Batch converting ptg files

[Henry Stahle]

H there,
I am doing some house and computer cleaning today. On one of my hard drives there are some thousand ptg files, most of them very old. I would like to convert them into a safe save format and catalogue them. But can I batch convert them using ArtRage or some script in ArtRage?

As I understand there is no other software around reading ArtRage ptg files, like XnView, that is a great batch converter that I use a lot for converting my photos. But not for ptg...

Anyone? If you know some solution, please help me.

Or I have to do it manually...

Henry

[markw]

Hello Henry,
I confess I’m not sure what you mean by “a safe save format”
Keeping the native .ptg format is the only way to retain all data regarding paint wetness, depth etc… that AR uses. To use another format would lose this info.
Normally when I archive paintings I compress them to Zip files and change the Zip file’s icon to a thumbnail of the actual painting in it.
This on average halves the size for storage more or less. Though your actual mileage may vary here.
macOS can do the batch compressing, but I believe you are on Windows? But I imagine it too must have a similar ability built into the OS.
The assigning of the paintings thumbnails to each Zip still has to be done “by hand”. Not too much of a chore as I tend to only be doing this to 4 or 5 paintings at a time.

[Henry Stahle]

hi markw,

by writing "safe format" I mean a file format that can be future safe, that can be read by other software, that can be edited in another software for colour correction and so on, a format that is common. Adobe psd is great, it is common, it works everywhere and is good for assigning a colour profile for getting my pictures or books printed.

I have been using ArtRage since 2004 and printed some art made by Artrage with exellent result, but I always convert to psd, add the colour profile and batch convert the files to the required format (mostly sRGB) for transfering online to my printhop or print it on my own printer or sending my illustrations to the education company that I make them for.

Since I have made my ArtRage files ready a long time ago there is no need to keep the native format any more.

Psd is what I want. It is safe for me.

[markw]

Ah, I see.
No I can’t think of any other apps either that could do this.
I tried recording an Action today to export an active painting, just to cut down on the number of clicks in exporting an image file from AR but with mixed results.
Whilst it did export to a .psd file with just one click, the content became just one flattened image layer. Nor did it retain the paintings original name. (It’s possible that someone might be able to write an AR Script that could do it correctly but I have to say writing scripts is not really “my thing”!)
So yes, right now I think you will have to go through them one by one to convert them.

[Henry Stahle]

As I understand, there is no way to do what I wanted to do. OK... I will do it one by one...

[roma Golich]

I think the PTG is the future safe structure, and you can open it using the demo version.

ARSCRIPT Q:
1. How to get the list of all files in a folder?
2. How to load ptg as if it loaded using open file menu item?

UI automation ... but the GUI Library is a problem.