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map file in ".sid" format???

B

bluemonkey

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 19, 2004
108
0
Knoxville, TN USA Near Oak Ridge. Never heard of O
I have a client who needs a high-res map of colonial Washington D.C. The link they sent me has the map in .sid format which is some proprietary format created by lizardtech for zooming in on maps without having to have a T1 connection or anything. Does anyone know if it's possible to translate that to a format acceptable to Photoshop? When I tried just opening it, it was treated as a RAW file and asked me to plug in the size information, but it never worked very well for me.

Anyone have any experience with this??

-Jason
 
bluemonkey said:
I have a client who needs a high-res map of colonial Washington D.C. The link they sent me has the map in .sid format which is some proprietary format created by lizardtech for zooming in on maps without having to have a T1 connection or anything. Does anyone know if it's possible to translate that to a format acceptable to Photoshop? When I tried just opening it, it was treated as a RAW file and asked me to plug in the size information, but it never worked very well for me.

Anyone have any experience with this??
Click to expand...

Yes.

Our GIS person at work uses TNTmips. Version 7.00 and higher contain support for MrSID on Mac OS X. TNTmips is quite expensive.
http://www.microimages.com/



TNTlite is the same thing, but limited in the size of the file (geographical area) that it can work with. It's free (no charge). It's probably what you need. http://www.microimages.com/tntlite/

GIS software like TNTmips is not something you can 'figure out'. That's why people get Master's degrees in GIS. TNT is extensively documented in PDFs from their site, so if you're able to learn highly complex software from reading manuals, you'll have lots of resources.

This is serious, hard-core unix software. It runs in X11 on OS X, Linux, Solaris, and MS Windows. You can do really awesome stuff with it, but it's not like anything you've probably used before.

Read this release notes page to get started: http://www.microimages.com/relnotes/v70/rel7003.htm
 
Thanks for the advice. I am but a lowly graphic designer, so I may have trouble figuring this out, as you said, but you've pointed me in the right direction. Trouble with clients is, they think if they can find it on the web, it can be printed on the dust jacket of their book, no problem. I run into this a lot, but I"ve never seen this kind of file. Really amazing stuff!!

-jason
 
The file is known as a Mr. Sid file.

They are really quite neat. There used to be a photoshop plugin that would let you open the file directly in photoshop. I have a quark XTension that will let you import the file into quark. You can than save a PDF of the document and then open the PDF in photoshop and save as any file you want. You might be able to find the XTension on the Lizardtech website. Oh one caveat you need to have a version of quark prior to 6. So you need 5 or 4. If it will help you and you can't find it PM me.

In addition, if it is a SID file and a map of DC. It most likely came from memory.loc.gov the library of congress american memory website. It is one of favorite websites. Most of the stuff there belongs to you and I. They have copy-write information available. Most of it is public domain.
 
bluemonkey said:
I have a client who needs a high-res map of colonial Washington D.C. The link they sent me has the map in .sid format which is some proprietary format created by lizardtech for zooming in on maps without having to have a T1 connection or anything. Does anyone know if it's possible to translate that to a format acceptable to Photoshop? When I tried just opening it, it was treated as a RAW file and asked me to plug in the size information, but it never worked very well for me.

Anyone have any experience with this??

-Jason
Click to expand...

If you supply me with the url or even the file I can convert it to a psd, tiff, or jpeg. Let me know what you need and I'll hook you up. :)
 
 
.sid

Hey guys im stuck as well! i need help getting this .SID file from my mac to either a JPG or PDF.... Is there any program out there that converts .SID files to other formats readable for my Mac?
 
.sid files

AppleToApples said:
Hey guys im stuck as well! i need help getting this .SID file from my mac to either a JPG or PDF.... Is there any program out there that converts .SID files to other formats readable for my Mac?
Click to expand...
I am using MrSid plug in and ExpressView. They may be still available free at the developer, lizardtech.com. ExpressView can View and export sid files.
 
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