Exported images are sharper when fit to screen than original images.
I just noticed that when exporting a NEF (Nikon RAW) file to TIF, the exported image has an overall higher clarity or sharpness to it when viewing it a 33%, which is more or less the size that fits my screen. It is still visible after re-importing this TIF file into my C1 catalog for direct comparison. The difference is slight but noticeable.
NEF file in C1 viewer:
Exported and re-imported TIF file in C1 viewer:
It's most noticeable with the roof tiles at the top right and the sub heading of the company name on the wall. I can only assume that the TIF export receipe adds some sharpness to the image, even though that option is not selected:
Can anyone explain this?
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In the RAW (pre-)view sharpening is not applied by C1 at all zoom levels. Advise found in the documentation is to always check the result of the sharpening tool at 100% zoom. I think this is done to improve performance. Because it is a non-destructive 'dynamic' edit (or live view so you will) it has to be computed every time you switch to another image. Some of the more computational heavy adjustments like noise reduction and sharpening are therefore not performed until you zoom in to check details.
You can sometimes see the delay caused by this computation when you zoom; the image starts out blurred/lower res and then becomes detailed.The TIFF on the other hand has the chosen sharpening hard 'baked in' -it's no longer a non-destructive / live edit of the RAW- so will be visible at any zoom level. Even when you generate a smaller miniature out of the full size TIFF.
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Thanks, I think that makes sense.
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Okay, while it does make sense technically, I just cannot un-see the blurriness in some of my images in the viewer. It's diffcult to work with a muddy image. A newly installed dedicated GPU didn't seem to make a difference. Will investigate further.
Edit: made a support request. I don't think I can work with C1 until this is somehow resolved.
Reference images: https://cloud.hans-apps.de/index.php/s/F9B2K6MEyL57ymP
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Perhaps you have a (very) high pixel count display? You could try increasing the preview size from its default 2560px. Of course with a possible performance hit.
I do agree the zoomed out preview does not need to be this blurred when a proper scaling method would be applied (e.g.Lanczos2).
Wonder what answer you'll get from support.P.s. a new GPU does not change C1's behaviour of not applying the (post) sharpening at lower zoom levels. Even worse, several display issues some users encounter improve when disabling hardware acceleration.
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I do agree the zoomed out preview does not need to be this blurred when a proper scaling method would be applied (e.g.Lanczos2).
Wonder what answer you'll get from support.They basically told me to uninstall display drivers (if the problem occured after installing a new display driver version) and disable hardware acceleration. Not very satisfying but I'll see if it makes a difference at all tomorrow.
I have a 2560x1440px display btw, so without knowing what the preview size of 2560px refers to, I think this should be rather standard.
P.s. a new GPU does not change C1's behaviour of not applying the (post) sharpening at lower zoom levels.
Which would be really too bad. Am I mistaken or are we all mostly working with images that are fit to screen, that is, a zoomed out image?
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Well yes for colour and exposure, no for details like noise and sharpness.
I am afraid this is a case of 'working as designed'. Wether we agree with this design choice is another question...
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Having to look at a blurry version of my images just seems to defeat the purpose of expensive image editing software, GPU rendering hardware and high resolution displays. But I'm still hopeful that there's a way to make this manageable, since other people seem to be fine with it.
EDIT: The support email I just got confirms your above statements. Which means I must look at blurry images while paying top money. I'm not happy right now. I hate Adobe for their greedy subscription model but will give LR another look.
EDIT2: to make it a bit less dramatic, I changed image preview size to 1440, re-enabled HW acceleration, regenerated preview images and, to my surprise, the image is sharp at fit-to-screen size. Adjustments do not seem to be slower than usual as other users have noticed when changing preview size.
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That's interesting. So you found out it was actually the downscaling from a larger resolution preview to a lower resolution display that is blurry. Perhaps they use a 'fast' cubic resampling filter instead of a more performance 'expensive' windowed filter (like Lanczos). While cubic filters are good for enlarging images, they're not so good for shrinking photos.
I tried comparing a developed 14megapixel JPEG shown at 15% in both XnViewMP and C1. In XNView I can switch between a.o. bicubic and lanczos3. Even while using bicubic it looked sharper than C1. No (disabled) sharpening is at play here, since it's an already developed image and I don't apply sharpening in XnView.
While zooming in and out in C1 it looks like some blur is added on purpose below 50%. Perhaps in an attempt to hide some patterns/moiré? Using a moiré test pattern it looked very ugly below 50% though...Top: XnView resizing a test pattern.
Bottom: C1 resizing the same test pattern.
I'll try changing my preview size as well.
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I do agree the zoomed out preview does not need to be this blurred when a proper scaling method would be applied (e.g.Lanczos2).
I tend to believe that this is where the problem lies. Since I was seeing a 2560px preview on my 2560px Monitor, the issue may be not the scaling of the preview, but the actual quality of it. It's just not good enough, it's blurry out of the box.
When reducing preview size to 1440, I assume the result is that the preview image is not being used anymore on my screen - I would have to zoom out until the image in the viewer would be small enough to be using the preview.
My CPU/GPU definitely have more work to do now, but I'm fine with that.
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I was seeing a 2560px preview on my 2560px Monitor, the issue may be not the scaling of the preview
Do you use a full-screen viewer? In the default workspace the editor/viewer is only using a part -around 1930 pixels wide in my case- of the total screen, so downscaling is still necessary.
but the actual quality of it
This could of course still be the case and the actual cause...
When reducing preview size to 1440, I assume the result is that the preview image is not being used anymore
I would expect so too. Preventing either possible cause for the blur.
The downside is a ~5 second delay every time you select another image due to the processing being applied. So it takes a few seconds before what you see is any good, before it's done processing it's low-res and aliased. A classical trade off: nice but slow zoomed out view VS a bit blurry (until you zoom in) but fast.0 -
Do you use a full-screen viewer?
Yes.
I haven't noticed a 5 second delay when switching images. Maybe some differences in hardware? My PC is equipped with a Kingston NVMe, an entry level GPU (RX 6500 XT) and an entry level CPU (Ryzen 5 3400g). I do notice a delay when scrolling / zooming the image, when different parts have to be re-rendered.
There's a guy in another forum who suggests using a preview size that is just slightly bigger than the image in the viewer when fit-to-screen (not the display size). By ie. collapsing the image browser sidebar, he can then switch between blurry+fast and sharp+slow image viewer.
It's a hack, and C1 should have adressed this issue long ago. Also the support wasn't very helpful, suggesting only re-installing of drivers etc.
But for me, there's no alternative to C1, so I take the quality over the performance.
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I'm back at the normal preview size. The slow experience of low-res > calculation 2-5 secs > good quality was a bit too much for me.
While playing with the sharpening slider I did find it to have an effect in zoomed-to-fit view by the way... just far less than expected or its effect negated by poor scaling.
I opened a feature request asking for better resampling/scaling. I described the issue using an attempted apples-to-apples, even leaving sharpening off for the jpeg export I compared against.1
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