Pixel peeping?!

A dumb qustion, but when do you start pixel peeping? When you look at a picture at 50% crop? 100%? or larger? I mean, at what point do you cross the line? Not sure if i explain my self right...:P

Taken literally it would mean 100%, but following the "spirit of the law" rather than the "letter of the law" you cross the line when you spend your time worrying about every little technical detail rather than looking at the image as a whole.

Pixel peeping tends to result in sharp images of vague subjects, to paraphrase Ansel Adams.

Hard to get over pixel peeping once you start. It took me a while to let go of worrying about being absolutely perfect in sharpnes, and just enjoy the image as a whole.
You enjoy photography a lot more once you let go IMO.

krb wrote in post #12999164
Pixel peeping tends to result in sharp images of vague subjects, to paraphrase Ansel Adams.

I think that Ansel Adams would have been the KING OF PIXEL PEEPERS if digital imaging had been available in his day.

I pixel peep my photos most of the time and if they aren't at-least decent I wont upload them any where. But some times I just give them a quick glance and then upload them to where ever.

I think if you are worrying about details that will be invisible in your desired output size, then you are pixel peeping. If you are planning to print 40" wide, then that might mean examining at 100% is the right thing to do. If you are printing 8x10 or smaller, then you shouldn't need to view larger than screen fit.

tkbslc wrote in post #12999910
I think if you are worrying about details that will be invisible in your desired output size, then you are pixel peeping.

That's my opinion also. If you're doing small prints for a little photo frame for your desk or as the background image on your mobile (cell, for the yanks ) phone then you can get away with some pretty average picture quality. That's why people that shot film and dropped rolls off to get their 6x4 prints were quite happy with Canons cheap 70-300 zooms and so on.

tkbslc wrote in post #12999910
If you are printing 8x10 or smaller, then you shouldn't need to view larger than screen fit.

A typical screen (1080p) displays only 1.46 megapixels of an 8x10 image. A 360ppi 8x10 file is 10.37 MP, a difference of about 7X (3X if your printer only does 240 ppi). Is it your position that 7X (or 3X) lower pixel count is sufficient?

Daniel Browning wrote in post #13000704
A typical screen (1080p) displays only 1.46 megapixels of an 8x10 image. A 360ppi 8x10 file is 10.37 MP, a difference of about 7X (3X if your printer only does 240 ppi). Is it your position that 7X (or 3X) lower pixel count is sufficient?

Sufficient pixels for the PPI is always better. However a print the same physical size as displayed on your screen should look much the same, and there are a lot of people that will print 1000 pixel wide photos at 6x4 and be perfectly happy. It's not something many people on POTN would be happy with, but for your regular photo viewer it would look OK.

The reason I know this is that sometimes my partner has a copy of my photos that are only 1000 pixels wide on the long end, which I've given her for emailing purposes, and gets them printed. In all honestly they look pretty good, all things considered.

Thurman wrote in post #12999801
I pixel peep my photos most of the time and if they aren't at-least decent I wont upload them any where. But some times I just give them a quick glance and then upload them to where ever.

Same.. but it can be an important factor in bird/wildlife shots(which i like), and having to crop tight..sometimes 100%.

Pixel peeping is akin to standing two inches in front of your TV and complaining that the picture is soft and fuzzy and is only red, blue and green dots.
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Go on, try it. You know you want to.
See if I'm wrong.

philwillmedia wrote in post #13001169
Pixel peeping is akin to standing two inches in front of your TV and complaining that the picture is soft and fuzzy and is only red, blue and green dots.

Actually another example using a TV, the most you'd have at home (except for possibly some very rare examples) is a 1920x1080 resolution TV. At 40" that's some pretty big pixels, but because people are normally viewing at a suitable distance it looks quite good.

Many would be horrified to see the quality of a lot of TV footage when viewed on a computer monitor.

I broke myself of it before it became a habit. I read on here enough times about how you will drive yourself nuts doing that, so I just stopped. There is no point in stressing myself out. Either it looks good when viewed as a whole or it does not. That is where I leave it.

I'll say this though, with todays point and shoot camera's getting better you can see the difference in photo quality when you compare a DSLR image to a P&S but when viewed at a scaled down view a point and shoot image can come pretty close to that of a DSLR sometimes.

Daniel Browning wrote in post #13000704
A typical screen (1080p) displays only 1.46 megapixels of an 8x10 image. A 360ppi 8x10 file is 10.37 MP, a difference of about 7X (3X if your printer only does 240 ppi). Is it your position that 7X (or 3X) lower pixel count is sufficient?

My 22" monitor is about 12 inches tall. Including the toolbars, if I view a portrait oriented photo in photoshop at screen size, that is about exactly life size for an 8x10. If it looks good there, it will print good. A 1.5MP image can print at about 150DPI for a 10" print and with a sharp photo will look quite good.

Since print pixels and monitor pixels are not equal, it does no good to compare them as you have. If I view a 10MP file at 100% on my monitor, then compared to an 8x10 print I will be seeing the pixels at several times the size they will print on paper. So again, I am magnifying them beyond what I will be able to see in a print.