Opening a Photo CD image in Photoshop

The Eastman Kodak Company originally developed the Photo CD format more than a decade ago. It has become a popular image format option because of its flexibility and high quality. Photo CDs store each image in multiple versions as Image Pacs, so you can open the version that has the resolution you need. Professional versions of this format provide copy protection and other features that professional photographers need. Your photofinisher can save your images to a CD in Photo CD format for you; Photoshop can’t save in this format, however.

Follow these steps to open a Photo CD image:
1. Choose File➪Open and navigate to the folder containing the Photo CD image you want to open.
2. Double-click the file’s icon.
The Kodak PCD Format dialog box appears containing the preview image and several other options.
3. Choose the desired resolution from the Pixel Size drop-down list.
Versions from 64 x 96 to 2048 x 3072 pixels are available. You can select a color profile tailored to a specific type of image from the Profile drop-down list. (Generally, only advanced users will want to change the default value.)
4. In the Profile drop-down list, choose the film type for the original image, such as color negative, Ektachrome (E-6), Kodachrome (K-14), and so forth.
5. In the Destination Image area, choose a resolution and indicate whether you want the image to open in landscape (wide) or portrait (tall) orientation.
Only advanced users will want to change the Color Space definition.

The ProCD version of Photo CD has one additional higher resolution than is available in the consumer version: 4096 x 6144 pixels, a whopping 72MB per image! The top resolution of 2048 x 3072 (18MB) in the consumer version should be plenty for all but the most demanding applications.

6. Click OK to open the image.
In the Image Info area of the dialog box, you can see what type of equipment was used to scan the original as well as the original image type (color negative, transparency, and so forth).