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Blurry preview images

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13 comments

  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    How large are you trying to view the thumbnails? They are really quite small low-resolution files. They are intended to enable you to identify an image to look at in the viewer, but if you magnify them much they will be blurry. The preview size is about what you see in the viewer, and it has no effect on the thumbnail resolution.

    Ian
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  • Mauli
    [quote="Ian3" wrote:
    How large are you trying to view the thumbnails? They are really quite small low-resolution files. They are intended to enable you to identify an image to look at in the viewer, but if you magnify them much they will be blurry. The preview size is about what you see in the viewer, and it has no effect on the thumbnail resolution.

    Ian

    hmm ok,
    that I didn't know, so its not an issue at last, though I don't like that

    In LR the thumbnails filmstrip has sharp previews and I am used to that

    thanks for the advice
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  • Permanently deleted user
    [quote="Mauli" wrote:
    [quote="Ian3" wrote:
    How large are you trying to view the thumbnails? They are really quite small low-resolution files. They are intended to enable you to identify an image to look at in the viewer, but if you magnify them much they will be blurry. The preview size is about what you see in the viewer, and it has no effect on the thumbnail resolution.

    Ian

    hmm ok,
    that I didn't know, so its not an issue at last, though I don't like that

    In LR the thumbnails filmstrip has sharp previews and I am used to that

    thanks for the advice

    Yes, this is a famous 'issue' that is reported every now and then for years, but apparently not of enough importance for it to be improved upon.
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  • WPNL
    You can try with smaller previews? Because probably the size of the photo you're looking at is smaller than 2560px and chances are that new previews are being generated for the smaller size. So you're rendering twice 😉
    This might not fix the thumbs but can speed up your browsing at 100% at least?
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  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    I don't think the preview size is the issue. The problem in the original post, as I understand it, is the resolution of the thumbnails which is not the same thing.

    Ian
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  • WPNL
    Indeed it's not the same thing and I declared so in my post.
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  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    [quote="WPNL" wrote:
    Indeed it's not the same thing and I declared so in my post.

    Ah yes, so you did. Apologies.

    Ian
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  • MikeArst
    I had this same problem. I thought: either I've lost my ability to focus or else a lens element has been knocked out of alignment! Phase One tech support provided some advice. I don't know if this will help for every occurrence of this problem, but here is what they advised me (and it helped):

    Open an image in Capture One. Determine: what are the pixel dimensions of the displayed image? I did this by taking a screen capture of the entire screen, then dropping the screen capture into the file viewer IrfanView, then ensuring that IrfanView was displaying at actual size. Then I cropped very carefully so that I had selected ONLY the area of the photographic image — with none of the Capture One user interface itself remaining after cropping. Then I looked at Irfanview's display that shows the pixel dimensions of the cropped image. Once you have the dimensions displayed: Note the longer pixel dimension.

    (There is probably a simpler way to do this, but I don't know what it is. I would have used Capture One's cropping tool but it seems to display only in inches and not pixels. In any case the above didn't take long.)

    Return to Capture One and in the program's Preferences dialog, in the Image tab set Preview Image Size (px) as close as possible to the longer pixel dimension you just noted. That immediately fixed the problem for me.
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  • SFA
    [quote="MikeArst" wrote:


    (There is probably a simpler way to do this, but I don't know what it is. I would have used Capture One's cropping tool but it seems to display only in inches and not pixels. In any case the above didn't take long.)



    The unit the crop is displayed by is a function of the default Recipe setting (usually). Check out the Process's Basic tab and the unit in use related to "Scale".

    HTH.


    Grant
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  • MikeArst
    [quote="SFA" wrote:

    The unit the crop is displayed by is a function of the default Recipe setting (usually). Check out the Process's Basic tab and the unit in use related to "Scale".

    Interesting. I have just re-installed Capture One 11 to fix some errors I caused by not using the default install location. I haven't restored any of my previous process recipes yet. The default/selected recipe ("TIFF Adobe RGB (1998) (8bit)") had Scale set to "Fixed" and Resolution set to 300 pixels/inch. When I changed it to "Long edge" and inserted a value (pixels), then the crop tool displayed in pixels rather than inches. Even so it wasn't displaying the actual pixel dimensions of the displayed image, but rather the output image. So I think taking the screen shot and determining the screen shot's pixel dimensions must be the way to go in this case.

    Changing Scale back to "Fixed" did not return the crop display to inches. It remains in pixels now.

    Another wish-list item, then:

    • Set default cropping display to Inches|Pixels|whatever-else in Edit > Preferences > Crop.
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  • SFA
    [quote="MikeArst" wrote:
    [quote="SFA" wrote:

    The unit the crop is displayed by is a function of the default Recipe setting (usually). Check out the Process's Basic tab and the unit in use related to "Scale".

    Interesting. I have just re-installed Capture One 11 to fix some errors I caused by not using the default install location. I haven't restored any of my previous process recipes yet. The default/selected recipe ("TIFF Adobe RGB (1998) (8bit)") had Scale set to "Fixed" and Resolution set to 300 pixels/inch. When I changed it to "Long edge" and inserted a value (pixels), then the crop tool displayed in pixels rather than inches. Even so it wasn't displaying the actual pixel dimensions of the displayed image, but rather the output image. So I think taking the screen shot and determining the screen shot's pixel dimensions must be the way to go in this case.

    Changing Scale back to "Fixed" did not return the crop display to inches. It remains in pixels now.

    Another wish-list item, then:

    • Set default cropping display to Inches|Pixels|whatever-else in Edit > Preferences > Crop.


    Mike,

    Fixed and 100% just means you will get whatever the max size available might be.

    2 ways to see it.

    In the process Summary the size is given in pixels and the current choice of measurement unit to be used for output (taking into account the resolution value set in the "Basic" tab definition.) Realistically for the screen pixels are likely most appropriate.

    To show the dimension of the uncropped image remove the crop (or create a New Variant temporarily) and double click on the image.

    To change the unit of measure displayed in the crop tool, right click on the image to access some settings and preferences.

    But it is all highly interactive and centres on the current purpose as defined in the selected process and a few other choices - like the influence of proofing for example. So where necessary setting things up specifically for what you are trying to do is advisable to avoid lost time and potential confusion. At least that's what I find.


    HTH.


    Grant
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  • MikeArst
    Well, I goofed. After watching one of the Capture One webinars I realized that the procedure I recommended above isn't correct. I must have misunderstood something that Phase One tech support wrote to me about this months ago.

    The webinar presenter showed the correct procedure for Preview Image Size (pixels) in the Preferences dialog. He said: Adjust that setting to be no larger than your monitor's resolution. He didn't mention the literal image size within the viewer. He mentioned only the monitor's resolution. Apologies for the earlier misinformation.
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  • Denis Mortell
    See my thread on Hardware Acceleration.

    Engaging HA removed my image preview quality issues.

    I’m still not sure if there’s a connection, but there appears to be.

    D.
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