Open Kodak PhotoCD files in PS CS5 - is it possible? (Win XP)

[John Blaustein]

Hi,

I have some old Kodak PhotoCD files (.PCD) that I would like to open in PS CS5.  After searching the KB and forums for info, I found the file "Photo CD.8BI" in the Goodies folder on my CS3 disk and copied it into C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Plug-ins\File Formats.  Unfortunately, PS CS5 still will not open the .PCD files.

I could install CS3 again and use the Photo CD.8BI plug-in there, but I'd rather not install CS3 if I don't have to.

Anyone know of a way to open/convert .PCD files in CS5, or is the .PCD format so old that it can't be done?  (I'm using Windows XP Home.)

Thank you.

John

[Mike_Abbott]

Just to add to this thread:

In the context of a Photoshop CS5 extended install on Windows 7, 64bit...

I copied the Kodak PhotoCD folder - containing the Photo CD.8BI plugin and the folder of Kodak colour profiles - from the Photoshop CS3 install disk into the Photoshop CS5 extended (32bit version) plugins folder. I installed the colour profiles into the Windows OS - right click on a profile and select install profile.

I didn't install a copy of pcdlib32.dll - nor could I find this file already installed on my system.

I'm able to open PCD files, with the dialog shown above, in the 32bit version of PS5 extended without any problem.

Mike A.

[pfield69]

I'm still having trouble opening the PCD files.

I don't have an old version to load the files from but did find  an archieve on the net containing the files I think I need.

Running win 7 64 & PS CS5, I copied icccodes.dll, kpcp32.dll, kpsys32.dll, pcdlib32.dll, pfpick.dll & sprof32.dll to photoshop directory in the (x86) program folder. I also added photo cd.8bi to the file formats folder.

When I try to open a pcd I get a dialogue box with rando characters in i.e. 1@?

Any ideas?

Thanks

Peter

[someguyinnw]

Peter,

Photoshop cs5 will not work, cs4 will not work, they do not function with the kodak plugin, it was made/written for cs2/cs3. It has to do with next releases of cs4 and cs5 being reprogramed, rewritten, recoded for the newer cpu chips, and video chips.

The easy fix is to install or find someone running Photoshop cs3, this has the Kodak plugin files (stuff you downloaded) that allowed you to read-open a Kodak Digital Science Photo CD master disc.

Then your golden, and you can save-as from Photoshop cs3. You can set this up with an action in Photoshop cs3 to make's it some what easy as a batch process. Archive those images as a “choose your poison” tiff, jpeg, or PSD back onto cd or DVD (they have archive quality disks available for sale these have a $$gold coating). Then shred those old Kodak Digital Science Photo CD master disc but keep the picture cards and cd cases for the new archive disk.

[Noel Carboni]

someguyinnw wrote:

Photoshop cs5 will not work, cs4 will not work,

...

It has to do with next releases of cs4 and cs5 being reprogramed, rewritten, recoded for the newer cpu chips, and video chips.

Hey SomeGuy, I smelled something unpleasant on my boots after I waded through what you wrote.

You should actually read the thread and research your facts before commenting.  I can open Photo CDs in Photoshop CS5 32 bit no problem, using the information I posted above in this thread.  Note this screen grab:

The ONLY files you need to accomplish this are Photo CD.8BI and pcdlib32.dll (e.g., from Photoshop 6.0).  If it is not working with these two files alone, then you have the wrong copies of the files.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5>dir "pcdlib32.dll" "photo cd.8bi" /s

Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5

05/26/1999  09:46 AM           212,480 pcdlib32.dll

Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Plug-ins\Kodak Photo CD from PS 6

09/22/2000  04:35 AM            53,248 Photo CD.8BI

-Noel

[someguyinnw]

yep, should have read it closer. I will revise my comment

On the Macintosh photoshop cs3 extended version came with kodak plugin that supported PCD files.

Those plugin files do not seem to work with photoshop cs5 running in either mode on the Mac platform with intel core i7 under leopard or snow leopard.

The mac permissions file setting were set up according to adobe documentation.

The mac version files available for download i found that I tried do not seem to make the pcd platform available either in the macintosh pscs5 version while running in 32 or 64 bit mode.

So what did seem to work was to use old version of ps cs3, then was able to bring in pcd file at full resolution. Did find out that the maintosh I-photo program imported the PCD files although you could not set the file resolution as when using the ps3 and kodak plugin, but it brought the files in at high resolution as a jpeg file.

On the mac platform the adobe photoshop program in its cs5 version is quite different a program then the earlier photoshop program versions that worked under the other osx version and os9 version.

If your got pcd plugin to work no problem on your pc photoshop version that's great.

[Noel Carboni]

Yes, Macintosh software is a whole 'nother thing.  I just assumed we were talking about Windows here as it's the Photoshop Windows forum, and there's a separate Macintosh forum.  I shouldn't assume.

That said, when did Photoshop switch from supporting the Mac PowerPC architecture to Intel?

-Noel

[John Blaustein]

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd pass along a recent experience with my PhotoCD disks. 

While I use Windows for all of my work, I have a MacBook with iPhoto '11.  Yesterday, I opened iPhoto and then inserted one of my PhotoCD disks.  iPhoto immediately recognized the disk and presented an Import button.  With one click, all of the images on the disk were imported into a new iPhoto Event (like a folder in Windows).  For each of my other disks, a new Event was created.  After selecting an Event, I was able to Export all of the images as full-size 18MB TIFF files into a folder on my desktop.  I copied those onto my Windows machine and easily opened them in PS CS5.  It could not have been easier.

Thank you to someguyinnw for suggesting this!

I hope this helps someone down the line.

John

[the_wine_snob]

John,

While not a solution for me (avowed PC-guy that I am ) it's always great to have as many options, as is possible. Knowing that other programs can still handle the old PCD format (I have maybe 200 PhotoCD's).

Thank you for taking the time to post. This question has been coming up, about the time of a new release, for several versions now, so others should benefit from your (and Noel's) post.

Appreciated,

Hunt

[John Blaustein]

Bill,

You are welcome.

One thing to emphasize about the iPhoto solution is that with one click all the PCD images were converted and imported.  When I was using the PS PCD plug-in on earlier versions of PS, I could only do one image at a time.  This is a great time-saver.  I'm not sure what iPhoto does in the conversion, but all of the images look great and get imported full-size.  Unlike the PS plug-in, iPhoto gives no options for film type or size, but that does not matter since the conversions are so good.

As an aside, if you were to use a friend's Mac to do your PCD conversions, iPhoto makes it very easy to "clean up" after yourself.  All the images are imported into an Event, and after you export from the Event to a folder of JPGs or TIFFs, you simply delete the Event.  When you've coped the folder of JPGs or TIFFs to an external drive, you then just delete that folder too.  There is nothing left behind and everything is done with just a few clicks.  (Like you, I'm a longtime PC-guy, but I got to know iPhoto when I recently taught a class using it.  I'm very impressed by it.  It's not LR or PS, but it's remarkably powerful and very easy to use.)

John

[the_wine_snob]

John,

This is but a guess (remember, I am a PC-only guy), but suspect that iPhoto is first Importing the Images into a cataloging function, sort of like Bridge, and is then giving the image-editing functions the capabilities to edit them.

PSElements has similar (but have no clue about the PCD decoding), called Organizer. It's sort of like Bridge-lite, but with some other functions too.

Anyway, thank you, as others will very likely benefit.

Hunt

[John Blaustein]

Yes, Bill, that is exactly how iPhoto works.  It's very much the way Lightroom imports images, and it sounds like PSE does it that way too.  For the purpose of converting PCD files, it's irrelevant that iPhoto is adding the images to a catalog, except that they are "automatically" organized into one, easy to find Event (folder) for each PCD disk.  Once the images are converted by iPhoto and then exported to JPGs and TIFFs to be moved to my PC, I remove them from iPhoto, so the catalog function is pretty much ignored.

If one used iPhoto as their main image management and editing program, the support of PCD is a wonderful built-in feature. 

John

[someguyinnw]

John,

Glad iphoto was working with the kodak PCD for your needs. This is a old thread, but it will keep poping up there are a lot of those PCD disks out there lurking in storage. The Pro Lab shop in Seattle must of made many thousand of the pro scan and master scan photo CD back in the late 90’s and first few years of 2000’s for both graphic arts industry and consumers as photography transitioned to digital. Those were made with the gold coated archivial quality cd media. Wonder if they will still work in 75 years?

iPhoto is a straight forward image manager. Very handy for quick organization like the easy event creation too.

[station_two]

Noel Carboni wrote:

...when did Photoshop switch from supporting the Mac PowerPC architecture to Intel?...

As of CS5.  Neither CS5 nor CS6 run on Power Macs (PPC).

(Sorry to resurrect an old thread.  I landed here through a link in a June 24, 2012 post in another thread.)

[SW4ALL]

Hi Noel,

Care to share those 2 files w/ me? I'm using CS5 Extended and don't have access to older PS media.

Thanks,

SW

[Doug.S]

It worked for me on my old PC with winXP but I now have win7 and the files did not work.

I now use Irfanview with a pcd plugin…all free and works fine

The only “trick” is that default setting opens files in small size, but from menu, jpg (I think) you can select which size you want…then can save as desired….like .tif and open in PS.

Doug.S

[Noel Carboni]

The ancient PCD plug-in will only work with Photoshop CS5 32 bit.  You wouldn't happen to be running 64 bit would you?

I have Windows 7 x64 and when I run the 32 bit Photoshop CS5 I can use the old plug-in, as I showed above.

-Noel

[SW4ALL]

Hi Neol,

I have windows 7 64-bit but I think I can run CS 5 as 32-bit instead of 64-bit. I just need those files and hopefully I can backup all of stuff off of the Kodak Photo CDs I used to archive my stuff. Over 65+ CDs and counting. Adobe really sucks taking this capability out of photoshop. Most photographers like myself used Kodak Photo CD as it was the pro solution at one time doing high res scans from negatives, etc.

If you can share those files that would be great. If that's not possible, I'll try to install the Irfanview and hopefully I don't loose anything in the conversion process.

Thanks,

SW

[Noel Carboni]

Unfortunately, I'm not really allowed to share them - they're part of a licensed software package.  But I think you may be able to find them online.

-Noel

[Hayes_Lorraine]

I tried to do this but the file I want to import (.PCD) is greyed out and I cannot elect it on my desktop when I access IMPORT from iPhoto.

[bergdev]

• Install the latest version of IrfanView. This is an extremely useful program. It has the fastest JPEG renderer on the planet and a ton of intuitively useful features. It's one of those freeware programs that I donate to - it's really that good.
• Install all of the plugins for IrfanView. They make it very easy.
• Open the Properties/Settings dialog (under the Options menu).
• Select JPG / PCD / GIF and choose the largest Photo CD - Loading size.
• When you open a PCD file, you can now save in whatever format you want, even lossless should you desire to preserve every detail of the film grain.

FWIW, I am running CS5, 64bit on Windows 7.

[MrPhotoBlitz]

The jpg's are in PICTURES.  I was able to copy them using Bridge CS6.

[junebuggie3]

Just open them in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and they open perfectly. Viola!