[Fabrys]

Does not Painter allows other formats as *.bmp ?
Try ACDSee to convert by packs (I've never tried with .rif which I don't know )

[lowlight]

Ummm, if I'm not mistaken, the .rif files are the same as .psd files in Photoshop. Which means, they are still open layers not yet merged down in your image. Try seeing if you've merged all your layers first and then if you have, you should be able to save your image file in a different file format then ".rif". Good luck

[zaar]

Does anyone here know if it is possible to convert a whole directory of painter images in .rif format to a more common format like jpeg or tiff?

[strata]

years and years and years ago there was a program that did exactly this... it was called graphic workshop, and the sole purpose of it seemed to be to transform images between different formats... I'm not sure if it just renamed the files or if it actually did something more, but still...

[zaar]

Thank you for you replies.
Fabrys: Painter does allow saving in other formats, but I want to convert large amounts of .rif files to .tif in one go, not open and save one by one... And ACDsee doesn't seem to support rif either.

lowlight: I was not able to open any rif files with photoshop (5.5)

Strata: I remember graphic workshop! haven't got it though... but there are plenty of programs that transfers between formats, I saw one recently that could read/write around 320 diffrent formats! but not painters .rif =(

[Jin]

quote:

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Originally posted by lowlight:
Ummm, if I'm not mistaken, the .rif files are the same as .psd files in Photoshop. Which means, they are still open layers not yet merged down in your image. Try seeing if you've merged all your layers first and then if you have, you should be able to save your image file in a different file format then ".rif". Good luck

---

Painter RIFF files are not the same as Photoshop PSD files, though in many cases PSD files saved from Painter can be opened, still intact, in Photoshop. Photoshop PSD files can also be opened in Painter.

Some of Painter's Composite Methods are slightly different, at least in their names, from Photoshop's Blending Modes, but they're very similar and it doesn't cause much of a problem as far as I knnow.

Any Painter-specific information in Painter file saved to PSD will be lost when opened in Photoshop.. and I suppose vice-versa.. since they're not the same program.

Some good examples would be Painter's Impasto Layer, the invisible Wet Layer and Water Color paint (while still wet), Water Color Layers and Liquid Ink Layers (Painter 7), Dynamic Plug-in Layers (Painter 5 and 5.5), Dynamic Layers (Painter 6 and 7), Text Layers (Painter 7), and I'm not sure about Text Shapes or how they'd come across in Photoshop. All of these should appear as intended when saved to TIF or JPG, especially if you first do File > Clone and save the Clone. When saved to PSD without dropping everything to the Canvas (flattening the image), since these are Painter-specific items, they'll be lost when opened in Photoshop.

There's also been a problem in Painter 7 when an image is saved with a selection. I don't know if this was fixed with the most recent patch, the "Painter 7 Update", or not. If not, it's important to get rid of the selection before saving to PSD or the file may not open in either Photoshop or Painter .. in other words, the file is lost and the image is also lost if it wasn't first saved in Painter's native RIFF format.

If the image is simple, with only ordinary Default Layers and no other Painter-specific information, it will probably open intact in Photoshop after being saved from Painter as a Photoshop PSD.

The file formats available to save files from Painter are:

RIFF (.RIF)
TIFF (.TIF)
Mac PICT (.PCT)
Photoshop (.PSD)
Bitmap (.BMP)
PC Paintbrush (.PCX)
Targa (.TGA)
GIF (.GIF)
JPEG (.JPG)
Postscript (.EPS)

I don't know of a batch process for saving Painter RIFF files to another format.

[lowlight]

Jin,

I meant to say that they were the "same" when it came down to the point that (when I used to work with Painter) painter, just like Photoshop, would save to a file format in which open layers could be supported. In the case of Painter, that's a .rif file and in the case of PS, that's a .psd (I think).
In any case, I was simply suggesing to merge down the layers...I had implied the use of Painter to go about that, so that's my mistake for making Zaar believe that it could be done in Photoshop; I didn't meant to suggest that.

[zaar]

oh well, it's still the batch process that I'm really looking for, it's seems like DeBabelizer can do it (it says it reads riff's on the website) But the trail version watermarks every image it outputs... So I dind't even bother trying, where's all the freeware when I need it?

Thanks anyway!

[Jin]

lowlight,

(Sorry about the double post. I usually remember to check and make sure that doesn't happen.. but I forgot and didn't notice it until today.)

You're right, Painter RIFF saved to PSD will carry default Layers (nothing complicated) over to Photoshop and they'll be just as they were in Painter.

I just wanted to make it clear that if there's anything specific only to Painter, those things won't carry over as Photoshop won't "understand" them.

It's still nice to at least have basic Layers carry over.. both directions.

[Richard]

I have been using some code written by Saveen Reddy that batch converts Rif's to Jpg's for a few years. I lost the poggie in a crash and couldn't locate my back up and reading this thread sent me on a search for the guy. You are in luck. He has a Painter 7 version for download at:

http://www.saveen.org/

He said he can't find the one for version 6 but will look if there is a big enough response for it.

These will only work on a PC. I don't know if Ed Wiser has tried them out yet but I can confirm version 3.1 works just fine for me on
Win 2K Pro Sp1 &Sp2. Saveen says he is about done with a user interface that will make things a bit easier to work with.