This is a minor update that provides a smaller binary, makes some improvement in memory usage, updates core library code, includes extra free stuff (namely Typer, which is the best utility there is for fixing file types, creator codes and extensions...) and makes many other minor enhancements.
Q: Why should I buy ProJPEG and not ImageReady or FireWorks?
A: To get smaller files faster with less effort and save yourself some money doing it. There really is no better reason to chose ProJPEG™ than the fact that ProJPEG is the best tool at the best price.
ImageReady and FireWorks are both good applications, but face it, neither one compares to Photoshop for image editing and neither compares to ProJPEG™ for making Web JPEG files. It doesn't make very much sense to get another stand alone application just to save your JPEG files for the Web when it can be done better and faster from Photoshop with ProJPEG™.
- ProJPEG makes drastically smaller files
- ProJPEG is much easier to use
- ProJPEG is much faster to use
- ProJPEG is about 1/6th the price
- ProJPEG doesn't use 20 MB more RAM
- ProJPEG doesn't use 30 MB of your HD
There are many greatly compelling reasons to chose a plug-in solution for your Web graphics needs despite the combined marketing budgets of Adobe and Macromedia.
Q: Will ProJPEG™ work with PhotoPaint, Painter, Canvas, ColorIt!, etc.?
Not very likely. ProJPEG™ is a file format plug-in and few non-Adobe applications support this type of plug-in.
ProJPEG™ is mainly just for Photoshop, but it should actually work with Adobe's other image editing products, which also support file format plug-ins.
Q: I installed ProJPEG™, but I don't see it in my filters menu. What's up?
ProJPEG™ isn't a filter plug-in. It doesn't appear in your filters menu. ProJPEG™ is a file format plug-in. File format plug-ins add new opening and saving capabilities for files to Photoshop and appear as menu items in the formats menu in Photoshop's dialogs for opening and saving files - not in the filters menu.
You can tell if ProJPEG™ is installed correctly and being recognized by Photoshop by looking in the "About Plug-ins" menu in Photoshop. If ProJPEG™ is installed correctly and recognized you will see a menu item named "BoxTop ProJPEG" in that menu.
When ProJPEG™ is installed you use it by saving files as "BoxTop ProJPEG" (Mac version) or "ProJPEG" (Windows version) in Photoshop's save dialog instead of just "JPEG", which is the name of Photoshop's own JPEG format module.
5 - Q: I was using ProJPEG™ and it said "The operation could not be completed because there was not enough memory." What's wrong?
There's not enough memory available to ProJPEG™ to complete the operation - exactly what the error message says.
Memory availability with Photoshop plug-ins is a tricky business because they can only use what Photoshop isn't already. Under ideal conditions, which never really happen, ProJPEG™ is able to use at most 1/3 of the RAM allocated to Photoshop. That means if you have 25MB of memory allocated to Photoshop, then ProJPEG™ can use at most about 8MB, and more likely it can only use about 6MB with Photoshop set to a 25MB application partition.
6 - 8MB is plenty of RAM to save 90% of the images you would ever want to put on a web page, but it's not enough for a large or hi-res image. ProJPEG™ has a very high memory overhead from the interactive previews. It needs twice the size of the original RGB image just for those two previews, and then about a MB of fixed overhead to be able to save a baseline JPEG. Saving the image as progressive further increases the memory overhead considerably.
The reason ProJPEG™ can take such liberties with memory requirements is because the average size of images for the web is well under a MB of uncompressed RGB data. For instance, a large 640 x 480 pixel image is only 900K of uncompressed RGB data.
However, an apparently smaller (in dimensions) hi-res image that's 4 x 5 inches at 220ppi is 3 times larger at 2.8MB in size, and could cause a memory error in ProJPEG™ easily if you haven't increased Photoshop's default memory partition of 16MB. The same is true of any large image, because it takes more memory than you think to save an image with ProJPEG™ and less memory than you think is available for ProJPEG™ to use.
To improve ProJPEG™'s and Photoshop's performance, you should increase Photoshop's RAM to as much as you can. (Photoshop can never have too much RAM.) You can also clear undo information, clear the clipboard, clear snapshots, and close extra documents to improve memory conditions for ProJPEG™ and other plug-ins.
If all else fails and you simply don't have enough physical RAM available for that huge image you just have to have - against all practical advice - on your web page, you can always save with Photoshop's built in JPEG. Photoshop's JPEG is quite different from ProJPEG™ in that it's not implemented as a plug-in and not subject to the same memory related limitations, which is presumably why Adobe chose to abandon their own plug-in interface for most of their file format support. Photoshop's JPEG is optimized for hi-res print images, and will not achieve the same level of compression as ProJPEG™, but it is able to save tremendous files because it doesn't have the memory constraints of plug-ins and it doesn't have an interactive interface that requires a high memory overhead.
Q: I opened a JPEG file saved with paths using ProJPEG and the paths were gone, is this a bug?
Nope. It's not a bug. Paths are proprietary to Photoshop, and ProJPEG™ simply doesn't support them. It won't save them. It won't read them. However, it will read JPEG files that have paths, and other kinds of application specific, proprietary information in them, it will just ignore it reading only the image information.
Should you need to open a JPEG file with paths, you should use the Open menu in Photoshop and select "JPEG" as the format to read the file.
Q: Are ProJPEG™ files compatible with PageMill, etc.?
Yes. ProJPEG saves ordinary JPEG files that comply fully with the JFIF specification. (JFIF is the actual file format. JPEG is a popular misnomer.)
By default ProJPEG saves non-progressive JFIF JPEG files, which are compatible with nearly every application that has any sort of "JPEG" support. However, ProJPEG™ can save progressive JPEG files, which are a less supported variation of the JFIF format that some applications do not support, like PageMill and several other current versions of popular WYSIWYG editors.
This isn't a problem with ProJPEG™'s files, and not really an issue to worry about at all. All of the current browsers support progressive JPEG files now, but if you want JPEGs that anyone and any application can open, just don't turn the progressive option on in ProJPEG™.
There is some advantage to using progressive JPEG files because they appear to load faster to the viewer because of incremental display similar to interlaced GIFs and usually are smaller, but this has to be weighted against some compatibility concerns. ProJPEG™ leaves that choice up to you, but progressive isn't the default anymore because too many people asked why files wouldn't display in PageMill.
Q: Can I batch process with ProJPEG?
Yes. ProJPEG, as of version 3.1, fully supports actions and can be scripted for batch processing of images in Photoshop 4 and 5.
Q: When I go to save my document with ProJPEG™, the option isn't available in Photoshop's format's menu. It's grayed out. Why?
Photoshop disables format options when there is information in the working document file that the individual format module isn't able to save. In ProJPEG™'s case it is because:
Your document isn't in RGB or Grayscale mode. ProJPEG™ can only save documents that are in RGB or Grayscale mode.
Your document contains layers. The file format plug-in API doesn't have access to layers in Photoshop and no file format plug-in can save documents using layers because of it.
Your document has alpha channels. ProJPEG™ doesn't support saving alpha channels.
When ProJPEG™ (or another format) is disabled in the format menu in the "Save as..." dialog, you can use "Save a Copy..." instead with "Flatten Image" and "Don't Include Alpha Channels" checked to save with a previously disabled format, except when it was disable because of the document's color mode.
Q: The size of the final file in ProJPEG's dialog isn't the same size as I see in the Finder. Which one is right and why are they different?
First, the final size shown in ProJPEG™'s dialog is the right one. That is exactly how big your JPEG file will be after you hit the OK button and ProJPEG writes the file to disk. It's already compressed it in RAM to know the exact final size, so it is accurate to the last byte.
That's only the JPEG file, though. It doesn't count any application and Mac specific resource information that Photoshop will save in the resource fork of your Macintosh "file" such as custom icons, previews, printer settings, etc.
For technical reference, the Macintosh file system uses two files, one called the data fork and one called the resource fork for every "file" you see on the desktop. Your JPEG file is the data fork of that Mac file, and whatever is in the resource fork of that Mac file is extra fluff that doesn't count as far as the Web or JPEGs are concerned. When you upload the file to your server the resource fork is never sent and even if your Web server happens to be a Mac, the resource fork is never sent in response to a request. It's just extra Mac info that other computers don't understand.
The difference comes in because the Finder shows the combined size of the data fork and the resource fork in the Get Info window, and there is no way from the Finder to just see the size of the data fork, which is what you want to know for GIF and JPEG file purposes.
You don't really need to worry about what the Finder says, as long as you're happy with the file sizes in ProJPEG™. The extra information in the resource fork will take up a little extra room locally on your hard disk, but it won't effect your Web page at all. The custom icons and previews are worth keeping because they make sorting through images much easier.
However, if you want the size you see in ProJPEG™ to agree with the size you see in the Finder, you can use GIF Prep™, included with the ProJPEG™ download and available separately from the BoxTop Software, Inc. Web site, to strip the resource forks from your GIF and JPEG files. GIF Prep™ is free. We pretty much wrote it to help answer this question that is asked too often.
BoxTop Software, Inc.
PO Box 2347
Starkville, MS, 39760
voice 662-263-5410
fax 662-263-5412
http://www.boxtopsoft.com
info@boxtopsoft.com
ProJPEG™ is Copyright 1995-99 BoxTop Software, Inc. All rights reserved. ProJPEG™ is a trademark of BoxTop Software, Inc., which may be registered in certain jutisdictions. All other trademarks are recognized as the properties of their respective holders.
Document published: 5/3/99
Copyright 1999 BoxTop Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
