GraphicConverter 5.4
GraphicConverter can now re-compress multi-page TIFF files. It also does a good job of converting multi-page PDFs to TIFF format. This will make it much easier for me to archive my paper documents.
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My HP scanner software outputs either multi-page PDFs or single-page TIFFs. The files are always created in grayscale, even though I'm scanning black-and-white documents, so they're huge and don't compress well. Before GraphicConverter 5.4, I didn't know of a good way to shrink them. ImageMagick theoretically should have worked, but it couldn't read the files that I gave it.
Now, it's easy. I can feed a whole stack of documents into the scanner. Then use "tiffutil -cat" to join the single-page TIFFs. Then give GraphicConverter a whole folder of them and tell it to convert them to 1-bit and compress with Group 4. A four-page document shrinks from about 120 MB to 350K.
I was feeling pretty good about this until I remembered that, sheet feeding aside, PaperPort solved this problem in 1996.
Yet something else new one learns during the day. My Canon scanner may begin to see more usage now.
I loved the PaperPort. The law firm I worked at in New Orleans made extensive use of the PaperPort, and all of the tech support staff had one as well. It was great, and I miss its capable easy of use.
