Extracting PICT resources

[J. Landman Gay]

Devin Asay wrote:
> I'm converting an old Hypercard app to Revolution. That app used PICT 
> resources in stacks to store images. There are hundreds of them. Before 
> I start doing them one by one in Photoshop, does anyone know whether I 
> could write a rev stack to automate this? I've looked at the commands 
> that work with Mac Classic resource forks, but I don't know enough about 
> how they're structured to try to extract just the PICT resources. Has 
> anyone tried anything like this? Failing that, is there existing 
> software that does this? I've tried GraphicConverter, which purports to 
> do batch conversions, but I couldn't make it work with PICT resources.

Since a big part of my client work is converting old HC stacks, I do 
this all the time. And yes, Graphic Converter is what you want. You want 
to extract the PICT resources and save them as jpg or gif.

Choose Open from the File menu. In the popdown for the type of file to 
open (it's a huge list) choose "PICT from Resource". Then select the HC 
stack in the Open File dialog. Graphic Converter will read all the PICT 
resources and present you with a list. Select the ones you want to 
extract and GC will open them.

You will probably want to do only a few at a time, since GC will open 
them all and things can get cluttered. Then you save them all in the 
format you want. There's a Save All menu item but I haven't used it for 
initial bulk saves, but it might work. I don't usually have that many so 
I generally just save them one at a time. Save yourself some time by 
checking off the box in the file dialog that offers to save in the last 
chosen file format.

I have tried many ways of moving those PICTs out of stacks and GC is a 
lifesaver. It's the way to go.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com