Picture formats and database growth

[Grayham Smith]

Hi all,

1/ What picture formats are supported in Microsoft Access which will
display on-screen when moving from record-to-record without the need to
click on the object itself? I can only get .BMP and .PSD file extentions to
display.

2/ Is there a work around for the excessive file size increase when
adding pictures in an OLE field. e.g. Add 10 meg of pictures and the file
size increases more than 20 meg. Storing the picture information external to
the database is not an option.

Grayham Smith

 

[Tom Wickerath]

Hi Grayham,

Which version of Access are you using? Access 2002--and presumably Access
2003--includes an example with external images of the employees in the
Northwind sample database. Open the Employees form to see this in action.
(The 2000 version of Northwind uses images stored internal to the database).

Storing the picture information external to the database is not an option.

Then you will have to learn to live with this file bloat. That's just the
way it is. Access converts embedded images into bitmaps, which is why you see
the size of the .mdb file quickly bloating out of control.

Tom
________________________________________

:

Hi all,

1/ What picture formats are supported in Microsoft Access which will
display on-screen when moving from record-to-record without the need to
click on the object itself? I can only get .BMP and .PSD file extentions to
display.

2/ Is there a work around for the excessive file size increase when
adding pictures in an OLE field. e.g. Add 10 meg of pictures and the file
size increases more than 20 meg. Storing the picture information external to
the database is not an option.

Grayham Smith

 

[ammara]

2/ Yes, store the images as raw-binary/blobs, rather than OLE Embedding. Then they take up just about
the same space as they do on disk.

Details and various alternatives are discussed here:
http://www.ammara.com/articles/accesspictureole.html
and here:
http://www.ammara.com/articles/imagesaccess.html

1/ Depends on how you implement it (Image Control, Bound Frame, etc).

 

[Larry Linson]

1/ ...picture formats ... display on-screen
when moving from record-to-record without
the need to click on the object itself?

2/ Is there a work around for the
excessive file size increase when
adding pictures in an OLE field.

The sample imaging databases at http://accdevel.tripod.com illustrate three
approaches to handling images in Access, and the download includes an
article discussing considerations in choosing an approach. Two of the
approaches do not use OLE Objects and, thus, avoid the database bloat, and
some other problems, associated with images in OLE Objects.

If you are printing the images in reports, to avoid memory leakage, you
should also see MVP Stephen Lebans' http://www.lebans.com/printfailures.htm.
PrintFailure.zip is an Access97 MDB containing a report that fails during
the Access formatting process prior to being spooled to the Printer Driver.
This MDB also contains code showing how to convert the contents of the Image
control to a Bitmap file prior to printing. This helps alleviate the "Out of
Memory" error that can popup when printing image intensive reports.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP