Family Historian User Group

Perhaps not strictly an FH question but is causing me a bit of grief and very much related to my Family History record management!
I have several documents e.g.reports, pamphlets etc that have been scanned as individual pages in .jpg format. I wish to use each of these documents in their entirety as a source which means I have to import all of the "pages" individually into the source record. This is a bit of a faff both to import and particularly trying to use them in a citation.
Can anybody recommend a way of combining several .jpg files into one .jpg without having to submit to an on-line processing entity? I prefer not to rely on PDF' (which I do know how to combine) as they have the disadvantage of not showing in FH as thumbnails.

Hi

There is a free image utility that I use for all sorts of quick and easy tasks for our Camera club, such as slideshows of topic images and reduced size images for our website.

It is called Irfanview, available in 32 and 64 bit verions, depending on your device.
It has a 'panorama' feature from Image>Create Panorama Image... which could well be used if you'd panned your camera and taken several images, BUT, you can use any images for this purpose. You can do it horizontally or vertically too.

https://www.irfanview.com/ is the website

Many thanks Niel40. Works perfectly!
I actually have Irfanview on my computer and use it for viewing images in a very limited way. However, once I located "Image" then "Merge images (simple panorama image)", I was away! Just select the individual images, arrange in the sequence you want them to be stitched together in and "create image" and you have a single .jpg image of them all.
Brilliant. It's the solution to a problem I've had for a while.

Yes, IrfanView is a popular tool with FH users. See FHUG Knowledge Base IrfanView.

However, do check how those images appear in FH Reports. They may be unreadable!

Good point Mike. However, at the moment I am keeping source info on my hard disk and imported into source records. I only show a thumbnail in reports, not relying on a full copy there. A bit old fashioned but suits my way of working. It is still possible to view images on the screen at whatever magnification is necessary, of course from within FH. Maybe one day I'll need to produce a full blown report as a stand-alone record at which point I may need to revisit my methods to include legible images.
I agree viewing an image is a bit long winded from the programme at present.

Irfan provides a great result with a practical legible limit of about 3 per combiined image.....I combine images on an almost daily basis with irfan.
You can simply copy & paste (Ctrl C > Alt E > T) an image to the top, left, right or bottom of an existing image and resave it (Ctrl S)

I would post an example if I knew how to do it

Just out of interest I use Paint to join images and just takes a few seconds. I do it by having both images open in Paint, cropping them to what I want, add additional canvas to the primary image and copy and paste the second image, then just position it.

dewilkinson wrote: ↑

14 Feb 2022 10:05

Just out of interest I use Paint to join images and just takes a few seconds. I do it by having both images open in Paint, cropping them to what I want, add additional canvas to the primary image and copy and paste the second image, then just position it.

I often do the same. For a basic programme, Paint is incredibly powerful!

With all this "editing" you should bear in mind loss of quality ,unless it is a jpg lossless action. That is why for editing I mostly work in PNG files (lossless), even converting jpg to png, working on it, then saving in png so any future edits should not affect quality.

jimlad68 wrote: ↑

15 Feb 2022 15:30

With all this "editing" you should bear in mind loss of quality ,unless it is a jpg lossless action. That is why for editing I mostly work in PNG files (lossless), even converting jpg to png, working on it, then saving in png so any future edits should not affect quality.

I for one am aware...I work with copies in .jpg and keep archival versions in .tiff. I combine images to use on my blog.

rlparsons wrote: ↑

03 Feb 2022 08:13

I prefer not to rely on PDF' (which I do know how to combine)

I'd appreciate knowing your method of combining PDF's, it is something I'm looking into and can only see on-line options. Hopefully your method doesn't involve going on-line or purchasing more software

That's something else that Irfanview can do. Use Options > Multipage images > Create multipage PDF. (You may need to download the Irfanview plugin for that if you haven't already got it).

Lorna,
No,, my program of choice for images is GIMP2.
You’ve given me an idea though, I need to see if GIMP2 offers the same facility as Irfanview

Irfanview is FREE so why not give it a try, at least for the multipage PDFs if nothing else? (Like you, it's not my main program for image manipulation but very useful for some things)

GIMP (Photoshop type functionality) is free as well (and will run natively on multiple platforms). It may be over-kill for some things but as you get to know it making small changes and doing minor tasks becomes very quick.

Sadly, whilst Gimp will accept/read a PDF files, I can't see a way to merge multiple PDFs into one file.

However, the good news is that Gimp can convert the PDF to a JPG file, which FH cannot do properly, (it trims boxes on Right Hand side and CP have been made aware).

Just picked up on this.

That's something else that Irfanview can do. Use Options > Multipage images > Create multipage PDF. (You may need to download the Irfanview plugin for that if you haven't already got it).

I have IrfanView 4.6 up to date and am trying to use the option above, but it doesn't work. Have tried looking for the plugin but can't find it....... any ideas on where I might find the PDF Multipage plug in please?

Regards
PP

In my version, (which is 4.53) under Help > Installed Plugins it says go to the Irfan View homepage http://www.irfanview.com then go to Download > Plugins to download the newest plugins.

Thanks Lorna,

I have already been there a few times and downloaded the newest plugins but when I come to use the option I can add the pdf files but when I select Create it says it can't find the two files that I have added. I have tried this with other pdfs same result. I personally think that this plugin isn't there. Not sure what to do now. I will probably ask them what I am doing wrong. If you go into list plugins, what is the plugin actually called?

Thanks again,
PP

I've got a plugin called PDF.DLL (version 4.52) which I assume is the one. I don't know what else to suggest I'm afraid, other than contacting them for help.

Are you trying to combine multiple images into one multi-page PDF or are you trying to combine multiple PDFs into one multi-page PDF?

I do the former all the time in IrfanView. I just tried it and it worked. I don't believe IrfanView can do the latter.

Bill

I was beginning to think Bill was right, but I have just managed to get Irfanview to combine two 32-page PDFs into a single 64-page PDF. It did hang for a little while 'not responding' but it got there in the end.

Lorna,

Are you using Options > Multipage Images > Create Multipage PDF?

If I use these and then select Add Images and add two PDF files to the selection and then click on Create PDF Image, I get:

Error! Can't load: filename.

Are you using different options?

Bill

Bill, yes I am using the options you stated. My version of Irfanview is 4.53, so a bit out of date, but I notice that PP's version is 4.6. Which version do you have?

See FHUG KB IrfanView which may be out-of-date but says to read PDF format it needs Ghostscript for Windows (32 bit) to be installed. (Do NOT install the 64-bit version as IrfanView will NOT detect it.)

I am running IrfanView 64-bit for Windows, Version 4.59

BTW: Ghostscript downloads are now at https://ghostscript.com/releases/gsdnld.html