Barbara Brundage wrote:
Hi, anyone who is here tonight. I am helping to test for a problem with mail attachments that may be caused by EXIF data in jpgs. But since I don’t shoot digital I don’t have any pix with EXIF data to use for testing. Can somebody send me a jpg or two that still has EXIF data in it, please?
Thanks.
I may be a day late and a dollar short here, but I’ve had a look at the "innards" of a jpeg that contains EXIF data from my digital camera, and I think I’ve figured out where a possible e-mail attachment headache may occur.
A "normal" jpeg contains the tag "JFIF" in bytes 7, 8, 9 and 10 of the file while the jpeg from my camera has the tag "Exif" in the same position. The "Exif" file also contains a lot more readable text at the start of the file than does the standard "JFIF" type file.
Because "Exif" is not a recognized MIME type and the extensive text at the start of the file, e-mail tools don’t necessarily recognize the picture as being a binary file and don’t encode it properly for sending, thus "bending, folding, mutilating and stapling" the result.
The only, reasonably sure, way of getting around this is to archive the file using something like Stuffit, PKZip or WinZip. This will encase the image in something the e-mail tool recognizes as being binary and the result will be properly encoded for transmission. If you’re not sure what platform the recipient(s) are using, then I would suggest using "zip" format, as I haven’t met a platform yet that can’t handle it. Not all MS-Windows or *nix users can handle a native Stuffit file.
If you still need examples of files with Exif data, contact me directly or leave a note here in the newsgroup and I’ll zip some up and send them to you.
HTH
Kyle
