Converting Kodak Photo CD Image Packs (.PCD)

Home, 2007-07-14


A Kodak Photo CD image pack file (.pcd/.PCD) contains an image in six different resolutions:

No. Designation Resolution
1 Base/16 128 × 192
2 Base/4 256 × 384
3 Base 512 × 768
4 4 Base 1024 × 1536
5 16 Base 2048 × 3072
6 64 Base 4096 × 6144

Using convert from Image Magick, these images can be extracted with something like:

% convert [options] 'file.PCD[No]' outfile

Example: you can retrieve the image in all six resolutions and convert the result to to jpg-files with:

convert -quality 100 'IMG.PCD[1]' img.1.jpg                     
convert -quality 100 'IMG.PCD[2]' img.2.jpg
convert -quality 100 'IMG.PCD[3]' img.3.jpg
convert -quality 100 'IMG.PCD[4]' img.4.jpg
convert -quality 100 'IMG.PCD[5]' img.5.jpg
convert -quality 100 'IMG.PCD[6]' img.6.jpg

Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD.