OK, Tonye. I see. I will look into Strawberry Perl, but I am cautious about problems which might develop by mixing versions. In the meantime, I have gone ahead reading a BMP version of the same image. That work is underway.
Many thanks for your reply.
Tony, sorry about misspelling your email name. I now realize that you are none other than Tony Cook, the one and only whose name appears throughout the Imager documentation.