Issue exporting jpgs to usb thumb drive

What USB thumb drive formatting (FAT32, exFAT, .etc) do the digital displays support? What specific image formats are supported?

Have you updated the firmware or if relevant, the operating system version in those digital displays? That may have changed the supported USB formatting or supported image requirements.

If you are exporting images from InDesign or any other Adobe Creative Cloud application, your direct support will be Adobe, as it is their application suite.

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How are you exporting them now?

What drive formats and image formats do the displays support?

Why is it difficult?

Can't you select an appropriate image format to export as from InDesign?

There's no way for us to know what your displays support or how they expect the images unless you tell us.

What were you doing on the Windows PC that made it work previously?

The Mac itself does not control export of files in any way, that is down to the applications you are using.

On the Mac, copying the files onto the USB drive does not involve any sort of format change.

It's not clear exactly where your issue lies.

Wether InDesign cannot export the files in a compatible format, or if you just don't know what format you displays support, or if you think just copying the files to the drive will result in something the displays can read.

In any case, you really need to provide with a lot more details and context.

If you don't know what format the displays support, perhaps providing the make and model of the displays can helps us determine what you need to do.

You're missing the most important pieces of information.

First off, what are the symptoms?

When you insert the drive in the display, what happens?

Does the display completely ignore the drive?

Does its give you an error message? what does the message say?

Does it recognize the drive but doesn't see the images?

Does it see the images but they don't display correctly? at all?

Any of this information would go a long way towards diagnosing the issue and finding a resolution.

As it stands, I think the most likely cause of issue is that the USB drive is formatted in a way that the display can't read - typically they use the lowest-common-denominator which is something like FAT or FAT32 which originate from the Windows side of the world. If the drive is formatted as HFS+ (one of the native Mac formats), the display might not be able to read it. The answers to my questions above would help establish or eliminate that possibility.

Select the drive in the Finder (or in Disk Utility.app) and Get Info on it (File -> Get Info). You s should be able to see here the drive Format. If it's not FAT32, use Disk Utility.app to reformat the drive and try agin.

If it is FAT32, then you'll need to delve deeper into the failure state (such as what does happen, error messages, etc.), or more details on what the Windows user is doing to save the images.

Are you, by any chance, having problems with the metadata files that Finder likes to create on non-Mac-formatted drives? E.g., if you copy the photos CAT.JPG and DOG.JPG to a USB flash drive, the drive might then contain

._CAT.JPG
._DOG.JPG
CAT.JPG
DOG.JPG

The ._CAT.JPG and ._DOG.JPG files do not hold JPG images. The Finder is trying to preserve metadata attributes that non-Mac filesystems do not provide with the idea that if you copy the main files back to a Mac, it will grab the metadata from the auxiliary files and use that to help store the original files.

Only in this case, the metadata is not really needed, even by Macs, and a lot of non-Mac systems will try to treat those ._*.JPG files as JPEG files – only to "discover" that they are "corrupt JPG files", at which point the non-Mac systems display error messages or choke.

You can use Automator to create a "drag-and-drop" application for "cleaning" the "._" files off of USB flash drives right before you eject them. (Once you have this application, using it is more convenient than going into Terminal each time that you work with a flash drive where Finder-created '._' files might be a problem.)

Run Automator and create an AppleScript that reads as follows. Be sure to include a space following the "-m".

Save this as an Application.

If you typed the script correctly, then once you save it, Automator will highlight the structure of the commands.

JPGs have lots of variations and some devices may only support some versions of the JPG format. You need to find out exactly what JPG specs each of your displays support.

The issue could also be with the USB sticks you are using. The quality of USB sticks are extremely poor. There is also a possibility that some displays may only be able to handle certain size drives.

As Camelot points out, you need to provide a lot more context before anyone here can help you.

Please try to answer his questions as well as mine.