Problem saving pictures from the web

[joelad]

I'm running Windows 7. When I "right click, save" pics from the web, they oftentimes show up as a flat colored line. In the folder they've been saved in, the thumbnail looks normal, but when you open it, it's a mess. Or the picture is compressed to the point it no longer resembles the original photo.

I've never had this problem with previous versions of Windows. What's going on?

 

[zvit]

Can you post a link to the page with the image you're trying to save and also tell us which image it is.

 

[joelad]

It doesn't matter which website, it happens on all websites, with any jpegs. Say I save 10 pics from a site, 7 may turn out OK, while the other 3 are a mess.

 

[zvit]

Say I save 10 pics from a site,

How exactly are you saving them? Are you right clicking one at a time?

Many pictures\images on the web are made up by pieces of imagery that look like one picture when viewed on the web but are actually cut up to small parts. If you right click on such a picture, you will only be saving a small part of the image - depending precisely where you clicked. Sometimes you can check this by noticing the name of the image the webpage has called it. If the name changes when you right click on different places of the image like, "flowerbottom", "flowertop"... etc, you know that's the problem.

 

[alfred01]

Also make sure your selecting Save As and not just Save.

 

[joelad]

I am using "Save as...). The pics are usually from different sources (hosted on differing sites, Photobucket, etc.), but are on the same web page. AR15.com e.g.

 

[zvit]

I know you said it's not specific to one site but I still want to ask you to post one link that you have this problem on.

 

[joelad]

Specifically here:

The FAL Files Forums - SARCO BM59 Type E Garand kit comes to life

Several of the pics turned out OK, while the others did not.

 

[zvit]

It is not a problem with your Windows, but ALL Windows. I also see the "squashed" images when I downloaded a few from that site. When I open them in Photoshop or any other photo viewer - Including Paint, they open fine. This is a known bug in Windows Photo Viewer. There is no known fix that I could find. The only thing you can do is open the photos in a different viewer and if you have to send them, you can save them again (from viewers like paint).

Here are some recommend free viewers, Irfan View (IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide), XnView (XnView Software - Free graphic and photo viewer, converter, organizer) which can handle about 400 different formats. (Both of the above are free.)

This can also be due to faulty EXIF information in the image, which would take Windows off the hook.

 

[Joe S]

It is not a problem with your Windows, but ALL Windows. I also see the "squashed" images when I downloaded a few from that site. When I open them in Photoshop or any other photo viewer - Including Paint, they open fine. This is a known bug in Windows Photo Viewer. There is no known fix that I could find. The only thing you can do is open the photos in a different viewer and if you have to send them, you can save them again (from viewers like paint).

Here are some recommend free viewers, Irfan View (IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide), XnView (XnView Software - Free graphic and photo viewer, converter, organizer) which can handle about 400 different formats. (Both of the above are free.)

This can also be due to faulty EXIF information in the image, which would take Windows off the hook.

I get the sane results some are OK and some are squished. You may try a bulk converter and convert them to JGP even though they are already. I've done this with susposed JPG files Adobe couldn't open. The poster may have processed them and something got corrupt when they saved.
Joe

 

[joelad]

Thanks for the tip on Irfan view. It's now my photo viewer.

 

[zvit]

Glad to help.

 

[OldTimer]

I take a totally different tack, when grabbing a picture off of a web page or any other source.

I press my "Prt Scrn" key on my keyboard, to copy the entire screen to my Windows Clip Board.
Then I open my Picture program, "Photo Filtre" from the icon in my Quick Launch Toolbar, and "Paste as new image" the contents of the clipboard
into the Photo Filtre screen.
Then I can easily crop the image to show only the part I want to keep, resize the image to less than 800kb and SAVE AS to my pictures folder.

The entire process, although sounding complex, is VERY simple and can take less than one minute.
I've installed the FREE Photo Filtre for many of my customers who take lots of photos and need to process them.
Even though they may have used other photo processing software in the past, they all seem to love "Photo Filtre".

I won't set up Windows on any PC, of my own, without it. Capturing a whole screen, just bypasses so many problems
with downloading and saving a photo from the web.

Cheers mates!