Is Windows Live Photo Gallery softening my pictures?

So, I'm not always really careful about keeping my horizons level when I take pictures. I'm shooting large jpegs and editing them with Windows Live Photo Gallery. After straightening the horizon line in a few that were acceptably sharp before seemed noticeably softer afterwards. Or I'm bonkers. Could be either one.


From Camera:

GoWolfpack wrote in post #12385382
I'm shooting large jpegs and editing them with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

That's the problems. A Jpeg is essentially a developed photo. It's a compressed lossy image format, and each time you open it, make any changes, and then save again it is going to lose Image Quality. Open it again make changes and save again, and lessen the IQ even more.
However, part of the problem could very well be Windows Photo Gallery

My recommendation would be use the software that came with the camera. E.g. DPP which is made for your camera and the images that come from it!

I just tried it with a 16-bit TIFF and I believe that I see the same phenomenon. I assume that you are using the Fine Tune > Straighten Photo slider; have you tried to tried using the Sharpen slider under the same menu to recover the lost sharpness?

I'll have to be awfully delicate with it, but it may help some. This sort of thing wouldn't be a problem if I were a better photographer. Perhaps the time has come to make the switch to RAW+jpeg

GoWolfpack wrote in post #12385886
I'll have to be awfully delicate with it, but it may help some. This sort of thing wouldn't be a problem if I were a better photographer. Perhaps the time has come to make the switch to RAW+jpeg

Raw isn't as difficult as you might think.
I still recommend using the Software that came with the camera rather than Windows Live Photo Gallery. Canons Digital Photo Professional(DPP) which came with the camera will do a much better job at handling your files, and its adjustments are pretty much straight forward and easy to use. You really won't notice much difference in editing a Raw file than you would a Jpeg. In fact its actually easier because you have all the raw data to work with rather than a pre-developed image that no longer contains all the data.

My biggest problem with RAW is that it inhales so much memory space. Memory might be cheap, but it's not free like jpegs are. I suppose I shouldn't complain about spending $50 on a memory card when I spent $500 on a camera body.

Perhaps someone could try straightening in Photoshop?

I can try later (at work now). I must admit I always use Windows Gallery to straighten as it's so quick to do.

I disagree with the earlier poster who said the problem is because you're shooting JPEG. While generational loss does occur when you open, edit and resave a JPEG you generally have to do it numerous times for there to be appreciable loss in quality.

The problem here is that straightening a photo is the same as cropping it; there will be some loss on one or more borders. And if you look at your photos you'd see you lost an 11 pixels wide band at the bottom of the straightened photo. But the width of the straightened photo is the same 1,023 pixels as the unstraightened one; which means that the original aspect ratio was not maintained. That resulted in the the image editing software using interpolation to create new pixels to keep the width constant, and to replace pixels that were altered when the image was straightened/rotated.

I pulled the two photos into Photoshop and by stacking them and changing the blend mode to Difference you can see where those changes occurred:

To further illustrate my point, here's the original image straightened in Photoshop. I first used the Ruler to draw a vertical line based on the "seam" in the wall above the door. The I used Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary command and it automatically estimated that it need rotation of 1.28 degrees.

As you can see a rotation of 1.28 degrees causes loss on all four sides (the grey bands):

Looking at this so many times make me regret more and more how OOF my sister-in-law's face is. I can't keep mucking up my pictures like this. DPP it is then. Thank you all for your help

Pixelmagic used a program and method that 90% or more who shoot jpeg either do not have the resources of, and/or do not know how to perform the function to make the crop/straightening.

So, Tim's statement about the losses is mostly correct. Those who are shooting jpeg and have the capibility of raw, may want to think of raw when the photos are very important to them, especially if one is going to perform some kind of processing once the image is downloaded.
I remember when I decided to go to raw. I shot raw/jpeg...what a waste that was. Raw alone is fine and can provide even a newbie the opportunities that most who shoot jpeg don't understand. Of course this means a raw converter, which is easily in the reach of anyone who is shooting digital.

What evidence do you have to support your assertion? I didn't do anything that couldn't be done in free software like Digital Photo Pro with the Trimming/Angle Adjustment tool.

The problem is caused by the fact that the OP kept the image width the same although there was image loss at the edges. So the editor was forced to interpolate pixels to make up what was lost.

pbelarge wrote in post #12389363
Pixelmagic used a program and method that 90% or more who shoot jpeg either do not have the resources of, and/or do not know how to perform the function to make the crop/straightening.

So, Tim's statement about the losses is mostly correct. Those who are shooting jpeg and have the capibility of raw, may want to think of raw when the photos are very important to them, especially if one is going to perform some kind of processing once the image is downloaded.
I remember when I decided to go to raw. I shot raw/jpeg...what a waste that was. Raw alone is fine and can provide even a newbie the opportunities that most who shoot jpeg don't understand. Of course this means a raw converter, which is easily in the reach of anyone who is shooting digital.

PixelMagic wrote in post #12389801
...

The problem is caused by the fact that the OP kept the image width the same although there was image loss at the edges. So the editor was forced to interpolate pixels to make up what was lost.

PixelMagic --

A related question, and I hope I can express it well enough to make sense -- although an image might be rotated, the array of pixels remains in a horizontal/vertical arrangement, meaning that the "new" pixels don't exactly match the "old" pixels. Wouldn't this also require interpolation of the pixels and a resultant softening of the image? (That was my first suspicion when I read the OP's question.)

Rimmer wrote in post #12389910
PixelMagic --

A related question, and I hope I can express it well enough to make sense -- although an image might be rotated, the array of pixels remains in a horizontal/vertical arrangement, meaning that the "new" pixels don't exactly match the "old" pixels. Wouldn't this also require interpolation of the pixels and a resultant softening of the image? (That was my first suspicion when I read the OP's question.)

Yes and no. In a rotation like Pixel Magic's every pixel's location in the grid is changed, but it is recreated in its new spot with the same RGB values it had before. Therefore, although there is always some theoretical loss, even when an image is copied without change, it is miniscule. Interpolation is the creation of new pixels that never existed before whose RGB values are calculated based on values of neighboring pixels. Although some of the interpolation algorithms in use today are extremely complex, sophisticated and clever, the bottom line is that it is still CG data and the loss of quality is more apparent.

Well, my take on the "lossy jpeg" thing:

I shot for a good number of years with P&S/compact digicams that were jpeg only, and have gotten plenty of nice images with them and don't see a reason to get "dogmatic" about Raw, even though I totally switched over several years ago when I got my first DSLR. Everybody has to choose what works best for them.

But that doesn't mean that jpegs are "as good as" a Raw file for getting the best quality images consistently, and it also doesn't mean that jpegs are "safe" in the sense that even though I've processed jpegs that didn't break down during the editing process -- partly because I had my share of bad experiences and one thing I decided to do was to convert the jpegs I wanted to edit into tiffs and then only resave a jpeg at the end.

So, while I support people whether they shoot jpeg or Raw (my daughter shoots a lot in "scene" modes and even when in something like Av she still prefers to work with jpegs) I do prefer a straight Raw workflow for my photography because I'm never approaching my photography as either "casual" or strictly for turning over to a client or whatever, And, to me, my Raw captures are images I enjoy revisiting with the chance to "recreate" them andd that's part of the power of Raw files and Raw processing software.

And, working with my jpeg-shooting daughter "allowed" me to revisit first hand the pitfalls of working with jpegs without a careful knowledgeable approach when she used to occasionally get an image totally messed up. She now does what I used to do -- convert the jpeg to a tiff when using the Lightroom Edit in Photoshop command.