Board index PBase Questions and Answers MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

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MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

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sea_king
 
Posts: 3

MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

Post Mon Jun 29, 2015 11:59 pm


For the past month I've been using a brand new 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display (16GB RAM) and all PBase.com photos I view are showing up as "soft". Has anyone else had this issue or know of a solution?

My own photos imported into the MacBook Pro and viewed using the MacBook Pro's "Preview" viewing app are tack sharp and look fanstastic, so are all fonts and graphics on the Pbase site, and all photos & graphics on other web sites (Apple web site, Flickr homepage photos, well know news sites, etc. etc.). However, PBase galleries, photos and thumbnails I view on the MacBook Pro look noticeably soft while the same photos viewed on my 5 year old 15" ThinkPad come in pretty sharp (my ThinkPad's screen is good but not up to par with newer latops). My MacBook Pro's display settings are default: Resolution = "Default for display" and the Display profile = "Color LCD" and I have the MacBook plugged in (which increases the lighting of the screen vs. having it on battery power).

The same photos from some of the more famous PBase users with high-end cameras & glass look solid on my old ThinkPad, great on my iPad Air and iPhone 6 but look soft on the MacBook Pro. Any ideas? Thanks - SeaKing

asianodyssey
 
Posts: 73

Re: MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

Post Fri Jul 03, 2015 9:13 pm


If you post a picture on PBase larger than 800 pixels in any direction, it can appear soft when you view it compressed down to 800 pixels. But most of your images are no greater than 800 pixels wide or high. Fwiw your images look fine on my Samsung notebook. Maybe you need to delve into the browser's advanced settings.

sea_king
 
Posts: 3

Re: MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

Post Sun Nov 22, 2015 6:41 pm


I did some digging on the soft photo item - and checked the browser settings as asianodyssey suggested. Here is more info:

1. When I view my own photos on my MacBook Pro/Safari browser and those (for example) by PBase user joseantonio and a few other users, all of our photos appear noticeably soft (although in reality they are sharp). When I view other PBase users like Paul Cools and his "Moth" gallery, those photos are sharp. Quite odd. I'm using a Canon 350D, Canon G15, and Canon 40D in my photos while joseantonio has different cameras, as do others where my browser is seeing "soft" images. Bottom line is this "soft" image problem appears to be an issue with my computer/web browser (2015 MacBook Pro and Safari Safari Version 9.0.1) because...

2. ...When viewing my images loaded on PBase.com, I plug my MacBook Pro into an external 23" ViewSonic LED 1080p monitor and my MacBook Pro's screen immediately resizes and my Base.com web displayed image is now about 50% the size it was when my MacBook was not connected to the monitor. Bottom line is my image on the MacBook Pro becomes sharp, as is the same image that becomes displayed on my ViewSonic monitor.

When viewing the originals of my "soft" Base.com photos in Apple's Preview app, Xee, and Adobe PhotoShop Elements 14, the photos are razor sharp. So my frustration with my soft photos on PBase is easily solved. When I want to browse photos on PBase.com and get consistent viewing results I'll just plug into the ViewSonic monitor. In my case almost all other web sites' photos are sharp. I've only run into my MacBook/Safari soft photo issue on some users' PBase.com galleries - and unfortunately my own galleries!

In Safari I did try to change browser settings while viewing my PBase images by using the following menu options: Develop > User Agent > ... and then experimenting with different browser versions. The web page quickly refreshed but none of the other web browser model selections sharpened my soft images. This method did appear to work for others however - just Google the phrase "all images are blurry" and the first result hit shows a Google forum thread about blurry images. Scroll down to the solution found by Frank Math and his info appeared to solve soft/blurry image issues that users of Google Chrome had. While this didn't work for my Safari browser, if anyone runs into a blurry photos issue, Frank's solution might help. His info is posted below. In the meantime I will experiment more with my MacBook & Safari and see if I can pinpoint a setting that solves my soft image issue when viewing PBase.com photos on my 13" MacBook...

==========Frank Math's comment========
Frank Math said:
If anyone is interested, I think I`ve found a workaround...
It appears to be something Google is doing when they detect Internet Explorer!
Open DevTools in Internet Explorer by pressing F12, then scroll down on the left hand side to the bottom option.  From there change the 'User String' from 'Default' to 'Google Chrome'  Preview images will now show nice and clear.
This does NOT make Internet Explorer emulate Chrome, it only make it lie and say that it's Chrome.
Can anyone confirm or deny that this works for them too?

=====================================

ellisson
 
Posts: 2

Re: MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

Post Wed Mar 09, 2016 3:56 am


I just came across your post, looking for a solution to this problem. I have the same issue with my pbase uploads from lightroom. All photos come out blurred when uploaded to pbase, but not to other websites. And I use the same computer - macbook pro, running safari. I started uploading files in the range of 200-400 kb, down from what I was previously uploading, but this did not help at all. I'm curious if you have solved the problem since your last post.

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

Post Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:39 pm


ellisson wrote:I just came across your post, looking for a solution to this problem. I have the same issue with my pbase uploads from lightroom. All photos come out blurred when uploaded to pbase, but not to other websites. And I use the same computer - macbook pro, running safari. I started uploading files in the range of 200-400 kb, down from what I was previously uploading, but this did not help at all. I'm curious if you have solved the problem since your last post.


Pbase compresses images and resizes them without much regard to quality settings. I have found two things that help me - try not to set the quality setting below 8 when you save the image and make sure you have your working space set to sRGB and not Adobe RGB before you resize and sharpen in either Lightroom or Photoshop.


Board index PBase Questions and Answers MacBook Pro w/Retina display and soft PBase photos

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