Resolution/Display Question

[Mike_P]

Great Forum -- learned a lot already.

Just bought my first digital camera - an S230 - love it, having a great time.

Bought a 256M CompactFlash Card so I can shoot everything at max resolution, minimum compression, resulting in large files, but that's OK. However when I view the photos on my computer monitor they seem strangely pixilated (sp?) unless I zoom in, at which point they're great but I then have to scroll around to see the entire shot.

I'm guessing this is because by normal monitor resolution (1024X768) is less than the resolution of the image in normal view (0 zoom).

If I want to see the entire shot in a single screen without this effect and without zooming it looks like I must:

1) double the monitor resolution setting (can't do it)
2) take photos at half the resolution (refuse to do it)
3) do a batch resizing for display purposes (doesn't seem very elegant)

Have the feeling this is a pretty simple item -- sorry if it has been asked before.

Thanks!

[Conk]

What sofware do you use to view photos?
I use irfanview that has a full screen mode. Check it out! :)

[Mike_P]

Thanks for the quick response. This seems to be an issue with all the software I've used (an enormous variety that has come bundled with the S230, my Dell 8250 computer system, Canon scanner, regular XP utilities, etc., etc. etc. -- too much to catalog).

I have noticed now that in all cases I do not have the funny pixilization (sp?) in the full screen or slideshow modes -- only when the photo is reduced to a partial screen.

Yesterday I downloaded irfanview (at your suggestion I think) and it really rocks! Downloaded the plugins as well and it's really neat to have a record of all my S230 camera settings for each shot, including detailed EXIF info. Today's digital imaging technology is awesome, I'm sorry I'm so late to the game.

But irfanview seems to have the same issue as the others -- perfect picture in full screen or slideshow mode -- but the funny pixilization if zoomed out a couple clicks.

I clearly need to study this stuff more. The only reason I'm particularly bothered is I have a lot of time invested in the Arcsoft Photobase software that came with my canon scanner, and there is no easy full screen view when browsing the albums, so everything I add from the digital camera is pixilated. This was not an issue with the hundreds of much lower resolution images I have already loaded from the scanner.

But I think I'm really going to love irfanview! And maybe it will provide some sort of solution.

-- Mike

[Conk]

Great Moke. Glad I could help somewhat.

[Guillermo Freige]

Probably the software is using the videocard (not very good in your case) rescaling routines. This can be a hardware or software limitation. Try to upgrade the video driver to the last version, it can help if it's a software limitation.
Which video card are you using?

Guillermo

[rdenney]

Guillermo Freige wrote:
Probably the software is using the videocard (not very good in your case) rescaling routines. This can be a hardware or software limitation. Try to upgrade the video driver to the last version, it can help if it's a software limitation.
Which video card are you using?

Guillermo

Yes, I agree. The effect you are seeing is called "aliasing", where details don't line up with the pixels, and the video card (or browser software, or OS) gets asked to resample it on the fly. Most of these resampling routines just arbitrarily choose the nearest pixel in the original bitmap to the one it needs to display, but are even worse and choose the next pixel. Both of these will give you jaggies and interpolation errors. High-quality anti-aliasing routines will average groups of pixels (or use some uther smoothing algorithm such as Photoshop's bicubic interpolation) instead of just choosing one arbitrarily, and will give you a much more accurate display. My laptop is excellent in this department, but my old laptop was unacceptable, even when displaying a simple photo in the middle of a Powerpoint presentation.

Aliasing is a digital fact of life, but we need to use tools that do the best job of correcting for it.

Rick "who hates aliasing errors" Denney

[Mike_P]

Thanks for the input -- what a great resource.

Well.... this is fascinating and I'll get to the bottom of it if it kills me (grin).

My first thought is: This has got to be a real common problem. As the technology progresses, ordinary people are snapping 3, 4, 5, and more megapixel photos and slapping them up on their ordinary computer monitors with everyday resolutions of 1024X768 (or marginally more or marginally less).

I've got a fairly serious home system (Dell 2.4Ghz. XP Home, Radeon ATI 9700 card, run desktop at 1024X768, some games at 1600X1200. I do have the ability to turn on various degrees (2X, 4X, 6X) of antialiasing but it doesn't seem to affect this situation.

The same photos with the same viewer (Irfanview, for ex.) on my older WIN98 and older GeForce256 card yield exactly the same result, so I don't think it's a bug or configuration anomaly. I have the same problem with both systems.

I also think it's interesting that, in both systems, for all viewers, the "full screen" image is always fine (even tho I theoretically don't have enough desktop monitor resolution even at full screen). So at least in that mode, something is compensating for the mismatch properly.

I'm intrigued that, given all the research I've done on the internet on this, I don't see many references to this phenomenon except for intriguing passing comments like the last one in this thread:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10869

Thanks again for the help on this....
-- Mike