Could not complete your request because the file-format module cannot parse the file

[_nina1234567_]

Hi there!

I use Photoshop CS4 now and I have a problem when I want to import (by dragging'n dropping, importing, open - I tried every way)a .png or i.e. also an .jpg:

when I worked a short time with PS (i.e. 10 minutes) and want to open a .png then, there comes the popup-window with:
"Could not complete your request because the file-format module cannot parse the file"

The funny thing is: my file is NOT broken!! Because if I then shutdown PS and open it again, there is no longer a problem to open the .png-file.... after a while of course it comes back...

So all solutions that I found on this problem were "the norton anti virus is also running"-solution: but I have no NAV running!!
And the files are NOT damaged!! Otherwise I couldn't have opened it after restarting PS.

I purged all files and I have enough cache!! So it doesn't seem to be a problem of my computerperformance.

Any idea???

Thanks a lot,
Nina

[mdrayerrn]

I am a digital scrapbooker and had this issue with png files when i upgraded to CS4.... not with any of the other 6 i had used. I literally have hundreds of thousands of png files. After going through tons of listings on this problem i found the easiest solution that worked with a free download of a tiny simply program called Irfanview!  Just download the program and open the file up in it and rename it.. just add a 1 or a to it. Then restart your photoshop and the file will open. 8o)  Wheeeeewwwwww!!! NOW... Photoshop needs to fix this BUG!!!

Melody Drayer, RN

[Austin38]

Melody,

I am also a digital scrapbooker and I am having a real hard time the PNG files as well. I have downloaded the program you referred to in your post. I opened a file renamed it and got the following message:

can't read file header. unknown file format. for unicode file names please activate the unicode plug in in properities-languages.

I did as it asked and it still did not work. I tried something that someone posted to my problem which was starting bridge, go to edit then preferences, and file type association. I changed it to have PS CS5 open these files but it didn't work.

Could you please help me if you have any other suggestions? My operating system is windows 7.

[Noel Carboni]

Austin, can you please be just a little more specific?  Describe what you're trying to do first, then what's going wrong.

Frankly I can't quite discern what you're seeing when from what you've written.  A step by step description would be good.

If I can try to do the same steps you're doing I can either confirm the problem or maybe discover what's going wrong for you.

I have not had to download any file to be able to use PNG format.

-Noel

[Austin38]

I have been able to open some PNG files in photoshop, however, when I try to open some of the files in photoshop CS5, I get this message:

Could not complete your request because of the file format module cannot parse the file.

I downloaded, as suggested by a poster, Ifran viewer. It was suggested to rename the file and then restart photoshop  which would then open the file but that didn't work.

[Chris Cox]

The message means what it says: Photoshop cannot read the file.

That either means one of two things:  the file isn't a PNG and has the wrong extension, or the file is corrupt and cannot be read.

[soncg]

You open file with other soft. Error messenge Similar. File is corrupted.

[rttimmons]

I had this problem - running a 2010 Macbook Pro & Photoshp CS5. I was getting this error when I was trying to crop, and I had set a specified crop size. The mistake I made was I set it to 1680x1050 INCHES instead of setting it to 1680x1050 Pixels. Once I realized my error, it cropped no problem.

Hopefully this helps someone...

[mdrayerrn]

FOUND THE ANSWER.........Even better. You dont have to rename the file. All you have to do is double click and open the file in the Irfanview viewer. Then close the file and restart photoshop and the file will work.

Melody Drayer, RN

[Noel Carboni]

Your enthusiasm is showing, Melody!  I also love IrfanView, but having to go to a 3rd party application shouldn't be necessary.  And if simply opening the file in another application (without saving) is magically "fixing" the problem, you have serious computer problems.

This thread has run on to two pages, and as far as I can see no one has posted a link to a file that Photoshop would not open!

All we need is a link to just ONE FILE with which the problem can be reproduced, and I should think Adobe would have to acknowledge a problem.

-Noel

[mdrayerrn]

Thanks for the note but i have a few hundred thousand png files that CS4 wont open. I have used every version since 7 and never had a problem. I also reinstalled 7 from the disk and it opens them fine. I have searched the internet and there are hundreds of people having this same error with not being able to open the file format because it cannot parse the file. I know because i have read all the posts at many different sites. I have read alot of things to fix it but only the Irfanview worked. So, can you tell me something that i can do so that i can open the png files in my CS4 without going into Irfanview first. Because if you can i would really love to know so i dont have to go through the trouble. 8o)

I am a digital scrapbooker and deal with png files all the time. I will be anxiously awaiting your reply with what adobe says i should do to fix this because the files are not corrupt or incomplete.... its just my CS4.

Melody

[Noel Carboni]

First, let me make it clear I'm not with Adobe.  This is a user help forum.

Without being able to reproduce the problem (or not!) on one of your files no one can help you further.

For example, if you were to upload one of your files to the net, and I were to download it, and I were to be unable to open it then there's the possibility of looking INSIDE the format of that file to determine if it is formatted badly.  If it were formatted badly, that would lead to further questions - e.g., about how it was originally created.  If it were formatted properly, then it would clearly become an issue to be reported to Adobe for resolution.

If, contra-wise, I COULD open the file, then we could start to investigate what's wrong with your computer - likely having less to do with Photoshop and more to do with what else you've installed, configured, or whatever on your computer, or perhaps some part that's failing.

You have stated that simply opening the file with Irfan View and not even saving it back out yields the ability to open it with Photoshop.

Opening a file with IrfanView without saving anything does NOTHING to the file itself.  If doing that makes a difference to Photoshop, it's time to suspect your Windows system of having a great many fundamental problems.

-Noel

[mdrayerrn]

if there was something wrong with the file would it still open in my photoshop 7 on the same computer? Also obviously opening it in Irfanview does do something to the file or at least in Photoshop CS4 installed on my computer... because it makes it open them. I can open these files in paint shop pro, photo impact ...ect.... Just not in my new copy of CS4. All these are installed on the same computer!!!

[Noel Carboni]

mdrayerrn wrote:

obviously opening it in Irfanview does do something to the file

No, it does not. 

Not normally at least.  I'm not sure what it might do with malware present.

Something's wrong with your operating system or your computer.  This is a computer engineer with 30 years experience talking.

What operating system are you running?

Post a copy of a file that does not open, and I'll be happy to try to reproduce the problem.

-Noel

[carlif]

I'm getting this error in Photoshop Elements 7. Here's a link to a file that opens in the browser just fine, but which Elements can't open.

http://www.jaycerenner.com/Seeds/Curve%20Set%2019.keep.634255493605482000.nonrotated.png

Maybe I should just stick with The GIMP? Slower, but at least it can open my files... 

[carlif]

I think I have a clue. I was getting ready to shut down, so I closed all my programs. But I thought I'd try that file one last time. This time it opened in Elements.

I had everything closed except the folder I was using. So if you are having this error, try closing memory-intensive programs (browsers, other image editors), and seeing if that helps.

[warrenwater]

I had this problem but until now i can't solve it. I think I may be use older Photoshop version.

[carlif]

Did you try closing all your other programs besides Photoshop?

[Guest]

Hi everybody!

Well, I posted my problem on March 12, 2009 and got a lot of response since then - thank you so much. It was good to see that I am not alone with my problem and some of the answers had maybe helped some others. In fact I never solved my problem - it was really sad.

But in the meantime I bought a never version of Photoshop and now everything works fine... I really hope that everybody else may find their way throught that boug - and be it only by buying a new version 

Greetz to everybody!

Nina

[RevTieDye]

I ran across this error trying to open several BMP files, using both CS4 and CS5 on Windows XP.  I was able to successfully open other BMP files from my hard drive but not these.  The BMPs that CS could not open, were opened without problems in MS-Word and Paint.  I tried moving the files to different location, and renaming the file.  None of this worked.

Two things that DID WORK (not a solution, just a work-around)

1. Open in Paint, and save again with new name, but still as a BMP

     Paint wanted to know which type of BMP to save it as (256 color/24 bit, etc)  Not knowing, I picked 24-bit at random.

     This worked.  The New BMP opened with PS5

2. Change File extension

     Using Windows Explorer/aka "My Documents" I changed the BMP extension to PNG.

     The file opened successfully in CS5 this way also.

[Chris Cox]

Using Windows Explorer/aka "My Documents" I changed the BMP extension to PNG.

No, that IS the solution.

They were not BMP files, but PNG files with the wrong extension.

Photoshop complained because they were not readable as BMP files -- correctly, because they weren't BMP files.

Putting the correct extension on the file (PNG) made Photoshop read them as PNG files, and they opened correctly.

[RevTieDye]

Well that would make sense. I really don't know anything about the

difference between BMP & PNG, but MS word & Paint opened the mis-labelled

PNG's fine. That seems weird to me--that a bundled application like Paint

can figure out how to handle the file, but the program I paid $500 for

can't.

Michael;

[the_wine_snob]

Michael,

As you have found out, some programs are much less strict on the file extension. The same thing can happen with files, that have poorly formed headers. One see this in JPEG's most often. Several other programs on my system work fine with them, when PS chokes, and spits 'em out. I just do a Save_As, locating them in another folder, and they write good, clean headers, that PS finds perfectly acceptable.

Same with video files, where the format is often mis-stated. Many players reject them, but others work around the improper format extension.

Never hurts to have several different "tools" handy.

Good luck,

Hunt

[Noel Carboni]

RevTieDye wrote:

That seems weird to me--that a bundled application like Paint

can figure out how to handle the file, but the program I paid $500 for

can't.

The error message is a bit geeky but they did tell you exactly what was wrong - the file was not of the format you said it was.  I'm not sure I agree that an application should try to "poke around" to see if it can find out what format an image really is after you've lied to it.  This way you learned about the error.

And what should it do if it opens a PNG with transparency diguised as a BMP then you do File - Save to save it back out?  Re-disguise it?  Save it per the file extension?  Keep in mind there are things the PNG format can do that BMP cannot.

Better to straighten out the root cause ASAP than to try to invoke a whole tangled mess of recovery logic that misleads you even further.

-Noel

[Guest]

I struck this problem for the first time earlier today and Googling it led me here. One thing that I had not seen mentioned anywhere is that this problem is not peculiar to Photoshop. In my case, I had three PNGs. All of them were created by Photoshop CS4 on the Mac about six months ago. Since then I have upgraded to CS5 which I have running on both a PC (Windows 7) and a Mac (10.6.6). I struck the PNG-import problem on Photoshop/Mac and promptly moved the files to the PC to see whether it "followed the files" or "followed the application". Because it followed the files, my first thought was that the files were corrupt. However, standard Mac tools like the Finder preview mode or the Preview application happily displayed the files, which suggested the problem might be with Photoshop.

The three files were referenced by an InDesign document. Launching InDesign/Mac showed that it was able to display the files. I moved the InDesign document (but not the problematic PNGs) to the PC and confirmed that InDesign/PC would open the document and show placeholders for the missing images. Then I moved the PNGs to the PC and repeated the test confirming both that the images were externally-referenced and capable of being parsed by InDesign/PC. Creating a new InDesign document on the Mac and repeating this test showed that InDesign/Mac was also capable of parsing the images.

To see whether the problem was specific to Photoshop, I then launched Illustrator on the PC and attempted to place one of the PNGs. It gave me the error message, "Could not read the file because the plug-in could not understand this file". I tried both a drag-and-drop import and the Place command and the behaviour was the same.

I repeated this test with Illustrator/Mac. This is the interesting bit. Unlike Illustrator on the PC, the Mac version puts up a small dialog box saying "Select File Format" and gives a choice of "Photoshop" or "PNG". It produces this dialog box for both drag-and-drop import and the Place command. Selecting the "PNG" option produces "Could not read the file because the plug-in could not understand this file." However, selecting the "Photoshop" option opens the file and places it in Illustrator/Mac. There is a giant clue here but read on.

Some more tests. Opening a problematic PNG in Fireworks/Mac succeeds but Flash/Mac fails. I then tried all the other non-Adobe suggestions in my "Open with..." menu on the Mac, including: Core Image Fun House (succeeds), DashCode (succeeds), FireFox 3.6.13 (fails), GIMP 2.6.11 (succeeds), Hydra Pro (succeeds), Preview (succeeds), QuickTime Player 7 (succeeds), Safari (succeeds), Xcode (succeeds).

My initial hypothesis from all this was that there were two PNG formats. Visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG_file_format (not necessarily authoritative but a reasonable place to start) produces the information that PNGs should begin with an 8-byte signature. The first byte should be 0x89 followed by the characters "PNG". My problematic PNGs do not have this signature. Instead, they begin with the four characters "8BPS". This is shown in the following. The first part shows the result of dumping the first 160 bytes of the problematic file. The second part is the result of opening the problematic file in Preview, then saving it in PNG format, and then dumping the first 160 bytes.

$ hexdump -C problemFile.png | head

00000000  38 42 50 53 00 01 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00  |8BPS............|

00000010  03 16 00 00 01 8c 00 08  00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|

00000020  77 ee 38 42 49 4d 04 04  00 00 00 00 00 07 1c 02  |w.8BIM..........|

00000030  00 00 02 00 00 00 38 42  49 4d 04 25 00 00 00 00  |......8BIM.%....|

00000040  00 10 e8 f1 5c f3 2f c1  18 a1 a2 7b 67 ad c5 64  |....\./....{g..d|

00000050  d5 ba 38 42 49 4d 04 24  00 00 00 00 4f 77 3c 3f  |..8BIM.$....Ow<?|

00000060  78 70 61 63 6b 65 74 20  62 65 67 69 6e 3d 22 ef  |xpacket begin=".|

00000070  bb bf 22 20 69 64 3d 22  57 35 4d 30 4d 70 43 65  |.." id="W5M0MpCe|

00000080  68 69 48 7a 72 65 53 7a  4e 54 63 7a 6b 63 39 64  |hiHzreSzNTczkc9d|

00000090  22 3f 3e 0a 3c 78 3a 78  6d 70 6d 65 74 61 20 78  |"?>.<x:xmpmeta x|

$ hexdump -C previewSave.png | head

00000000  89 50 4e 47 0d 0a 1a 0a  00 00 00 0d 49 48 44 52  |.PNG........IHDR|

00000010  00 00 01 8c 00 00 03 16  08 06 00 00 00 e2 5b b1  |..............[.|

00000020  46 00 00 02 e0 69 43 43  50 49 43 43 20 50 72 6f  |F....iCCPICC Pro|

00000030  66 69 6c 65 00 00 78 01  7d 54 5d 48 14 51 18 3d  |file..x.}T]H.Q.=|

00000040  bb 29 06 89 3d 54 f6 43  c1 7d 08 91 50 19 b4 a7  |.)..=T.C.}..P...|

00000050  88 40 d7 9f fc 49 97 75  2d 93 40 c6 d9 bb 3f 3a  |.@...I.u-.@...?:|

00000060  bb 3b cc 8c 9b 85 4f 11  f4 18 45 0f 3d 05 fd d0  |.;....O...E.=...|

00000070  4b bd 27 3d 45 08 3d 04  f9 20 56 44 04 f6 16 15  |K.'=E.=.. VD....|

00000080  04 82 08 65 db b9 33 eb  ce 90 e5 5d ee bd 67 be  |...e..3....]..g.|

00000090  7b ee f9 ce bd df ec 00  b5 67 75 cb 32 a3 02 70  |{........gu.2..p|

The other interesting thing is that there is a major difference in file size. The problematic file is 1.8MB whereas the size of the file saved by Preview is 602K.

The question then becomes: is the file signature of 8BPS a variant of PNG or, if not, what is it the signature for? Those who know the answer will be way ahead of me by now. For those who don't, let me pose the question in a different way: what graphics application do we know of that has comparatively massive file formats? Answer: Photoshop. "8BPS" means "this is a .PSD" file.

Renaming the file to have the extension .PSD results in it being openable by Photoshop on both the Mac and PC. And in Illustrator on both platforms.

My conclusion is that the applications which are able to open the problematic file when it has the .PNG extension are doing so by relying on the signature bytes, whereas those applications that are not able to open the file are relying on the file extension.

How did PSDs come to be misnamed as PNGs? I use PNG as a delivery format for almost everything I do. I have a collection of some 4,000 PNGs in my library. Regardless of whether the source is screen captures, scans, photographs, vector artwork in Illustrator, or whatever, my final steps are always to paste into Photoshop for final cleanup, set transparency and resolution, then save-as into PNG format. I always just type the filename and let the application set the extension. I could accept having made a mistake with one file but not three at the same time so I'm keeping my mind open about the possibility that the underlying cause might be something other than pilot error.

Of course, whether my solution of "just rename from .PNG to .PSD" will work for you is another question. All I can say is that, in my case, the incorrect file extension perfectly explains the observed behaviour.