Corrupted TIFFs: how to restore/repair?

Hello!
Does anybody knows how to recover (I assume) corrupted TIFF files?

It all happened when the system (W98SE, at the time) crashed, leaving me with a folder of TIFFs which wouldn't open anymore.

Photoshop 6 and CS2 say "Could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document" when I attempt the Open or the drag&drop way.
Open As gets me "Could not complete your request because the file is not a TIFF file".

When opening the folder, ACDSee 2 Pro says "The source data format is not recognized" and doesn't show a thumb/preview, although it reads the size (in KBs) of the file.

Does anybody know what could have happened and how/if it is possible to recover the files?

Thanks,
Enrico

"Lemmyfan" wrote in message

Hello!
Does anybody knows how to recover (I assume) corrupted TIFF files?

First, please try to make a copy of the files to something other than your hard drive. Put the copy aside.

Many of us here use Image Magick, which is open-source software. It's all command-line but we can help. One of their routines will identify a file as thoroughly as it can - for example, it will tell you if a TIFF is actually a JPEG, and so-forth. It will also tell you when it cannot make out a thing. Touch base again on that. Others may have better suggestions. (Me, sometimes I revert to HEX Edit.)

Lemmyfan wrote:

It all happened when the system (W98SE, at the time) crashed, leaving me with a folder of TIFFs which wouldn't open anymore.

You could try PC Inspector Smart Recovery (freeware). It can scan for TIFF-files, which means that it tries to locate TIFF-like structures on the harddisk.

You could also put one of the files online and provide a link to it. Maybe someone will be willing to take a closer look at it and estimate whether it can be slavaged.
--
Toke Eskildsen - http://ekot.dk/

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 09:57:24 -0600, "jjs" <john> wrote:

First, please try to make a copy of the files to something other than your hard drive. Put the copy aside.

Done.

Many of us here use Image Magick, which is open-source software. It's all command-line but we can help. One of their routines will identify a file as thoroughly as it can - for example, it will tell you if a TIFF is actually a JPEG, and so-forth. It will also tell you when it cannot make out a thing. Touch base again on that. Others may have better suggestions. (Me, sometimes I revert to HEX Edit.)

I'm sure the files are TIFFs: when I started saving them with the action, I then opened'em with Open As to make sure it was working fine, and it did.
I'm currently using PC Inspector but it doesn-t seem to be finding any TIFF on a DVD which is only full of'em.

More later, thanks again!

Enrico

On 03 Dec 2007 19:34:10 GMT, Toke Eskildsen
wrote:

You could try PC Inspector Smart Recovery (freeware). It can scan for TIFF-files, which means that it tries to locate TIFF-like structures on the harddisk.

Hey, thanks!
I downloaded it and it is now working on a DVD on which I burned the corrupted TIFFs. Looking forward to the results...

You could also put one of the files online and provide a link to it. Maybe someone will be willing to take a closer look at it and estimate whether it can be slavaged.

One is online at www.redsectorart.com/arzach08.tif
It's a big mother, about 16MB.

Thanks again,
Enrico

Lemmyfan wrote:

One is online at www.redsectorart.com/arzach08.tif
It's a big mother, about 16MB.

Ugh. It does not look good. It's padded with a big chunk of $DF and when I remove that, ImageMagick's identify gives a mile long list of problems with the file. Looking at it with a hex editor gives some strange content with the content broken up in pieces with seemingly random bytes in between. It looks like a significant part of the random bytes appears with exactly 8 correct bytes between them, but I'm afraid that's not 100% consistent.

Without spending more than 10 minutes on it, I'd say that the TIFF-file is broken in such a way that the content is salvageable, but that restoration requires in-depth knowledge of the TIFF-structure and a lot of time. All the extra randomly added bytes needs to be purged. --
Toke Eskildsen - http://ekot.dk/

On 04 Dec 2007 22:17:25 GMT, Toke Eskildsen
wrote:

Ugh. It does not look good. It's padded with a big chunk of $DF and when I remove that, ImageMagick's identify gives a mile long list of problems with the file. Looking at it with a hex editor gives some strange content with the content broken up in pieces with seemingly random bytes in between. It looks like a significant part of the random bytes appears with exactly 8 correct bytes between them, but I'm afraid that's not 100% consistent.

Without spending more than 10 minutes on it, I'd say that the TIFF-file is broken in such a way that the content is salvageable, but that restoration requires in-depth knowledge of the TIFF-structure and a lot of time. All the extra randomly added bytes needs to be purged.

Thanks heaps for taking the time to do that, Toke!

From what you say tho, it looks like I'll just have to chuck the folder and forget about it: nothing in it that my life depends upon, just artwork that I would've liked to archive for one of the artists I work with, and I don't have the knowledge nor the time to get into something like that.

Again, thanks!

Enrico