Soft images

[reimar]

I have noticed lately that my 800 pixel images on pbase are NOTICEABLY softer than the same images displayed by any picture software like Photoshop. I'm on Firefox, but IE is has the same softness (and much more intense colors). I convert all my AdobeRGB images to sRGB and the colors are fine, but the pictures are very blurry. I expect that uploading 800 pixel images should not involve any re-sampling, so what is going on?

I would very much like to fix this - any suggestions?

Reimar

[john1946]

This is nothing new, I have always thought images on PBase are soft and I've been here 10 years. The number of times I've uploaded an image and then deleted it straightaway as it looked disappointing and soft, I've then done more sharpening and re-posted it and I've still not been really happy with the image. The same image can look fine on my monitor when viewing from my files.

[mardoli]

This is a quite personal impression, so it's based on my own taste and it has not any importance.
Said that I often find many photos posted on PBase definitely too sharp.
The photo itself is good, well composed, but its excessive sharpness in many details of textures disturbs me, while I have never noticed and particularly unpleasant exaggerate softness.
Marisa

[reimar]

Taking a closer look at my images in Photoshop, I notice that an 800 pixel image at 100% measures 20 cm wide on my monitor. To get the original quality on the web page, the dimension should be the same. It's not. On pbase, the "original" image displays at 25 cm wide. The image has been upsampled or stretched. This fully explains the softening.

Is there any way I can display my original images at 100% on pbase? This could be a deal breaker for me.

[reimar]

I just tried SmugMug and Zenfolio to the same effect. They all display my 800 pixel image at 25 cm wide, with the same blur as pbase.

[vneilknobbe]

It's a ong shot, but you wouldn't have your browser set to zoom to 125% would you? (Just a guess with 3 sites expanding your image by a quarter.)

[reimar]

Interesting you should suggest that vneilknobbe, someone else suggested that too. But I don't see how I could change the "Zoom" of my browsers. I'm at full screen on a calibrated 2560 x 1600 monitor with digital DVI input. How would I check that?

[vneilknobbe]

It would depend on which browser you are using. Right now I only have access to Internet Explorer. To change the zoom, click on View and about half way down the menu you should see "Zoom" from there you can select a preset amount of zoom or set your own.

Not sure how to change settings like that in Firefox or Safari without sitting in front of them.

Hope this helps.
Neil

[reimar]

Yes, I can zoom the text, but this doesn't change the display zoom of images. I ended up setting the about:config item labelled "layout.css.devPixelsPerPx" from -1.0 to 1.0. Now my pictures are 20 cm wide and sharp on pbase and other sites. Unfortunately, this makes the font of tabs and such very small (I can still adjust the zoom of other web text). Looks like this was a recent change in Firefox (although I had the same problem in IE). All good now, but really, how many viewers of our galleries are going to go through so much trouble? I used the Theme Font & Size Changer add-on to upsize the tab fonts.