# Photo viewing help.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 4, 2003, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347 "2003-04-04T01:21:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aslan\_of\_Narnia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Aslan\_of\_Narnia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aslan_of_Narnia)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347/1 "2003-04-04T01:21:51Z")

</div>

I downloaded some images, which had a ‘the gimp’ logo next to it that meant it would be used to view it. When I deleted the gimp because of this, it said all of them were .dat files and gave me binary code in notepad when I tried to view it. I got a pic viewing application, how do I get it to register as a jpg rather than a .dat?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aslan\_of\_Narnia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Aslan\_of\_Narnia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aslan_of_Narnia)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347/2 "2003-04-04T02:08:12Z")

</div>

Bump.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347/3 "2003-04-04T02:12:35Z")

</div>

Which OS and viewer program? Where did the image files come from originally, what format is it in, and what’s the file extention? If the images are JPEG files with some other file extentions, can’t you just rename it?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347/4 "2003-04-04T02:14:05Z")

</div>

Have you tried changing the extension to .jpg? I’m not familiar with gimp, so I have a feeling that won’t work, as the formats are likely different.

You can go into the Extensions editor in the Control Panel and give a different program to handle files with the .gimp extension. I don’t know if your image viewing program understands the gimp format, however.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![NotMrKnowItAll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6bbea6/32.png) [@NotMrKnowItAll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NotMrKnowItAll)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347/5 "2003-04-04T03:10:29Z")

</div>

Hi Aslan2,

I use The Gimp quite a bit. To the best of my knowlege, .DAT files are not particular format. Could you post a link to the images, or email me one of them. I’ll let my Gimp give it a try.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aslan\_of\_Narnia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Aslan\_of\_Narnia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aslan_of_Narnia)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/photo-viewing-help/166347/6 "2003-04-04T03:22:19Z")

</div>

I downloaded it in rar archive format, the gimp being used as the image viewer, when I deleted gimp it turned them into .dats. When I reapaired the file it turned them into jpgs but they were still just code.