CS2 sharpen tool

Hi,
I moonlight as a freelance food photog. I have only just noticed with my last couple of photo sets, that when I use the sharpen tool in CS2, save and view the pictures in IE explorer, they look very grainy and noisy. As long as the processed photos are viewed using photoshop, they look really good, once they are opened via IE they look horrid.
I am not able to post the pictures here, becasue of copyright issues. Has anyone had this problem? Is this a flaw in IE? Which copy should I consider a true representation of the final form, the one I see using photoshop, or the one I see using IE?
I uploaded the pictures into my flickr account and looked at the final product, and the pictures looked really great. So, I am confused.....any help?

shutter_blitz.

Depending on the size of the image they may look bad in IE because of resizing the image. Photoshop should have a much better algorithim as well as only resizing to certain percentages whereas IE does the "fit to window" which could be way off.

lol...me too, now, open it in the windows fax and photo viewer... they look good again..right?

do you mean windows photo viewer? or IE? I can open in IE and they look great but in windows photo viewer...yuuuck!!

Thanks for the quick reply guys,really appreciate it. I have been on many other forums where members not only don't respond, but when they do they tend to be very obnoxious.

Zacker....its actaully the other way round for me, they look ghastly in IE browser but look great in windows fax and photo viewer. In2photos' explanation makes sense.

So, In2photos are you saying that IE is not a correct representation of my changes, vis-a-vis the final product and so should be ignored?

Here is pic taken w/ S2IS pp in CS2 w/ USM @ 150/0.9/0 and curve adjustment:

shutter_blitz wrote in post #3166289
Thanks for the quick reply guys,really appreciate it. I have been on many other forums where members not only don't respond, but when they do they tend to be very obnoxious.

Zacker....its actaully the other way round for me, they look ghastly in IE browser but look great in windows fax and photo viewer. In2photos' explanation makes sense.

So, In2photos are you saying that IE is not a correct representation of my changes, vis-a-vis the final product and so should be ignored?

That depends. What size images are you looking at in IE (pixel dimensions)? What is the native resolution of your screen? That last question may sound odd but it lets me know if the image you are viewing is being resized by IE. Answer these and there might be some other questions based on your answers.

What colour space are you working in and do you convert it to RGB (edit-convert to profile-working RGB) before saving it for IE?
I know that my pictures look lousy unless I remind myself to do this step.

If it were a color profile related issue, Windows Fax viewer would look equally horrid, since it's also not color managed (on XP).. When this is using Vista, you've found the problem.

from what i can remember, there's an option to turn on/off 'auto image compression' on IE. make sure you have that turned off

In2photos,
I photoshop on my PC at work, so I will have to report back on size and resolution tomorrow.

Thornfield, no I don't convert to RGB before saving. I'll have to check the color space and get back to you. However I must remind you that this noise distortion occurs only when I use the sharpen tool.

Rene, I use XP, so that rules out any color management in the monitor.
Simply amazing, I will give the 'auto image compression' a try and let you know.

Thx everyone.

Ok, here the details:
Native resoltuion: 1024 x 768
LCD Monitor: 15.4"
Color space in photoshop: RGB
Resolution of images that get distorted: 2664 x 2016, 2592 x 1944, 1600 x1200
Size of images that get distorted: Apprx 5 M to 14 M

'Simply amazing', I did try truning off 'auto image compression'. That only blew the picture up but did not get rid of the noise.

shutter_blitz wrote in post #3171423
Ok, here the details:
Native resoltuion: 1024 x 768
LCD Monitor: 15.4"
Color space in photoshop: RGB
Resolution of images that get distorted: 2664 x 2016, 2592 x 1944, 1600 x1200
Size of images that get distorted: Apprx 5 M to 14 M

'Simply amazing', I did try truning off 'auto image compression'. That only blew the picture up but did not get rid of the noise.

The first part of this leads me to believe that you are experiencing these problems because of resizing. In order for IE to display a 2664 x 2016 image on your 1024 x 768 screen it has to resize the image to fit the screen window size. It does not have the best algorythims to do this, but PS does as long as you view the image at 25%, 50%, 100%, etc and not 33.3%, 66.7%, etc. But then you say the image still looks distorted when Auto Image Compression is set to off which means that no resizing should be taking place. The only other thing that I can think of is that the website (assuming you are viewing from a website since IE is involved) is doing some kind of resizing from an even larger photo that you did not list.

If the last part of that is the case then here is my suggestion. If you are uploading pics to be viewed only (meaning no printing or saving will be done from the uploaded image) then I would save the image at 800 pixels on the longest side. This will allow just about everyone to view th eimage at its native resolution without any resizing taking place.

shutter_blitz wrote in post #3171423
Color space in photoshop: RGB

Whàt RGB?
sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB, MonitorRGB?

Try the thread linked to in my sig for how PS should be set...

In2photos, could you elaborate on the following. I am not clear on what that means.

"The only other thing that I can think of is that the website (assuming you are viewing from a website since IE is involved) is doing some kind of resizing from an even larger photo that you did not list."

When you say resizing from an even larger photo that isn't listed, do you mean listed here in the forums?

There are a total of 5 pictures that are distorted. They all belong to the same photo shoot, and have the same props and subject. I had some problem with lighting, so had to use the sharen tool on these pcitures. All these pictures have very nearly the same size. I only had to resize one picture from this set to a smaller size, to be able to email it to the client. I looked at the smaller image and its original image in IE and BIngo! the smaller image has no noise, while the original, larger file does!

This thread has helped me figure out the problem. Thx everyone, but what does this mean for my client? Will there be constraints on the usage of such a small picture. These photos are just for viewing, they are photos of recipes on the client's website. People may print them, but they are primarily for online viewing. So I am not concerned about the printing part.