Call for photos with display artifacts

Baldy

We're in the thick of improving the way we make display copies of your photos and we're looking for test cases. I think I've snagged the ones in previous threads about display quality, but if there are others you have, link to them here.

Thanks!
Chris

I'll start:

jfriend

Sky boundary artifact examples

Baldy wrote:

We're in the thick of improving the way we make display copies of your photos and we're looking for test cases. I think I've snagged the ones in previous threads about display quality, but if there are others you have, like to them here.

Here's a few that are all mountain/sky boundaries that show visible JPEG artifacts in the sky (with one of them included below):
http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/879690/2/39914182
http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/879690/1/39913315
http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/879690/1/39913443

Mike Lane

Here's one with some horrible artifacting...

bwg

this really jumped out at me:

Scala

A red background brings up lots of artifacting:

marlinspike

This one has got some big artifacting...though apparently normal peope don't notice or don't care cause he bought a 20x30.

Baldy

bigwebguy wrote:

this really jumped out at me:

Hey bigwebguy,

Can you describe the artifacts you're seeing in this image? It took me a couple minutes to discern any so I'd love to know what I'm missing.

Thanks,
Chris

bwg

now that is odd. when i was looking at it on my flat panel at work the artifacts were really evident. Now at home on my old busted crt, they're hardly noticible. That goes for all the images in this thread.

either that or you're messing with me

Baldy wrote:

Hey bigwebguy,

Can you describe the artifacts you're seeing in this image? It took me a couple minutes to discern any so I'd love to know what I'm missing.

Thanks,
Chris

Andy

bigwebguy wrote:

either that or you're messing with me

Nup. And, you've just proven one of the difficulties with this whole exercise we're doing - it's highly subjective and also highly dependent on folks' monitors, resolution, eyesight, post-processing methods, and more.

A lot of variables but we're still working through some cool things, and hope to have some new hotness to show off soon enough. at least for those that can see such changes

Lee, thanks for your help, much appreciated!

bwg

andy wrote:

Lee, thanks for your help, much appreciated!

glad i could stumble into being helpful.

HighLightPhotos

Thanks for addressing this. I thought it was just me.
here's one: (look around the eyes and right side ball)


oddly enough (or not) not as visible in the large resized image

Andy

From Matthew Saville (found it in an old thread - thanks Matthew)

rainforest1155

Sorry, but I had not much time before. Let's see what I can dig up for you:

1. especially tree branches on the right top against the sky


2.building edges against sky


3.tree+cable against sky


4.building edges


5. crane...


6.everything against the sky - this time trees with leaves


7. the red 'DOK' logo against the white BG (enhanced by noise)


8.this time not against sky! around the black characters - especially under the S between the spider web-threat lightened up by sun rays


9.not all skys are blue - left houses against sky




Hope this helps! Holler if you need any more - I'll then look deeper into my archives!

Sebastian

kwalsh

Oh boy! Well, bright things against uniform backgrounds do it:








Aww, heck. All the lightning shots do it. Here's a whole gallery full. Note that the larges for these images are only about 30KB!!!!: http://www.kenandchristine.com/gallery/861927

These cactus spines would be harder to deal with, file is already over 100KB because there is a lot of image detail. I find I do notice these artifacts but the eye tends to be distracted by all the other detailed elements in the image:



Classic lots of blue sky + tree = noticable artifact (file only about 50KB):



Even though the foreground has a lot of detail to keep the eyes attention I still find I notice the artifacts around the monuments in this one (file about 75KB, room for improvement). Still, no where near as bad as the lightning:



Finally an example that shows there is always some artifacting, but maybe you shouldn't worry about it for every image. This tree is close to 140KB and of course there is some artifacting against the nice blue sky. But I for one only see the artifacting if I stare at it and look for it. There is just so much detail and contrast in the leaves of the trees I find I don't notice the artifacts unless I really search for them:



Anyway, hope that helps!

Keep up the great work!

Ken

ginger_55

I must be totally one of those "normal" people. I am SO normal that I have no idea what you all are talking about.

I saw something in ONE photo, I quit looking half way through this page. I was tired of feeling stupid.

Usually, the only stuff I see have to do with sharpening or highlight/shadows, I usually assume that. Or I finally figured out what someone meant by "purple fringe" the other day. And I do have problems with that.

But this oh so obvious artifacting that you all are showing me. I wish you had arrows to point it out. it is probably all over my stuff...........but I don't know it.

And some would be subjective and some wouldn't.

Please, someone come along with arrows and show me all the artifacting so I can make sure I don't show photos, important ones, with artifacting that I don't need to.

ginger

Allen

ginger_55 wrote:

I must be totally one of those "normal" people. I am SO normal that I have no idea what you all are talking about.

I saw something in ONE photo, I quit looking half way through this page. I was tired of feeling stupid.

Usually, the only stuff I see have to do with sharpening or highlight/shadows, I usually assume that. Or I finally figured out what someone meant by "purple fringe" the other day. And I do have problems with that.

But this oh so obvious artifacting that you all are showing me. I wish you had arrows to point it out. it is probably all over my stuff...........but I don't know it.

And some would be subjective and some wouldn't.

Please, someone come along with arrows and show me all the artifacting so I can make sure I don't show photos, important ones, with artifacting that I don't need to.

ginger

Couldn't have said it better ginger. Must have my monitors at high enough res to not see?
Al

bwg

allen and ginger, are you on a crt or lcd monitor? I'm having the same issues as you are, at home on my 4yr old crt i see no artifacts. at work on my 2 week old lcd i see artifacts everywhere.

Allen wrote:

Couldn't have said it better ginger. Must have my monitors at high enough res to not see?
Al

JimM

bigwebguy wrote:

allen and ginger, are you on a crt or lcd monitor? I'm having the same issues as you are, at home on my 4yr old crt i see no artifacts. at work on my 2 week old lcd i see artifacts everywhere.

I don't see anything either. I am on a 2 and a half year old laptop (LCD).

rainforest1155

bigwebguy wrote:

allen and ginger, are you on a crt or lcd monitor? I'm having the same issues as you are, at home on my 4yr old crt i see no artifacts. at work on my 2 week old lcd i see artifacts everywhere.

I use a 19" CRT @ 1024x768 and only see them when I look close and know where to look at. Never worked much with a LCD - so I can't tell about the difference.

Sebastian

Allen

bigwebguy wrote:

allen and ginger, are you on a crt or lcd monitor? I'm having the same issues as you are, at home on my 4yr old crt i see no artifacts. at work on my 2 week old lcd i see artifacts everywhere.

On a crt here.
My opinion is lcd's are not good viewing or editing pics. Getting better though.
AL

kwalsh

ginger_55 wrote:

But this oh so obvious artifacting that you all are showing me. I wish you had arrows to point it out. it is probably all over my stuff...........but I don't know it.
ginger

Hi Ginger,

What everyone is talking about are small little artifacts that look very similar to sharpening halos along edges of light and dark areas. If you look up at my lightning photos and follow the tendrils of light you'll see they are surrounded by wiggly little halos. These JPEG artifacts look very similar to sharpening artifacts because the JPEG rounding process is somewhat similar to sharpening.

And as people have pointed out some veiwing media show it better than others (LCD vs. CRT) and some people are more annoyed by it than others. I can always see them if I sit and stare at the image and look specifically at edges but I don't think a normal viewer would. In some pictures though (particularly with lots of large uniform backgrounds) it really seems to jump out at you.

Anyway, if you thought you saw any sharpening halos in the samples on these pages you were probably actually seeing the JPEG compression artifacts. They are very similar in appearence and smugmug has toned down their sharpening to the point that I think the compression dominates.

And I wouldn't worry to much about your customers. I think for most images people are making a moutain out of a molehill.

Ken

Baldy

Thanks for the good examples! Keep 'em coming if you have them.

Ringing artifacts are what we're after and they happen along sharp, high-contrast edges like building against sky. They're much more evident on LCDs than CRTs, and much more evident at low resolutions.

We're judging them on 1024x768 LCDs. An image that looks clean at that resolution may not at 800x600 but we don't feel the extra size in bytes is worth going for 100% clean at 800x600 on an LCD.

Thanks,
Chris

ginger_55

How do you know what kind of monitor you are on? I am on about a 3 yr old 17" Dell monitor?

I thought LCD were the little things we chimp with on our cameras.

I am losing my perception of myself as a smart person real fast here.

ginger
(And the good part is that the people you are selling to are probably on crummy monitors too. Now is the downside the printing? How do these "no see ums" print?)

I do have a dust spot hangup. Like I have to get rid of it, before someone mentions it. OK, that is all well and good, except I have a perfectly wonderful photo for my calendar. I have created "artifacts" trying to get rid of dust spots that only we would see.................and we would all see them. My family wouldn't, no one else would. Just dGrinners and certainly the people from dPreview.

Any other photo I would discard, this one is staying in as long as it prints ok otherwise, just too much going for it. My proof is being printed, and I am still taking dust spots out of the sky, though. And trying to mask them, etc. The moon is out, just setting as the sun has just risen. The sun is shining on the dunes and the moon is setting over the dunes..........the full moon, of course.

ginger_55

Other than the fact that I do have a dirty sensor, it is only that shot with the bright moon against the uniform blue sky that is driving me nuts.

To the point that I am creating artifacts myself.

And it is like the lightening!!!!

It has always been acceptable to me in lightening, just looks like lightening to me. I have never seen it other than photos, actually.

g

rainforest1155

ginger_55 wrote:

How do you know what kind of monitor you are on? I am on about a 3 yr old 17" Dell monitor?

I thought LCD were the little things we chimp with on our cameras.

Rule of thumb: you know that you're working on a CRT when the depth of the monitor is almost as big as the width.
Yes, the things on cameras are LCDs - which also exist in bigger variants for PCs - the biggest difference to CRTs is, that they're not even close in depth compared to CRTs.
Know imagine a camera with a CRT.

Hope that helps,
Sebastian

rainforest1155

You want more? M'kay:
1.around the boat


2.church tower + borders of the big beige house wall on the left


3.cable-time


4.around my plant - does anybody know what kind of plant this is?


5. at the right border of the yellow trashcan top


6.another leaf-less tree


7.horizont line + kite


8.license plate + at borders on hood where reflected bright sky meets darker parts


9. borders to black points of the dices



10. around the plants - especially visible on the right side of the picture


11. the red part looks awful...and in the white letters, especially the "P"robe


Now I'm tired and somehow exhausted.
Hope you still get the chance to look over my theme with all these artifacts in mind.

Have a nice weekend,
Sebastian

HighLightPhotos

sorry I don't have a quick links active in the gallery for this one:
http://perfectpixel.smugmug.com/gallery/855162/1/39937573

BTW, various CRTs here for viewing.
One thing I hear back commonly from prople who visit my galleries is that the pictures appear "too dark". They print well form originals though (from SM), so I'm wondering is the "darker look" is also observed by others contributing to this thread and if it's something that can be looked at as SM re-evaluates the resizing protocol.


as a side.... (Since we've been discussing CRTs vs LCD, and before someone mentions how things look on their calibrated monitor, I'd like ot say that 99.9% of the people who visit our galleries do not have calibrated hardware and whether they are looking for purchase or enjoyment having a dark jpg is less than satisfying.)

HighLightPhotos

this one shows the artifacts well:

Baldy

marlinspike wrote:

This one has got some big artifacting...though apparently normal peope don't notice or don't care cause he bought a 20x30.

Indeed I see a really big artifact of history in there: a white guy trying to jump. Great shot. Nice job cropping out the mini trampoline that made it possible.

ginger_55

Some of what I thought were dust spots were artifacts! Now I know! Wish I had sent a different version to the calendar. Anyway, I am now a smarter person again. Can't see most artifacts well, but that would be expected, I am on an uncallibrated LCD monitor.

ginger (thanks for the education.)

Andy

ginger_55 wrote:

Some of what I thought were dust spots were artifacts! Now I know! Wish I had sent a different version to the calendar. Anyway, I am now a smarter person again. Can't see most artifacts well, but that would be expected, I am on an uncallibrated LCD monitor.

ginger (thanks for the education.)

Ginger, if you are trying to determine if something is dust vs. artifact, it's simple: view your image at 100% size and if you see something, it's dust on your sensor

And, why don't you do a simple gamma calibration at least, on your monitor? It's easy.