[Image-SIG] Read EPS (bitmap and vector), TIFF and PSD on windows

[Markus Meyer]

Stefano,

at least for vector EPS, you definitely need a RIP (raster image 
processor). Of course, Photoshop has kind of a RIP built-in, so it can 
interpret vector formats. Ghostscript is a well-known open source RIP 
which can be used over command line, but it won't help you with reading 
PSD files. But there are commercial RIPs available which can read 
PhotoShop files, for a list see:

http://www.wide-formatimaging.com/resources/rips.shtml

Most of these programs should be able to create JPG previews. Commercial 
RIPs normally work using a "hot folder", that is, an application (or the 
user) copies the file to be converted into a folder, the RIP picks it 
up, processes it and writes the output to another folder automatically.


Markus


Stefano Masini schrieb:

>Hi,
>
>I've been digging around a bit and found a little too many different
>libraries for dealing with image formats, so I'm a little confused...
>here's my problem:
>
>I need to read JPG (easy), TIFF (easy), EPS (both bitmap and vector)
>and PSD (photoshop) files, and create small jpeg previews. This should
>preferrably be done under windows, optionally under linux.
>
>I know this must be not an easy problem to solve in its generality.
>Just to mention one problem for all, a vector EPS files may contain
>text set with a font that is only present on a given system. So in
>order to create a jpeg preview I must rasterize the postscript on the
>system containing that font, and my system must be able to use
>whatever format the font is available on such platform.
>
>My requirements are not totally stringent though:
>
>1) I can give up PSD files, if I must.
>2) I can give up windows platform, if I must.
>
>I already have an ultimate solution: have a windows machine running at
>all time, with Photoshop installed and running at all time as well. A
>server listening on a tcp port waits for preview-generation requests,
>and have Photoshop convert whatever format comes in to a jpeg preview,
>that gets sent back to the client machine.
>
>I think this solution is quite extreme though. And probably not very
>efficient too.
>
>There may even be some off the shelf command line tool that does all
>the magic, I thought. In that case I could write some wrapper in order
>to have its functionality available with a simple api. But I don't
>know such tool.
>
>So I'm wondering: what else can I do? Do I really have to write such a
>monster of a distributed app to obtain simple image previews?
>
>thanks in advance!
>stefano
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