Incredibly strange file size discrepancy only appears in image files (jpg, gif, png)!

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Level 1

8 points

Incredibly strange file size discrepancy only appears in image files (jpg, gif, png)!

I'm creating a bunch of banners for google ads, yahoo ads, ...etc in Photoshop on my Mac OS!

The .gif files of these banners appear to TRIPLE in size when on the MAC (>150KB), but when transferred to windows; the real file size shows correctly! (<50KB)

It is not a result of the base2 vs base10 discrepancy since the difference in size is simply too big, and it only happens with files created on Photoshop on my Mac.

The reason I know that windows is showing the correct size while my Mac OS is displaying the wrong size, is that the file gets approved by google and yahoo ads, even though Mac OS shows that it surpasses the size limit (50KB) three times over!

This isn't an isolated incident either, all image files created in Photoshop on the MAC continue this weird behaviour! However, files downloaded from the net appear to be consistent on both operating systems!

One example is the attached screenshot:

Explanation, please??

Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jul 19, 2012 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

hellfang Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 20, 2012 9:52 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Geez, sorry I offended you Mr. Jobs (incarnate)!

You came in here with a three ton chip on your shoulders. Did you really expect sunshine and puppies in return?

No, I expected useful help, and I got it from Jeffrey Jones. Thanks again Jeffrey!

I mean, when you move or upload it, it loses this data association anyways!

To a drive which doesn't support Apple's AB tree structure (NTFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT), yes. To another HFS+ drive, no.

What about uploading the file to the cloud?? Does it lose this association or not?? And does anyone really care about the data in the Resource fork?

This "Resource Fork" means nothing to the file owner, only to the OS and the Drive. Therefore, it shouldn't be added to the total. Period. Because its not part of the file, its part of Apple's tree structure! This is really a simple concept, not sure why you are bending over backwords to defend a clearly stupid oversight from apple!

There's no reason to force me to use the command line to get the real file size of a GIF! There's just no excuse for that!

If an OS is saying it is fetching file size information for a single file, it should do exactly that! Not add hidden Resource Forks that are part of the OS's internal workings

OS X is fetching the file size. It's file size, not the way a different OS would report it.

There is no such thing as it's file size. A file size is a file size, accross all platforms, on the cloud, wherever!

A GIF file should have the same file size whether its on windows, linux, unix, darwin, freeBSD, or anything else. The only time its weight should vary is in outer space!

That is why I'm surprised that they are breaking simple UI Design rules.

The User Interface has nothing to do with the file structure of a drive.

I don't care about the structure of the drive!! Neither should you, neither should the average user!

A good UI should NOT concern the user with this! The average user doesn't care about these Resource Forks, and will never try to view them, therefore, there is no logical reason to add up their file sizes to the total size of each file, and then to make things worse, hide that fact! That only creates confusion, and it makes it so much harder for a designer like myself to view the REAL file sizes of my image files! Now, whenever I'm on my MAC, I will have to run command line scripts to be able to see if my GIF files (that I work on EVERYDAY) meet the file size quota, because Mac OS adds up hidden files that I have no use for and gives me the WRONG file size!

Let's say this again: when you select a file and click get info, you should get the info for the file you selcted. Nothing more, nothing less! I don't care if the file structure creates an entire colony of hidden files, they should be completely hidden to me, and if not, the Get Info dialog box should at least give me two sizes, one is the REAL file size, and the other is the added up file size for the Resource Fork as well (although I can't think of any good reason why it should add up the Resource Fork size anyways)!

do you think it is at all logical, that when you select 300 or so files, and click Get Info, that it open 300 windows at once each showing separate information for each file? Or does it make a lot more sense, intuitively, to get the total tally of all the files selected added up, without having to hold down shortcut keys when clicking them to do so?

Yes, it is logical because that's what you, the user, told the OS to do. You wanted the Get Info data on 300 individual items. I don't know about you, but I avoid the menu bar as much as possible (your reference to avoiding shortcut keys). Command+I will always give you singular Get Info dialogue boxes.

No, that's not what I told the OS to do. I selected 300 files cumulatively, therefore, I should get the cumulative info for all the selected files. That's just common sense. Every other OS seems to get this!

And I'm hard pressed to find anyone who has found a use for having 300 get info boxes open at the same time. Therefore, that shouldn't be the default.

Will you start defending apple's decision to stick with the one button mouse for all these years depriving us from the all important context menu as well?? There was absolutely no good reason to do that, just as there is absolutely no good reason to do this!

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,670 points

Jul 20, 2012 10:16 AM in response to hellfang

What about uploading the file to the cloud?? Does it lose this association or not??

Don't know. Don't use iCloud and very likely never will.

This "Resource Fork" means nothing to the file owner, only to the OS and the Drive. Therefore, it shouldn't be added to the total. Period.

In your opinion. It means everything to a user transferring data from one Mac to another. You can't pretend the information, which will copy over, doesn't exist.

This is really a simple concept, not sure why you are bending over backwards to defend a clearly stupid oversight from apple!

I'm not trying to defend anything. I'm trying to explain it. Read this for pretty much everything there is to know about resource forks.

A good UI should NOT concern the user with this! ... gives me the WRONG file size!

Again, you're basing your opinion on other operating systems. Is it part of the .gif, .jpg or other file itself? No, but it still takes up space and the user does need to know that when calculating if the data they are copying will fit on another Mac formatted drive.

No, that's not what I told the OS to do. I selected 300 files cumulatively, therefore, I should get the cumulative info for all the selected files. That's just common sense. Every other OS seems to get this!

And yet again, you are trying to force one OS to behave the same as another OS. You can't do that, plain and simple, no matter how much you wish it. It doesn't matter whether or not you like how it behaves, it's up to you as the user to learn what you can do and use it that way. If you don't like it, use a different OS, or submit feedback to Apple and request a UI change.

Will you start defending apple's decision to stick with the one button mouse for all these years depriving us from the all important context menu as well?? There was absolutely no good reason to do that, just as there is absolutely no good reason to do this!

Will you quite assuming I'm an Apple apologist and read my posts for what they are? Facts? I used DOS 3.1 on my first computer and had many different Windows boxes before switching to Mac. I hated the one button mouse and never, ever used a Mac with one. I always bought a Logitech wheel button mouse of some sort to replace it.

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Answer 3

Jul 19, 2012 8:19 AM in response to hellfang

Obviously, Photoshop is doing something. I don't use Photoshop, so I don't know what options to check. Is it adding a preview or a custom icon? Those might be saved in a resource fork, and would not survive the transfer to Windows.

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Answer 4

hellfang Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 19, 2012 9:17 AM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

Thank you for your response!
I don't see any icon files or any additional files, just the GIF file by itself in the folder.

What's more, checking the file size in the Terminal using ls -l displays the correct file size! So this is obviously an issue with Finder!

And what in god's name is a resource fork? How do I check for that? 🙂

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Answer 5

Jul 19, 2012 9:57 AM in response to hellfang

A resource fork is an extended attribute for a file in the Mac OS file system. They are used less in modern Mac OS X systems, but some applications with a long legacy, such as Photoshop, still use them to store additional data that doesn't fit in the standardized file types like GIF and JPEG.

To see if your file has one, in Terminal use ls -l@ yourfile.gif. The "@" option displays extended attributes. A resource fork would be listed as "com.apple.resourcefork". Include the size of the resource fork to get the full file size.

Again, I am not familiar with Photoshop, but I'll bet there is an option in preferences or in the Save dialog to omit whatever it is putting in the resource fork, if that is what it is doing. An image preview or a custom icon are likely candidates, neither of which is necessary on a modern Mac.

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Answer 6

hellfang Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 19, 2012 12:59 PM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

That's it!!

com.apple.ResourceFork

120934

What a *&%$!!

Thank you so much!

For an OS that is supposed to be catered towards designers, doing something like this - which goes against all common sense, and against all other OS's, and against the kernel's own design as well - is incredibly STUPID!

This little problem caused me countless lost hours trying to optimize GIFs down to size, only to discover that Finder was playing a trick on me!

Honestly, I expected better from Apple! I wouldn't blame Photoshop either because its really the OS that is adding up data that doesn't belong to the file! If anything, Finder should at least mention that there is a resource fork adding to the size of the file! The windows version of Photoshop doesn't seem to be doing this, and even if it did, Windows rightfully ignores it!

I will go annoy Adobe now in hopes of finding a way around this mess!

But I do hope Apple realizes its mistake with finder and corrects this, and since they are *correcting* things, maybe they should change the way Finder displays the Get Info dialog when selecting multiple files!

The first day I got my mac, I went ahead and selected 200 files, and then pressed Get Info... you can imagine my horror when 200 dialogs opened up all at once!

This is also very counter intuitive, and this really shouldn't be the way it behaves by default!

Anyways, I'm done ranting. Thank you again for your help!

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Answer 7

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,670 points

Jul 19, 2012 1:16 PM in response to hellfang

For an OS that is supposed to be catered towards designers, doing something like this - which goes against all common sense, and against all other OS's, and against the kernel's own design as well - is incredibly STUPID!

Uh, no, it's been like that since the very first Mac OS. Just because you're not used to a system with a resource fork doesn't automatically make it "stupid".

If you want stupid, try Windows and file extensions. Like .eps. In Windows, only one app can be associated with an extension. So if you assign .eps to Photoshop, every .eps will try to open in PS, regardless of whether it came out of Illustrator, Quark, Freehand, or any other number of apps which can output the .eps format.

Apple got around this with the resource fork (among other uses it has). Part of the resource fork was the Type and Creator codes. Each file had one, and using them, the OS knew what files belonged to what app. The type was EPSF (all Type and Creator codes must be 4 characters) for just about any app which created an .eps. But in Photoshop, its Creator code is 8***. For Illustrator it's ART5, and so on. So by checking both codes, the OS knew which app created that .eps and would open it in the correct app.

While the OS will still read Type and Creator codes, and many apps will still create them (such as Adobe's and many others) they have been replaced with Uniform Type Identifiers. So even though OS X now also relies first on file extensions, other UTI data saved with each file still keeps .eps files separated by the app which created them.

Honestly! Why do people think a completely different OS is going to behave exactly the same as the one they were using before.

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Answer 8

hellfang Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 20, 2012 2:55 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Geez, sorry I offended you Mr. Jobs (incarnate)!

I'm actually very happy with my MacBook Pro, so I'm not even bashing the product itself! I'm simply mentioning 2 very bizarre oversights that Apple's UI designers should have considered!

And I'm not - in any way - defending Windows either, in fact I think Windows a horribly unstable & broken OS!

What I am simply saying is: It's absolutely LUDICRIS that there is NO WAY in the UI to get the actual file size of a GIF file without using a command line prompt! And if this hidden Resource Fork that is mysteriously adding size to my file is only carrying information that is OS specific, then why is it's size even being counted towards the final tally? I mean, when you move or upload it, it loses this data association anyways!

If an OS is saying it is fetching file size information for a single file, it should do exactly that! Not add hidden Resource Forks that are part of the OS's internal workings - since the average user shouldn't be concerned about it anyways - and then to make things worse, hide that fact from you!

This is bad design, and quite shocking coming from Apple!

I should know, Its my job! I've been a User Interface Designer for the past 14 years, and a huge admirer of Apple's designs! That is why I'm surprised that they are breaking simple UI Design rules.

This is counter-intuitive and confusing, and now that I conducted a Search on the internet, I can already see this same question I posted being posted by other designers a well, so I'm not alone in this!

And I never said I expected completely different OS's to behave exactly the same! I said I expected an OS catered towards designers to be able to read the REAL files sizes of a simple GIF file - especially since in the case of web Designers file size IS a sensitive issue - right from the UI!

And as for the other bizarre oversight from the UI: do you think it is at all logical, that when you select 300 or so files, and click Get Info, that it open 300 windows at once each showing seperate information for each file? Or does it make alot more sense, intuitively, to get the total tally of all the files selected added up, without having to hold down shortcut keys when clicking them to do so?

Everyone single Mac User I've talked to tells me that this has happened to them the first time they used the OS, since it simply goes against logic! Why would you ever want to open all these dialog boxes at once? If you ever need to do that, a simple ls -l would do that, plus you can actually printout a detailed list from the command prompt!

And by the way, I'm not a first time mac user, I've been using macs ever since design school, what is new to me is that I am a first time Mac owner, so I'm becoming a lot more familiar with the OS than before. My main OS at home and the office was always windows simply because I needed 3D Studio Max, and that doesn't come on a Mac!

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Answer 9

gumsie

Level 4

2,185 points

Jul 20, 2012 3:49 AM in response to hellfang

hellfang wrote:

And as for the other bizarre oversight from the UI: do you think it is at all logical, that when you select 300 or so files, and click Get Info, that it open 300 windows at once each showing seperate information for each file? Or does it make alot more sense, intuitively, to get the total tally of all the files selected added up, without having to hold down shortcut keys when clicking them to do so?

Everyone single Mac User I've talked to tells me that this has happened to them the first time they used the OS, since it simply goes against logic! Why would you ever want to open all these dialog boxes at once? If you ever need to do that, a simple ls -l would do that, plus you can actually printout a detailed list from the command prompt!

And by the way, I'm not a first time mac user, I've been using macs ever since design school, what is new to me is that I am a first time Mac owner, so I'm becoming a lot more familiar with the OS than before. My main OS at home and the office was always windows simply because I needed 3D Studio Max, and that doesn't come on a Mac!

I'm pretty sure something has changed. What you statre about multiple windows holds true here too. I've just had 77 new windows open up in front of me.

But I'm sure it wasn't always like that. Can't remember which OS iteration it was but I'm sure somewhere maybe 10.3 or 10.4 that once you'd seected over a certain number, (don't know what that is), of files - the OS would automatically do a Get Summary info for you.

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Answer 10

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,670 points

Jul 20, 2012 7:22 AM in response to hellfang

Geez, sorry I offended you Mr. Jobs (incarnate)!

You came in here with a three ton chip on your shoulders. Did you really expect sunshine and puppies in return?

I mean, when you move or upload it, it loses this data association anyways!

To a drive which doesn't support Apple's AB tree structure (NTFS, FAT, FAT32, exFAT), yes. To another HFS+ drive, no.

If an OS is saying it is fetching file size information for a single file, it should do exactly that! Not add hidden Resource Forks that are part of the OS's internal workings

OS X is fetching the file size. It's file size, not the way a different OS would report it.

That is why I'm surprised that they are breaking simple UI Design rules.

The User Interface has nothing to do with the file structure of a drive.

do you think it is at all logical, that when you select 300 or so files, and click Get Info, that it open 300 windows at once each showing separate information for each file? Or does it make a lot more sense, intuitively, to get the total tally of all the files selected added up, without having to hold down shortcut keys when clicking them to do so?

Yes, it is logical because that's what you, the user, told the OS to do. You wanted the Get Info data on 300 individual items. I don't know about you, but I avoid the menu bar as much as possible (your reference to avoiding shortcut keys). Command+I will always give you singular Get Info dialogue boxes.

If you want cumulative, press Command+Option+I. That one does kind of break the UI rules. Once the cumulative box is up, unlike just about anything else in the Mac OS, Command+W will not dismiss it, even if it's the foreground highlighted item. Something behind it will close. It has to be dismissed by clicking its close button at the top left. The nice thing about it being up all the time is you can keep changing what items you have selected, and it will keep reflecting those changes. You don't need to close and reopen the cumulative box to update the changes in your selection.

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Answer 11

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,972 points

Jul 21, 2012 4:27 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Will you start defending apple's decision to stick with the one button mouse for all these years depriving us from the all important context menu as well??

And, of course, you were not deprived of anything. You could invoke the "all important" contextual menu simply ** control-clicking - and the OS worked with any two button mouse you wanted to use as well.

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