Anyone found a way to convert paperport / visioneer .max files to .jpeg or .bmp, etc?

[magicianstalk]

Hey all,

I have been following this problem on the web for years. It
still seems that besides printing to file, or screen capturing, there
is no way (without the paperport software) to convert the scanned .max
image files into any other format. Has anyone come up with anything?
It's annoying because paperport came with an old scanner, and wont
install on my new computer -- the paperport support people say i have
to purchase the upgrade -- forget that....

I really appreciate your help.

Thanks,

Matt
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Dances With Crows]

still seems that besides printing to file, or screen capturing, there
is no way (without the paperport software) to convert the scanned .max
image files into any other format. Has anyone come up with anything?

If you choose to save images in a format that isn't an open standard
(TIFF, JPEG, GIF, and PNG are all open, BMP isn't really open but it's
very well-understood) then you will get ****ed over. I don't understand
why anyone would archive images in a proprietary format, but hey, you
made your bed, you've now gotta lie in it.

Whatever you do, archive your images (and your other documents, if you
care about them) in open formats from now on. TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and
BMP images; ASCII, HTML, Unicode, and XML text; MP3 and WAV sound files;
MPEG and MPEG2 movies; TAR, GZIP, ZIP, and BZIP2 archive formats; and
just about any format used by open-source programs (like OpenOffice's
XML format used for word-processing/presentation/spreadsheet files) are
essentially future-proof. Other formats may or may not be--look
carefully before you commit to using them, and you could save yourself a
lot of pain later on.

It's annoying because paperport came with an old scanner, and wont
install on my new computer -- the paperport support people say i have
to purchase the upgrade -- forget that....

Paying money for a new version of this commercial software product is
the easiest and quickest way out of your dilemma[0]. If you have some
programming skill, a compiler, and a hex editor, you might be able to
decipher enough of this proprietary .MAX format to be able to read the
data. Run /usr/bin/file on one of these .MAX files; if it identifies
the file as anything other than "data", that'll give you a good place to
start your investigations.

I've deciphered an undocumented binary file format and written code to
parse/extract/rewrite it for work. This takes a while. If you decide to
do that, make sure you publish what you find (blog, freshmeat.net,
Sourceforge, whatever) so other people can build on your efforts. HTH
anyway,

[0] You're still left with using code you don't own, can't look at, and
might not be able to use effectively later on to access *your* data.
You may be OK with that. Refer to paragraphs 1 and 2 for the potential
disadvantages.

 

[magicianstalk]

Woah,

Easy Killer -- The I always save in open formats -- The files are
my Grandma's. She saved some in .max until she started saving them to
..jpg. We were just figuring out how to convert them...

Thanks for the response -- i guess..

 

[es]

I have pp 5.1 deluxe running on 98se, 2000, and XP. 5.0 may work on
these as well.

If you have an old hard drive about, install 98se and pp 5.0. export
all the max files as tiffs, depending on what the scans are (photos, b/w
text, etc.). Burn the result to a CDROM and there you are.

How many max files do you have? How many MBs?

ES

 

[magicianstalk]

Es,

Hello...

Well, my grandma just got a brand new computer, and we are
using the HD form the old computer as "removable media". Although the
old HD has Win 98 on it -- i would have to toss it back in the
tower.... I think she has about 50 or so .max files -- luckilly all
of her hundreds of scans weren't saved in this format.... I wonder if
i can somehow trick xp into running the older version of Paperport (as
if it's Win 98 SE). I have to check what version of paperport sh WAS
using. She got it with her 7600 USB visioneer scanner.... Hey, can
you email me at magicianstalk AT hotmail.com? Thanks....

Thanks for your help....

Matt

 

[CSM1]

Es,

Hello...

Well, my grandma just got a brand new computer, and we are
using the HD form the old computer as "removable media". Although the
old HD has Win 98 on it -- i would have to toss it back in the
tower.... I think she has about 50 or so .max files -- luckilly all
of her hundreds of scans weren't saved in this format.... I wonder if
i can somehow trick xp into running the older version of Paperport (as
if it's Win 98 SE). I have to check what version of paperport sh WAS
using. She got it with her 7600 USB visioneer scanner.... Hey, can
you email me at magicianstalk AT hotmail.com? Thanks....

Thanks for your help....

Matt

If she has the original Visioneer Software CD, have you tried installing the
old Paperport on XP? Some programs for Windows 98 will install and run in
XP. I use some older software that was made long before XP.

OR:
It would take a bit of work, but maybe you can make the old HD the boot
drive in the new computer and run Windows 98 after configuring 98 to live
with the new hardware. (To do that, you may need the Motherboard driver CD).

Run PaperPort and convert all the .max to Jpeg or Tiff.

Go back to the New HD for boot and Old HD for external removable. Copy the
converted files.

 

[Warren]

Try this from the paperport site: It purports to be a converter for your files.

http://www.scansoft.com/paperport/viewers/default.asp

 

[CSM1]

May be, but it does not say that you can save the converted file to Jpeg or
Tiff.

They say "view and print". Of course, if you can view the file you may be
able to "Screen Save" the image.

 

[Dances With Crows]

Please don't top-post, and don't put quoted text below your "-- " .signature
delimiter. Top-posting makes it difficult to read your messages;
putting quoted text below the "-- " makes it so that people replying to
your messages have to manually paste the context in.

[ problems with Paperport's damned undocumented proprietary image format ]

Maybe, but it does not say that you can save the converted file to
Jpeg or Tiff. They say "view and print". Of course, if you can view
the file you may be able to "Screen Save" the image.

Screenshots? Too labor-intensive and error-prone. Print to file, then
check the .PRN file generated to make sure it's PostScript. GhostScript
can convert PostScript files to several image formats, including
black+white, color, or grayscale TIFF. GhostScript is free speech and
free beer, so no worries there. Like so:

gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -dNOPAUSE -r150 -dBATCH -sOutputFile=file.tif
file.prn

....that takes file.prn as input and writes a 150 DPI TIFF file, Group4
compression named "file.tif" as output. Put a for loop around that
command and you'd be set. It'd be more difficult in Windows thanks to
the inadequacy of the shell, but you could write a .BAT file without
much effort. HTH,

 

[CSM1]

"Dances With Crows":

I will top post if the previous poster used top post.
I could move my Signature, then it would be lost in the clutter.
--
CSM1
http://www.carlmcmillan.com
--

Please don't top-post, and don't put quoted text below your "-- " ..signature
delimiter. Top-posting makes it difficult to read your messages;
putting quoted text below the "-- " makes it so that people replying to
your messages have to manually paste the context in.

[ problems with Paperport's damned undocumented proprietary image format ]

Maybe, but it does not say that you can save the converted file to
Jpeg or Tiff. They say "view and print". Of course, if you can view
the file you may be able to "Screen Save" the image.

Screenshots? Too labor-intensive and error-prone. Print to file, then
check the .PRN file generated to make sure it's PostScript. GhostScript
can convert PostScript files to several image formats, including
black+white, color, or grayscale TIFF. GhostScript is free speech and
free beer, so no worries there. Like so:

gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -dNOPAUSE -r150 -dBATCH -sOutputFile=file.tif
file.prn

...that takes file.prn as input and writes a 150 DPI TIFF file, Group4
compression named "file.tif" as output. Put a for loop around that
command and you'd be set. It'd be more difficult in Windows thanks to
the inadequacy of the shell, but you could write a .BAT file without
much effort. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Hire me! http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume/
Your very best intentions probably involve guns and knives and a large
concept leap. --MegaHAL, trained on random gibberish