[Pythonmac-SIG] Does PIL handle OS X TIFFs?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Tuesday, Sep 16, 2003, at 19:32 America/New_York, Dinu Gherman wrote:

> Hi,
>
> has anybody succeeded here in using PIL for loading TIFFs generated
> on OS X, e.g. stuff created like this?
>
>   img = NSImage...
>   tiffData = img.TIFFRepresentation()
>   tiffData.writeToFile_atomically_(path, YES)
>
> I'm using PIL 1.1.4, but get errors like the following:
>
>   >>> import Image
>   >>> tiff = Image.open("test.tiff")
>   Traceback (most recent call last):
>     File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>     File "/usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 1571, 
> in open
>       raise IOError("cannot identify image file")
>   IOError: cannot identify image file

PIL doesn't support that level of TIFF..  the TIFF files that OS X 
produces have a signature of 'MM\x00*', which is not supported by 
TiffImagePlugin (PIL can't even save big endian TIFFs).  You're better 
off using ObjC for getting the pixels anyways (faster, more complete, 
etc).

Python could use a PIL replacement that's a lot smarter (better at bit 
swizzling, can interface to native APIs like QuickTime, etc.).

-bob