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J
Julian Vrieslander
Inspiring
December 30, 2010
Question

Script to open a multi-image TIFF into a layer stack?

  • December 30, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 6941 views

I have a colleague who has multi-image TIFF files, each of which contains a series of images of microscopy sections. He needs Photoshop (Mac version) to read these files, and place the multiple images into a stack of layers in one document.  We have found indirect ways of doing this, but they require multiple applications and several steps.  Is it possible to create a Photoshop script that does this directly: opening the multi-image TIFF, parsing the file, and loading the images into layers?  Does such a script already exist?  If not, can you point us toward source code samples that will help us build the script: perhaps snippets for parsing a multi-image TIFF, and initializing a document with multiple layers.

Thank you.

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1 reply

M
Michael_L_Hale
Inspiring
December 30, 2010

Photoshop and Illustrator will only open the first page of a multi-page(image/frame) tiff. InDesign will not open on at all. It seems that the only Adobe app that supports reading multi-page tiffs is Acrobat.

I don't think that you are going to be able to create a Photoshop script to process multi-page tiffs without using some other app to first covert each page into single files or convert to PDF.

M
Muppet Mark
Inspiring
January 2, 2011

I've never had a multi-page tiff file to take a look at. (I thought these came from fax devices?). If you wanted the file splitting process to be done invisibly then it 'may' be possible to call the app.system() and use a command line utility like 'imagemagick'… You would have to download and install this then look up the available options in it's man pages. If you have the pages split then you could load into a stack? I've not actually done this myself but it should be possible. I've seen elsewhere that 'bridgetalk' will communicate with Acrobat on the PC but not on the Mac so I think that route is out?

M
Michael_L_Hale
Inspiring
January 2, 2011

Mark, you can find a 4 page sample tiff at http://www.codebeach.com/tutorials/resources/in.tif

And yes they seem to come from older fax/scanner software. I think PDF has for the most part replaced the need for multi-page tiffs.

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