pcdindex

View documentation for the command under its current name

$ tldr pcdovtoppm

pcdindex [OPTIONS] FILE

FILE
    The path to the Kodak Photo CD image file to be analyzed.

-h, --help
    Displays a help message with usage information and exits.

-v, --verbose
    Enables verbose output, providing more detailed debugging messages during processing.

-l, --list
    Lists only the names or identifiers of the images found within the Photo CD file, without additional metadata.

-V, --version
    Prints the version information of the pcdindex utility and exits.

-o OUTPUT_FILE, --output=OUTPUT_FILE
    Specifies an output file to which the indexed information will be written. If this option is not used, output is directed to standard output (stdout).

The pcdindex command is a utility designed to read and interpret Kodak Photo CD files. It extracts essential metadata and lists the images contained within a Photo CD master file. Originally developed by Kodak in the early 1990s, the Photo CD format stored digital images at various resolutions on a CD-ROM. As a proprietary format, access often required specific software.

pcdindex provides an open-source solution, typically part of libraries like libkdcraw or utility packages such as pcdtojpeg-tools, allowing Linux users to inspect the contents of these historical media without proprietary software. It's particularly useful for archival purposes, helping identify and catalog the images stored on legacy Photo CDs before they can be converted or processed further.

Kodak Photo CD is an obsolete format. pcdindex relies on underlying libraries (like libkdcraw) that may not be actively maintained on all modern Linux distributions. Compatibility with newer Photo CD variants or damaged discs might be limited. This command is primarily for accessing legacy data.

To list the contents of a Photo CD file named myphoto.pcd, you would typically use:

pcdindex myphoto.pcd

To get just the image names, you could use:

pcdindex -l myphoto.pcd

A Kodak Photo CD typically contains images stored in a hierarchical structure at different resolutions (Base/16, Base/4, Base, 4 Base, 16 Base, 64 Base). pcdindex helps in navigating this structure by providing an index of the images, often including their internal IDs or names, which can then be used by other tools (like pcdtojpeg) to extract the actual image data.

The Kodak Photo CD format was introduced in 1992 and gained some popularity for digital image storage. As a proprietary format, open-source initiatives emerged to allow users to access their data without reliance on Kodak's specific software. pcdindex, along with tools like pcdtojpeg, is part of the libkdcraw project or similar efforts, developed to provide open-source support for Photo CD file parsing and image extraction on Linux and other Unix-like systems, enabling the preservation and conversion of this legacy data.

pcdtojpeg(1), kdcraw(3), dcraw(1)