair use, hello pay-per-view. In case it has escaped anyone's notice, American Photo named Mr. Gates one of the most important figures in photography, by virtue of his ownership of Corbis. Connect the dots, and this browser "problem" may be just the tip of the iceberg. Note to self: de-commoditize JPEG, weaken Adobe, then...

Get a grip.

The fact is that if you want people to be able to view your jpegs you have two options:

1) Complain to Adobe and get a patch, or use the workaround.

2) Complain to MS and get a patch, then convince 100 million or so other people to install it so they can see your images.

I'd suggesting getting a life and choosing #1.

Mark C. wrote superciliously:1) Complain to Adobe and get a patch, or use the workaround. 2) Complain to MS and get a patch, then convince 100 million or so other people to install it so they can see your images. I'd suggesting [sic] getting a life and choosing #1.

Well, I haven't ever used PS7 to prepare JPEGs for upload, but thank you for your kindly suggestions, it's nice to know there are still legions who make such fine software viable in these difficult times. Life, as you would have it, might be otherwise so boring without the entertaining distractions of a browser that can take down the operating system into which it is so tightly integrated. We should all be so blessed.

Even if MS were to miraculously update all of the existing 100 million IE browsers, there is still a problem. PS is embedding profiles which get transferred to thumbnails, and sizes of 40 to 100KB for 200x130 pixel images are common. This is extremely wasteful of storage and bandwidth, and needs to be fixed.

PS is embedding profiles which get transferred to thumbnails, and sizes of 40 to 100KB for 200x130 pixel images are common

Even though I agree that file size vs. storage/bandwidth is a valid concern, I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. Post-install, PS7 is set to "Web Graphics Defaults" -- sRGB with Color Management Off. ICC profiles are preserved for existing sRGB-profiled images, but opening an image with no profile or a non-sRGB profile will cause a dialog to pop up, asking the user what to do, and the default is to discard the profile. Using Save As JPEG or Save for Web, profile embedding is unchecked by default. So, it would seem that, under Photoshop's default settings, user intervention is required to embed a profile. What would you have Adobe do? Prevent users from ever embedding profiles in JPEGs?

<i> Mark C. wrote superciliously: </i> <p> Yes, you'd be the expert.

Mark C offered:Yes, you'd be the expert.

If 100 million people use a defective browser, it is still a defective browser. Adobe installs PS7 by default to discard ICC profiles unless these are sRGB (which many digital cameras now embed). Adobe could, for the sake of 100 million users of a defective browser, disable profile embedding for all PS7 JPEGs, but hmmm... that defeats the purpose of having a color managed workflow and potentially creates problems for people who rely on onscreen proofing to preview and adjust hardcopy output -- e.g. the photofinishing and publishing industries, and anyone who prints images from their digicams and film scanners. Oh, never mind, they don't matter.

Instead of blaming Photoshop 7, and being reluctant to come to Photo.net, why not simply get a browser that can handle proper JPEGs? (And at the same time, a browser that doesn't open you up to every security exploit under the sun.)

Sorry to sound like an advert here, but I switched to Mozilla because it actually supports the formats that the web is based on. The fact that it's fast, secure, blocks pop-ups and (if desired) banners, is just gravy.

Whatever you do, don't bug Adobe about it. They did the right thing by supporting the standard as it's written. If Microsoft can't do it right they deserve to take the heat for it.

This drove me up a wall!!! And, drove the computer to BSOD. '98 2nd Ed. Here is a fix that I created and is better by far than a reboot. It will last until you return to another bad jpeg. Gus

#1 I close the I E 6 browser,
#2 Crtl - Alt - Delete (ONCE!) and high-lite Explorer,
#3 push the End Task button,
#4 Shut Down window comes up,
#5 click cancel,
#6 a window declaring that Explorer is not responding comes up (not instant [maybe 5 seconds] - but - comes up),
#7 click and hold the end task button down for a full one second and let up, things will blink like a glitch or refresh and your done.

Thank you, to everyone. I actually found this site, because I was looking for an exif stripper, guessing that was my issue. It was confirmed, after using the commandline software suggested jpegtran.

It appears that this is a known issue and no vendor wants to deal with it.

For those interested, I was using Photoimpact 6 SE, and the files I could not open were files from a late model Kodak digital camera (processed via their photo software). The only way of tracking the fault was watching photoimpact die (crash and burn) every time I tried to preview the file (forget about opening it).

The latest photoimpact 8 (and I assume 7), appears to have got round this problem.

I list this here, in case someone else is pulling their hair out (I spent 3-4 hours trying to resolve the issue.

Regards

Bob

I'm not sure what architecture photo.net runs on, but I am running a farm of servers for a personals service. All linux, all manipulating images using ImageMagick 5.5.6. When someone uploads a photo, I, of course, create thumbnail images for the search feature. I use IM's convert feature to create these thumbnails.

My ultimate question: Is there ANY unix-based utility that anyone knows of that can "detect" these PS7 files? If so, I could easily not allow these image, as the complaints to the site are coming in at a ridiculous rate.

Feedback?

How to detect/filter/fix jpeg images with an XML EXIF header

I use an utility called jhead: jhead -v image.jpg (version 2.0 in my case) to dump the EXIF header.

If you find something like:

COM marker comment: (...) xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"

then this is the type of headers that can fool IE and others.

Not only photoshop 7 generates XML headers, this example is taken straight from an HP camera...

You can of course grep on the output of the jhead utility, but jhead has some filtering options like camera model, etc, which can be helpful.

Once identified, you can use jpegtran -copy none as mentionned earlier to clear the EXIF header.
Enjoy... Sam

Hi Guys,

This problem seems to have reared its ugly head again. I have had 3 occasions in the last couple of days when looking at the "request for critique" pages and halfway down the images stop and I lose all images on all sites until I kill IE. Is Photo.Net still filtering the PS7 files that caused the original problem, or has something new crept in?

Hi All,

Does anybody have a site they can point me to where I can look at this problem? I've tried saving JPEG images in PS7 PC version with the preview turned on and wasn't able to see the load problem. Also, Is there a specific platform (WinXP, Win2k, Win98, etc) and IE version (IE 6.0, 5.01, 5.5, etc.) that people are seeing this problem on?

Thanks, Philip Nachreiner [MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi All,

After further investigation we've fixed the above issue please follow the below link:

(link)

or download directly:

(link)

-Phil Nachreiner [MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Phil, I have downloaded the patch. It tells me I need IE 6 SP1 and won't load. I go to load IE6 SP1 and it tells me I already have it loaded...

Now I guess I need a patch for the patch? Help... Dave

Subject: Response to Browser Problems Caused by Photoshop 7 JPEG images Yes, it seems to happen again with various versions of XP and higher levels of SP's. Oh well ;-) The temporary fix I use is pretty much the same as I posted before on :

"jan 03, 2003; 07:14 p.m. This drove me up a wall!!! And, drove the computer to BSOD. '98 2nd Ed. Here is a fix that I created and is better by far than a reboot. It will last until you return to another bad jpeg. Gus #1 I close the I E 6 browser,. . . ."

You need to use slightly different steps; just keep the theory consistent, but the same idea is applied with a consistent result.

Dave, When you click Help->About in Internet Explorer what does it say next to Update Versions? If it says SP1 you already have SP1. If you see Q824145 in the list you already have the patch that fixes this PS7 Image issue. If you are still having problem. Here are a couple Knoweledge Base (KB) articles that might help with setup of IE 6:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=318378 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q164539

Hopefully the above will help you out.

-Phil Nachreiner [MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

photo.net only tests when a new image is uploaded.

when an existing image is updated (including uploading a new JPEG), the test is not performed.

so there is no guarantee that images on photo.net don't have the XML tags causing problems with some browsers.

i think photo.net should test JPEG also when people update existing images.

the best solution, naturally, would be for photo.net to automatically filter-out the Photoshop XML tags on your server :)

I identified a similar issue in Corel WordPerfect 10. When you try to insert a JPEG image created in Photoshop 7.0 into a WP document using the menu "INSERT>GRAPHICS>FROM FILE..." the JPEG image is converted but simply appears as a white blank image. When printing the document, the image also doesn't appear. The good news is that the workaround given by Adobe which specifies to ommit the preview data when saving the JPEG images ALSO WORKS for this problem in WordPerfect. Hope this solves another headache for WP10 users