2009.11.30 07:01 "Re: [Tiff] TIFFTAG_JPEGTABLES mandatory for JPEG-in-TIFF since 3.8.x ?", by

Lee,

Is it silly of me to not want TIFFTAG_JPEGTABLES written to the TIFF?

No, it isn't.

From a JPEG point of view, there roughly exists two options.

• One is to use standard tables. One good reason for doing this, is that you want compression to be a single-pass process, when you need compression speed and/or want to avoid the buffer involved in a two-pass compression process.
• The other option is to use optimized tables. One good reason for doing this, is if you want the best possible compression ratio.
• From a TIFF point of view, there roughly exist three options that make sense, and then there's a fourth that sneaks in when there's editing and recompressing being done on a limited number of strips or tiles.
• One option corresponds to the use of standard tables in JPEG. When you want the best possible compression speed and/or want to avoid the buffer involved in a two-pass compression process, you can prefer to have standard tables on all strips/tiles. In this case, it makes sense not to include the tables in every single strip/tile, but to write them only once in the JpegTables tag.
• Another option corresponds to the use of optimized tables. If you want the best possible compression ratio, and your strips/tiles are not too small, it may very well make sense to not include the JpegTables tag, but include tables in every strip/tile, individually optimized for the best possible compression ratio of that particular strip/tile.
• If your strips/tile are reasonably small, and/or your picture is reasonably uniform, I guess it may turn out the best possible compression ratio may be to use tables that are optimized for the complete picture instead of a single strip or tile, and include those in a JpegTables tag, and not include them in every strip/tile. It may be that the gain from including tables only once outweights the gain from table optimization on an individual strip/tile basis.
• Last but not least, TIFF can support editing and rewriting of a single tile or strip. In such cases, it can happen that the rewriter includes tables in an individual strip/tile, that may be optimized for that particular strip/tile, while the original writer choose to use the JpegTables tag instead. As such, there can be tables in both the JpegTables tag and in some or all of the strips/tiles. This too, is perfectly legal, the latter taking precedence on any individual strip/tile.

Since I need to make the application be compatible with libtiff 3.8.2 - if there's not a way to avoid writing TIFFTAG_JPEGTABLES with that version when writing JPEG-in-TIFF, then I'll probably just need to write TIFFTAG_JPEGTABLES properly... but I wanted to understand if this was intentional behavior by libtiff, or if this is a bug, or if I just don't know what I'm doing (likely).

Must be categorized as a bug. It's not the only one, related to that tag. I seem to remember that the decompressor holds on to the tables of the previous individual strip/tile when decompressing a subsequent individual strip/tile, effectively using wrong and unrelated tables when the previous strip/tile overwrites tables in JpegTables tag, and the subsequent

strip/tile doesn't.

Best regards,

Joris