Tag Archives: CMYK

internet explorer won’t display certain images

Computer Aid Posted on by

This is something that I came across over 1 year ago, but it happened again recently, in a slightly different context, so I thought I’d cover the topic again.

Many people don’t realise this, but there are 2 types of jpg images:

RGB (its what most people use)

and CMYK (used by graphic design companies)…

Often, you cannot tell the difference, unless you use an image viewer like IrfanView… where, if you view the image properties, you will see the compression field will be either “jpeg” or “jpeg, cmyk”

The big problem, is that Internet Explorer and Chrome cannot display CMYK images, while Firefox, Opera, and Safari might be slow to display them.

Note: soon after publishing this post, I noticed that Chrome could actually display CMYK images… probably due to an update.

Here is an example:

Logo in RGB:

ca13-twitter-100x50

Logo in CMYK:

ca13-twitter-100x50-cmyk

Obviously, you can only see the CMYK logo if you are using Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or Safari

an error occurred while importing this file (bad jpg import into MSWord)

Computer Aid Posted on by

A customer was frantically trying to import a graphic logo into word (and email), but whenever he printed the document, he got a black rectangle where the logo should have been.

He’s using office 2003.

I try printing the logo from the windows image viewer… and it prints correctly. I can also print other images from word correctly.

At first I think it might be an MSWord problem, but I cannot see an obvious cause.

I find out the logos have been newly created by a nearby graphic design company (ablazing grafix), and they can print the imported logos from Microsoft Word without any problem.

I take the CD with all the logos, and try it at the office (on my old office XP).

Well, when importing, I get “an error occurred while importing this file”… On another PC, the import seems to work, but the colours are lighter than when viewed from irfanview…

I decide to use irfanview to resave the images.

Since the CD has 3 logo sizes (small medium and large), and 3 different color types (colour, grayscale, and black/white), I take the large colour image, and resize it to the same resolution of the small image, and save it with a similar name as the existing small logo.

I can see some differences:

– the new logo is about half the size of the original.

– the new logo is much better quality (no jaggies due to proper anti-aliasing)

– the logo can be viewed and printed within word.

I looked at the hex codes within the original logo, and it seems that it was saved from an adobe product (maybe photoshop).

I guess that ablazing grafix didn’t use proper anti-aliasing, and only use a state of the art version of MSWord.

After I hand over the “corrected” logos, ablazing admits that they saved the logos as a CMYK jpegs (instead of RGB)… I didn’t think that the jpeg format allowed for CMYK and RGB, so I looked it up and sure enough, it looks like jpegs can be either format.