jpegs in Graphic fields

[Guest_imported]

I am having trouble displaying jpeg images properly in Graphic Field. Any tips welcome

 

[almir]

Generally, Paradox has problems when displaying .JPG pictures. Your graphic card is probably not strong enough. Another (better) solution would be to convert pictures to .GIF or .BMP and than use them. You can use any of graphic converter that can convert more files (if you have many pictures) automatically, like IrfanView. Hope this will help.

 

[footpad]

You didn't mention the version of Paradox you're using, so this is going to seem a bit scatter-shot. Sorry...

Part of the problem may be due to the internals. The Paradox Graphic field is, unfortunately, a Windows metafile beast. It doesn't necessarily support formats other than WMF's metafiles or BMP's.

In fact, your original JPG may be being converted to one of these formats, losing something in the process.

Since JPG's can be compressed while neither WMF's nor BMP's are, you may be better off to
a) store the original JPG in a separate directory and store that filename in your table or b) storing the JPG as a binary BLOB and writing it to a temp file to display it.

Personally, I'd opt for the former approach, especially in this day of cheap disk space.

You could then display the picture by either dropping a button on your form and pointing the user's web browser to the target file (crude, but effective) or embed a JPG-aware ActiveX control on your forms/reports as needed.

The difficulty of the latter may depend on the version of Paradox and the ActiveX/OCX control you're using.

Older versions of Paradox (5.01 and before) were especially vunerable to graphic images with 256 color+ palettes. If you're using a 16-bit version, this may be a factor as well.

Hope this helps...

-- Lance

 

[buttersoft]

Yep. I wanted to do this with Paradox have a photo album for my digital photos. I gave up and 5 minutes later had exactly what I wanted using Filemaker Pro V5 - which handles .jpg files perfectly.

Hopefully one day sooner than later Paradox will be updated to cope with digital files....... Steve Butterworth

 

[buttersoft]

Actually, Adobe Acrobat .pdf files are almost perfect for Picture albums, this is what I now use. If my camera took .gif then I would use Paradox of course. Steve Butterworth

Time is fluid

 

[footpad]

Steve,

Um, you realize (I hope) that most any graphics package lets you convert (as far as possible) one graphics format to another.

For example, Paint Shope Pro handily switches between JPEG and GIF, as well as other formats.

Also, it may interest you to know that in more recent versions of Paradox (such as v10, provided WPO/Pro 2002), you can directly import JPEG's into your Paradox tables using Edit | Paste From. (I just tried this with a photo of my daughter and it works just fine.)

This was, I believe, something that was added to Paradox v9.

Hope this helps...

-- Lance

 

[Langley]

In Pdox8 you could paste to graphics fields from the clipboard as well (Ctl-V).

Mac
Mac

 

[footpad]

Mac,

Good point. That's actually worked since Paradox 1.0 and part of the OS itself. when you paste images to the Clipboard, Windows saves it using a format that can convert the the image to WMF, which is what Paradox was originally designed to support.

Hope this helps...

-- Lance

 

[buttersoft]

I will try again Lance at cut and paste Steve Butterworth

Time is fluid

 

[buttersoft]

Cut and paste with 2002 and Paradox 10 gives me the same result, the pictures do not display or scale properly. In Filemaker on the other hand the picture can be dragged to virtually any size and it scales perfectly and I have less work to do, to arrive at what I want, which was a photo-album in a database. Steve Butterworth

Time is fluid

 

[Langley]

Sounds like the problem is a display issue, not one of getting the image into the table. Try setting the magnification property of the image object to 'best fit'

Mac

"Strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" - Dennis, age 37

mailto:langley_mckelvy@cd4.co.harris.tx.us

 

[Bystander]

I do a lot of storing ID card photos in HR Databases. A simple approach is to use Windows Photoeditor or somethng of that ilk to re-size the jpeg then copy and paste into a Paradox graphics field on a form. The jpegs normally end up about 15K in size. Been doing this since version 7 I think.

Regards

Bystander