No copy - paste images anymore in Studies?
Hi,
I heavily relied in Mental Case on images.
A PDF image is my first facet.
I had a problem with Mental Case inability to resize copy-pasted PDF's, but I found a way around by making the PDF bigger pasting it in Keynote.
I could then copy-paste that enlarged PDF into Mental Case.
It had been stated that image resizing would be made easier in the new MC version.
Now, what happens in Studies?
1. No resizing options when PDF is pasted from Omnigraffle => it remains an undersized image.
2. IMPOSSIBLE to copy - paste the enlarged PDF from Keynote. Studies simply doesn't allow me to do this anymore.
This seriously interrupts my workflow.
For me, it's a huge setback.
I would truly appreciate a viable solution.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 07:05 AM
Hi Peter,
This is a bug we have just discovered. It is not a deliberate change, and we should have the functionality back soon enough.
For now, I suggest dragging images in, or using the built in screen shot functionality to capture parts of your PDFs from another app.
Thanks for reporting the issue.
Kind regards,
Drew
drewmccormack closed this discussion on 24 Feb, 2016 07:05 AM.
Peter Narkis re-opened this discussion on 24 Feb, 2016 09:17 AM
2 Posted by Peter Narkis on 24 Feb, 2016 09:17 AM
Ok. I'll wait...
Just a few more things :
1. As I said, it had been stated in this forum, the option to resize the imported images in the facets (like automatically fullscreen) would be implemented in the "next" version, i.e. with the release of Studies. Is this now possible?
2. What's the format of Studies' screenshot? It looks a bit blurry, compared to PDF captures. Any way to have Studies capture in PDF?
3. This might be a feature request, but instead of each time manually drawing the screenshot window, would there be a way to have a fixed size screenshot window I can hover over the area I want to capture?
Support Staff 3 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 09:25 AM
Hi Peter,
1. Not quite sure what you mean by ‘resize the images’. The slideshows should show them as big as possible, I think. You can always use the quicklook (space bar) to look closer.
2. We store most images as JPEG, to conserve space. This is particularly important when syncing. It can be a 5-10 factor difference in size.
3. Thanks for the feature request.
Kind regards,
Drew
4 Posted by Peter Narkis on 24 Feb, 2016 12:22 PM
hi,
1. I joined a screenshot of a Studies facet with a dropped image, resulting from an export from within omnigraffle.
This is the default size I get in Studies.
Not quite "as big as possible" as you can see...
I would be quite happy if Studies could simply fill up the whole of the facet with the imported image...
2. It would be nice to be able to give a choice to the enduser concerning the file format of the ccreencaptures...
Thanks
Peter
Support Staff 5 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 12:26 PM
I believe it is respecting the DPI set by OmniGraffle. What you see on the screen is probably the size that OmniGraffle intends.
In any case, I agree it would be better to drop to screen resolution, and have the image appear bigger.
Can you send me that image? It would be good to have to test.
Drew
6 Posted by Peter Narkis on 24 Feb, 2016 01:55 PM
here ya go.
My workflow is :
1. omnigraffle : copy past
2. preview : command - n (making pdf)
3. studies : drag and drop
Support Staff 7 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 01:59 PM
General question: Can you create other image types (eg PNG) with omnigraffle? PDF is not a great image format. More for documents and vector graphics.
In any case, I am going to look into it.
Drew
Support Staff 8 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 02:00 PM
When I open this PDF in Preview, it is small. It is the size you showed in in the screenshot. In other words, it seems like Studies is showing it at the ‘correct’ size.
An easy way to get a bigger image would be to zoom in with Preview, and then use the screencapture to get the image.
Drew
9 Posted by Peter Narkis on 24 Feb, 2016 02:08 PM
follow-up
I also include :
the same PDF with width blown up to 30 cm, which fills the facet.
screenshot of this PDF inside Studies.
____
ok, I just got notice of your 2 comments :
1 Can you create other image types (eg PNG) with omnigraffle?
Yes.
The advantage of PDF is that it minimizes pixelation, secundo, I can reduce its filesize by a ratio of 6 without any apparent pixillation through specialized software, which is impossible with png or jpg.
2 it seems like Studies is showing it at the ‘correct’ size.
Yes.
But why couldn't Studies let the image just "fill" the available space of the facet, as I can do in about any other app handling images (such as omnigraffle), at least manually...
3 An easy way to get a bigger image would be to zoom in with Preview, and then use the screencapture to get the image.
Well, as I said, my workaround is to blow up the size of the picture to 30 cm width and paste this in Studies, which fills up the screen, but that seems like an unnecessary step I have to repeat every time...
Support Staff 10 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 02:13 PM
The downside of Studies increasing the size is that it becomes blurry.
I will see if we can add some special PDF handling to increase the size, but again, a bitmap in a PDF that gets blown up will become blurry (text will not, because it is vector).
Why don’t we allow resizing like OmniGraffle? OmniGraffle is a diagram creation program, so that is what it specialises in. Adding that sort of functionality to Studies is probably not a great idea. It is better to leave it to specialised apps like OmniGraffle.
The situation as it is now is that you get to choose how the image looks. You can tweak it how you want. If we jump in and autoresize it, you won’t have that control, and it could be either a very big file, or become blurry.
Drew
11 Posted by Peter Narkis on 24 Feb, 2016 02:58 PM
ok, that explains a lot.
Guess I'll just have to stick with my manually oversizing PDF's before getting them into Studies...
At least it'd be welcome to get the copy-paste functionality back.
Support Staff 12 Posted by drewmccormack on 24 Feb, 2016 03:04 PM
The copy-paste has now been fixed. Will be in the next minor update.
Drew
13 Posted by Peter Narkis on 26 Feb, 2016 03:17 PM
ok, I'm adding a small follow-up, which might be due to the same bug.
Now on Studies it works when drag-and-dropping an image on the facet.
But, when exporting the stack as a .studyarch and importing it in MC on iOS, the thus created facets don't show up. But when I import the stack in MC on mac from Studies and then export as a MC2 archive, they DO show up in MC iOS.
2B continued...
14 Posted by Peter Narkis on 27 Feb, 2016 09:38 AM
Well, I'll have to retract my previous statement, apparently it's not that clear-cut : even when exporting as MC2 from within MC after import from Studies, they don't show up all...
Support Staff 15 Posted by drewmccormack on 27 Feb, 2016 09:47 AM
So do you suspect that the studyarch is broken, or the importing? It sounds like it sometimes works, correct? If so, the studyarch is probably OK.
I have a feeling iOS can’t actually handle PDF images, so maybe that has something to do with it (?)
Drew
16 Posted by Peter Narkis on 27 Feb, 2016 12:19 PM
I have a feeling iOS can’t actually handle PDF images, so maybe that has something to do with it (?)
Well, actually all my front facets ARE pdf images, as the ones I uploaded, MC iOS never had a problem with that (just the resizing issue).
The only annoyance was that I had to pass through a third party app to be able to import them in MC iOS, that's all.
So I suspect there's a problem with Studies' handling of PDF's.
As I said, on the Mac I can drag&drop PDF into Studies, so that works, but the problem is the exporting of the stacks to import them into MC iOS.
I'll try to give it another try this afternoon and give more details.
Support Staff 17 Posted by drewmccormack on 27 Feb, 2016 12:39 PM
If you use StudyArch, you can change the extension to zip and unzip it. Then you can look to see if the images are there OK.
Otherwise, perhaps you can send me a problem archive, and I can test it.
Drew
18 Posted by Peter Narkis on 27 Feb, 2016 02:52 PM
ok, so I did...
and I got a few surprises really.
I did two things : first exported from Studies to studyarch and zipped-unzipped as you said.
Secondly, I did the same thing this time exporting to .studies and idem ditto.
Now:
First of all, I found out that in both cases almost all my "PDFs" are actually converted in .png in the unzipped study. This is how it breaks down :
147 original PDFs
STUDYARCH
PDF 17
JPG 0
PNG 131
STUDIES
PDF 17
JPG 147
PNG 130
So this makes me wonder : is Studies not retaining the original image format, but converting them? Either in .png and/or .jpg? I guess it does. But even so, in the Studies archive the numbers are at odds : it seems to have a double copy of each image : both in jpg and png? Why so?
Why doesn't Studies just keep the original PDF?
The reason I use PDF is that an original screenshot is about 500 ko, which I can reduce to 100 ko without (almost) any pixelation. Reconverting them to png increases the same image fivefold (to the size of the original PDF), BUT introducing noticeable pixelation. Thus, my archives become actually much bigger than needed (or intended) and its original quality is degraded.
Could Studies please just keep my original slimmed down PDFs?
I join the "converted" png and the original pdf, so you can zoom in and check for yourself...
Peter
19 Posted by Peter Narkis on 27 Feb, 2016 02:54 PM
attached files didn't show up so second try...
Support Staff 20 Posted by drewmccormack on 27 Feb, 2016 03:00 PM
The two copies I think are probably thumbnails. We use thumbnails to speed up the UI, but I admit it needn’t be exported. They should be small anyway.
Secondly, Studies converts to JPEG if possible. It can only do this if the image is fully opaque, but if it can, it can save a lot of space. Most libraries are 5 times smaller in Studies than in Mental Case for this reason.
PNG is lossless format. It should not lose any quality at al, assuming the resolution you are comparing is the same. JPEG has lossy compression, so you don’t get exactly the same image you put in.
PDFs are not supported on iOS as far as I recall. We have to convert to get that to work, which is why more universal PNG and JPEG image formats are used.
Keeping the original format is a lot more problematic in terms of sync and library size, and that’s why we convert things internally. We know that it will not take too much cloud space, and it will appear fine on iOS.
(PDFs can be shown on iOS, but only in a PDF browser, not as standard images.)
Drew
21 Posted by Peter Narkis on 11 Mar, 2016 03:46 PM
Hi,
I'll get to your last answer shortly, but in the meantime I did upgrade to the latest version of Studies (1.0.1) and the copy-paste issue hasn't been solved, as had been stated it would be ...
Support Staff 22 Posted by drewmccormack on 11 Mar, 2016 04:27 PM
It’s fixed in 1.0.2, which was sent to Apple today. Should be out next week.
Drew
23 Posted by Peter Narkis on 15 Mar, 2016 02:30 PM
Hi, I'm quickly getting back to the image conversion issue...
PDFs are not supported on iOS as far as I recall. We have to convert to get that to work, which is why more universal PNG and JPEG image formats are used.
=> I'm not a developer, but Googling yielded my some github links that seem to make integration PDF's in an app possible :
https://github.com/mindbrix/UIImage-PDF
https://github.com/vfr/Reader
PNG is lossless format. It should not lose any quality at al, assuming the resolution you are comparing is the same. JPEG has lossy compression, so you don’t get exactly the same image you put in.
=> Yes, but PNG makes a selection in the color gamut, retaining only "web-safe colors", so it does alter the original image.
Keeping the original format is a lot more problematic in terms of sync and library size, and that’s why we convert things internally.
=> Please check back the images I uploaded.
The original PDFs are compressed with iHQC technology, yielding small files with almost no visual pixelation.
When importing them in Studies, be they converted either in PNG or JPG, two things happen :
1. the size INCREASES fivefold
2. the image is severely pixelised.
So it's actually the contrary that's happening!
Please consider the possibility of retaining original PDFs.
It doesn't seem to be a big deal to implement and it would keep my thousands of flashcards at a reasonable size...
Support Staff 24 Posted by drewmccormack on 15 Mar, 2016 02:41 PM
It is quite a big deal to implement though. You want me to pull in thousands of lines of open source, unsupported software. I happen to know the developer of one library you linked, and he has gone to Apple, and will not be supporting the library now. Keeping software stable is much harder than it looks. We deliberately stick to Apple frameworks, because they get well supported.
There are other issues with PDFs. What about multiple page docs? Do we just show the first page? It is not a format designed for presenting single images.
You may be using specialized compression (is it even supported on iOS?), but most people don’t. I haven’t had anyone else ask for PDF support in this way, so it would be an awful lot of work for a small number of people, and we have a lot bigger issues to worry about at the moment. (Eg getting iOS app ready)
But I have heard the request, and if I hear it more from others, it will move up the list.
Drew
25 Posted by Peter Narkis on 15 Mar, 2016 02:49 PM
We deliberately stick to Apple frameworks, because they get well supported.
=> I can understand. But this link seems to give just that, no ?
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/2DDrawing/Conceptual/DrawingPrintingiOS/GeneratingPDF/GeneratingPDF.html
You may be using specialized compression (is it even supported on iOS?), but most people don’t.
=> ok, but I mean, anyone who wants to compress any file format, be it PNG or JPG will have to invest in third-party "specialized" software, right ?
drewmccormack closed this discussion on 17 Mar, 2016 06:56 AM.