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Newbie getting an error message when extracting a preview from a JPG

Started by warhammer, January 29, 2011, 12:51:32 PM

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warhammer

Hi, thanks for this great app. I'm going mad because I've been trying to get exiftool work for about 1.5 hours but it won't. Here's the scene. I have a JPG file containing a 640x480 preview and a thumbnail. I didn't copy exiftool to one of my PATH directories, because I'm using it in my picture's directory. I'm running ET on Windows 7.

I can successfully extract the thumbnail via
exiftool -b -thumbnailimage picname.jpg > thumb.jpg

But I can't extract the 640x480 preview using the command
exiftool -b -previewimage picname.jpg > preview.jpg

I get the following:

Warning: [minor] PreviewImage is not a valid JPEG image - picname.jpg

Phil Harvey

Sounds like the previewimage may have been lost or corrupted by editing with other software.  If you post a sample image or email one to me (philharvey66 at gmail.com) I'll be able to tell for sure.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

warhammer

Thanks for your reply.

The picture hasn't been edited, it's absolutely untouched. I have the same issue with this sample image made by the same model (Pentax Optio E40).

Phil Harvey

I suspect that you are wrong about the image being "untouched".

The image you linked was corrupted by a Microsoft product.  You must be careful since it is very easy to corrupt image metadata with Microsoft software without realizing it.

I have original samples from an Optio E40 where the preview image is fine, so I know that you should be able to extract the PreviewImage without problems from an untouched E40 image.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).