Q: Back in the mid-1990s I was probably one of the very few people who actually purchased a Kodak Photo CD player. The system was/is great, and I have several thousand photos on the CDs that Kodak put them onto. Therein lies the problem.
Since the software for the Kodak Photo CD was proprietary and is no longer supported by Kodak, I cannot use it on my PC at home. I currently run Windows 7 Premium Home Edition, but it is totally useless when I insert on of the Photo CDs.
My ultimate goal is to be able to open these CDs and convert them to a usable format. I want to then transfer these photos to an external hard drive for storage and possible use by me in the future. Of course I would like this all to happen for the least cost possible.
Any ideas or suggestions?
All Photo CD resolutions are supported, with correct color handling and no blown highlights. PcdMagic is the only Windows 10 application that can correctly convert Photo CD images. PcdMagic features color profiles that are specific to model of scanner used, and the original film type used. PcdMagic can either use its own internal color profiles, or use the original Kodak color profiles as supplied along with. PcdMagic A GUI-based converter for Windows and the Mac that is based on pcdtojpeg above. I've not been able to test it, but it does provide a free trial that should help you make a buying decision. PcdMagic, which is based on the pcdtojpeg decoder library, has been released, for the first time offering Mac users a state-of-the-art Photo CD conversion package. PcdMagic offers the convenience of a GUI, and advanced conversion features such as color profiles and batch mode conversions.
PcdMagic features color profiles that are specific both to model of scanner used, and the original film type used. See the examples above for an example (all other settings at their defaults). PcdMagic can either use its own internal color profiles, or use the original Kodak color profiles as supplied along with Kodak's professional software. Photo CD is a system designed by Kodak for digitizing and saving photos onto a CD. Launched in 1991, the discs were designed to hold nearly 100 high quality images, scanned prints and slides using special proprietary encoding. Photo CDs are defined in the Beige Book and conform to the CD-ROM XA and CD-i Bridge specifications as well.
—George Kevin Brash, Illinois
A: I talked your problem over with Ted Felix, a longtime software engineer who also was stymied by Kodak's lack of support for Photo CD. Ted has turned himself into an expert on this topic — 'The Kodak Photo CD page and my QBASIC Programming for Kids book are the two most visited destinations' at tedfelix.com, he says — and his site (tedfelix.com/PhotoCD/index) is the go-to place for Photo CD info. Here's what Ted told me:
'The Kodak Photo CD format does not follow the rules for a standard data CD-R (the so-called orange book). It is possible that a modern CD drive can't read the CD at all as the Kodak Photo CD format (the beige book) has long been forgotten. If this is the case, find an older computer and use it to read the files and copy them to a USB flash drive.'
As I found out, older computers running Windows 98 or Windows 98SE can't copy files to a USB flash drive without a lot of help. Fortunately, here's the help you need: technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php. That's how I learned to use my current computer to add USB mass storage drivers to my late-1990s Windows 98 machine, which has USB ports. Fortunately, the site is not written in tech-ese.
Once you finally get the files, you can convert them to jpegs. Try downloading the free trial version of pcdMagic for Windows (https://sites.google.com/site/pcdmagicwindows/home). There's a link to a Mac version too, for you Mac users with the same problem). If that works, you can get the full version, which converts your photos at the highest resolution possible, for $79.
If that sounds like costly, consider that it's based on a lot of hard work by a Photo CD owner who faced the same problem you do and created a solution. There's a free version, Sandy McGuffog's PCDtoJPEG (pcdtojpeg@sourceforge.net), but its only for the intrepid. You have to run a command prompt (on your PC, click Start > Accessories > Command Prompt) and type in such commands as 'pcdtojpeg img0001.pcd img0001.jpg' — for every one of your several thousand photos. So if the trial version of pcdMagic works for you, the $79 full version will be a time-saving bargain.
If you know someone with Adobe CreativeSuite 3 or earlier, the disk with the folder labeled 'goodies' has a plug-in that will convert Photo CD images to jpeg. Later versions of this professional (i.e., really expensive) photo-editing software don't have it. If you have a Mac friend who has iPhoto 9, that might work too, but no guarantees.
Pcd Magic Mac App
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