Display scaling problem

dennismullen

The picture selected in a gallery is not very accurate when it has a white pinstripe around it because it is often missing on one or two sides.
It happens in the slideshow too. I think this just started recently.

Here is an example...

http://www.dennismullen.com/Galleries/Bonaire/Bonaire-11/i-Rk6tRT9

Cheers,

pbandj

Interesting...in a not-so-good way. I confirmed what you're seeing...if I resize my browser in different ways I can make your pinstripe on either the right-hand side or the bottom appear/disappear.

pbandj

Also interestingly, I can't reproduce the problem in Chrome; only in Firefox. In Firefox this photo overlaps the slideshow button at the top:
http://www.dennismullen.com/Galleries/Bonaire/Bonaire-11/i-jstVLgg

Do you have any customizations that you've added recently that could be influencing this behavior?

thenickdude

Your pinstripe is 1 pixel wide, this means that the slightest difference in scaling is going to make it wink between about half brightness to full brightness (if it ends up in the "space" between two display pixels, it will appear as a line two pixels wide which is half the brightness, due to the scaling). If you slowly scale your browser window, you should see the borders on all sides flash.

Either use a wider border, or add the border with CSS instead of including it in your image file. Adding it with CSS ensures that the border will be precisely 1 pixel no matter the photo scale.

dennismullen

Lamah wrote: »

Your pinstripe is 1 pixel wide, this means that the slightest difference in scaling is going to make it wink between about half brightness to full brightness (if it ends up in the "space" between two display pixels, it will appear as a line two pixels wide which is half the brightness, due to the scaling). If you slowly scale your browser window, you should see the borders on all sides flash.

Either use a wider border, or add the border with CSS instead of including it in your image file. Adding it with CSS ensures that the border will be precisely 1 pixel no matter the photo scale.

That would be fixing the symptom instead of the problem. I've been using smugmug for years and never had this problem until a couple days ago.

Cheers,

thenickdude

In legacy SmugMug, SmugMug never scaled images on the screen, it just showed one of their preset sizes.

It would be easy to have missed this problem previously on New SmugMug, since your precise window size and browser will change how those images scale, and they might have (by chance) ended up at precise pixel boundaries for you.

EDIT: It looks like Chrome on Windows (instead of Chrome on a Retina Mac) doesn't demonstrate the same issue, perhaps due to a difference in scaling algorithm (e.g. hardware acceleration can change the way that images scale).

dennismullen

I don't care what is causing it. It is unacceptable. I view my pictures critically and this just started.
Another problem like the unneeded scroll bars that make it impossible to view this 1920 x 1080 picture on a 1920 x 1080 monitor full screen.
And the white text on a white background in the replace dialog.

Cheers,

Andy

Lamah wrote: »

add the border with CSS

(if you have to have a border... not a fan of them here)

thenickdude

dennismullen wrote: »

I don't care what is causing it. It is unacceptable. I view my pictures critically and this just started.

It doesn't matter what SmugMug does. A 1 pixel border on the image can not be sharply represented on the screen as soon as the image is scaled even a little bit. Depending on the precise scaling algorithm your browser chooses, you will either get a permanently fuzzy border at all scales (this is effectively the Nyquist-correct version), or you will get a border whose brightness noticeably varies as the window scales (causing uneven or winking borders).

dennismullen

Thanks for all the advice about how I should just live with this. This is a bug that started a few days ago. It is not something to be lived with.
You can change things all you want and these problems do not happen in Chrome or Internet Explorer.

I am trying to get a response from smugmug on this as these problems need to be fixed.

Cheers,

Andy

dennismullen wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice about how I should just live with this. This is a bug that started a few days ago. It is not something to be lived with.
You can change things all you want and these problems do not happen in Chrome or Internet Explorer.

I am trying to get a response from smugmug on this as these problems need to be fixed.

Cheers,

It could easily be a FF issue. Point is, if you use CSS to make your borders, it will *always* work. And, you don't have to mess around in PS, either.

dennismullen

Why would I always want a border on every picture and why would I stop using Photoshop. This isn't Flicker. These aren't iPhone pictures on Facebook.
The point is there is a problem when my pictures aren't being shown the way I processed them.
All these problems may be Firefox's problems but Firefox's problems are smugmugs problems and these problems need to be fixed.
Smugmug changed something a few days ago that caused this issue. Fixed one thing and broke another.

beardedgit

I think Dennis has a valid point here. If I took a shine to one of his "bordered" pics and had a mind to buy it, I'd like the pic that I receive to be the one that I chose. A pic with a 1px "display purposes only" CSS border isn't going to be the same item as a pic with an integral "Photoshopped" border when it's printed.

I can't imagine that Dennis would want to have two versions of each pic concerned - one border-less for display in a CSS border, and another true-border version for print only.

Andy

dennismullen wrote: »

All these problems may be Firefox's problems but Firefox's problems are smugmugs problems

If it just changed in FF you're going to have to give SM time to fix what FF broke (if FF broke it).

thenickdude

beardedgit wrote: »

I think Dennis has a valid point here. If I took a shine to one of his "bordered" pics and had a mind to buy it, I'd like the pic that I receive to be the one that I chose. A pic with a 1px "display purposes only" CSS border isn't going to be the same item as a pic with an integral "Photoshopped" border when it's printed.

A 1 pixel border would never appear in the print anyway, it would get cropped off.

dennismullen

There is a common link, I think, between one pixel line missing on a picture and the one pixel line that causes scroll bars to appear when looking at a 1920 x 1080 picture on a 1920 x 1080 monitor.
Something is stealing, or adding, that one extra pixel line.

Cheers,

beardedgit

Lamah wrote: »

A 1 pixel border would never appear in the print anyway, it would get cropped off.

Gotta get my head around that... if I order a pic that has a 1px border as part of the pic (as opposed to added to the display by CSS) that border wouldn't be on the print that I receive? That implies that what I'd get wouldn't be what I'd ordered.

thenickdude

beardedgit wrote: »

Gotta get my head around that... if I order a pic that has a 1px border as part of the pic (as opposed to added to the display by CSS) that border wouldn't be on the print that I receive? That implies that what I'd get wouldn't be what I'd ordered.

Every print has some bleed/trim area around the edges, that's just physical reality.

beardedgit

Lamah wrote: »

Every print has some bleed/trim area around the edges, that's just physical reality.

I can see that I'll be testing that on my printer sometime over the weekend.

Of course, the results will depend on the size of the original - a 1px border on a 300x200 pic should print 10x the width of a 1px border on a 3000x2000 pic if they're both scaled to best-fit on A4.

dennismullen

Why is everybody focused on everything except the display problem?

For the record I have the Buy Button disabled in this gallery. I process my pictures for viewing with a vertical size of 1080 pixels.
I do not want them changed as I have used my own sharpening and have different framing, like a pin stripe, on most of them.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=238148

I have a completely different gallery called "Print Sales" with the full size files for ordering prints.
These are without the framing.

Cheers,

beardedgit

dennismullen wrote: »

Why is everybody focused on everything except the display problem?

Not focused, just including. Sorry, I was just trying to be supportive. I'll STFU.

dennismullen

beardedgit wrote: »

Not focused, just including. Sorry, I was just trying to be supportive. I'll STFU.

No worries, I appreciate the support.
It's not you I was pointing at.

Cheers,

Andy

Lamah wrote: »

Every print has some bleed/trim area around the edges, that's just physical reality.

Bleed Trim

Andy

dennismullen wrote: »

Why is everybody focused on everything except the display problem?

I think we are. IMO, it's extremely unreasonable for SM to drop everything and fix a scaling issue that just appeared in FF when FF did an update. And it's my bet that this border issue that you are describing affects an extremely small amount of people.

That gallery has a bunch of images with different photoshopped borders. IMO it is rather ungapatchka, and detracting from your excellent photography.

My money's still on FF doing something in their latest update.

dennismullen

Firefox 24 has been up for some time now. This happened when mbonocor left a message to me here...

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=238148&page=2
message #29.

"Dennis,

Please re-test this and let me know "

A change was made to how pictures are scaled.

You are developing a reputation for blaming problems on the browser and this is not the first time you have criticized my pictures as an explanation for a bug with smugmug.
It's been months now since the roll out. All of these bugs should have been fixed by now.

Andy

dennismullen wrote: »

this is not the first time you have criticized my pictures as an explanation for a bug with smugmug.

Andy wrote:

from your excellent photography.

dennismullen

This is a bug report.

Recently in Firefox the picture selected in a gallery is not scaled accurately.
A picture with a white pinstripe around it is often missing it on one or two sides.
This happens in the homepage slideshow too.

Here is an example...

http://www.dennismullen.com/Galleries/Bonaire/Bonaire-11/i-Rk6tRT9

Firefox version 24 has been up for some time now so it is not likely the culprit.
This started when mbonocor left a message to me here...

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=238148&page=2
message #29.

"Dennis,

Please re-test this and let me know "

A change was made to how pictures are scaled.

Cheers,

dennismullen

Andy wrote: »

I think we are. IMO, it's extremely unreasonable for SM to drop everything and fix a scaling issue that just appeared in FF when FF did an update. And it's my bet that this border issue that you are describing affects an extremely small amount of people.

That gallery has a bunch of images with different photoshopped borders. IMO it is rather ungapatchka, and detracting from your excellent photography.

My money's still on FF doing something in their latest update.

Firefox ver. 25 just came out and the problem is still there.
How much money were you talking about?

Cheers,

thenickdude

CSS+HTML gives SmugMug zero control over how an image is scaled, that is up to the browser. It's unlikely you will see a fix for this that comes from SmugMug as it's simply not something that they can control.

FWIW, Firefox 24 or 25 on a Mac Retina display does not display the issue. The borders strobe in brightness, as they mathematically must as they pass through fractional positions on the screen, this is simple aliasing. They do not disappear. So it's not problem general to Firefox, it's likely due to the specific rendering pipeline used on your computer. What's your operating system? You may even see the rendering change if you update your video card drivers, if Firefox is using hardware acceleration to draw the image.

EDIT: I see you're adding a CSS 1 pixel border now, so how does it even reproduce for you any more? With that CSS border, it should be just fine.

dennismullen

Lamah wrote: »

CSS+HTML gives SmugMug zero control over how an image is scaled, that is up to the browser. It's unlikely you will see a fix for this that comes from SmugMug as it's simply not something that they can control.

FWIW, Firefox 24 or 25 on a Mac Retina display does not display the issue. The borders strobe in brightness, as they mathematically must as they pass through fractional positions on the screen, this is simple aliasing. They do not disappear. So it's not problem general to Firefox, it's likely due to the specific rendering pipeline used on your computer. What's your operating system? You may even see the rendering change if you update your video card drivers, if Firefox is using hardware acceleration to draw the image.

EDIT: I see you're adding a CSS 1 pixel border now, so how does it even reproduce for you any more? With that CSS border, it should be just fine.

Looking closely the borders that do show are 2 pixels wide and 0 pixels wide on the others.
This computer is Windows 7, it also happens on my laptop with windows 8, and totally different hardware, so not buying this.

I use the CSS 1 pixel border because it looks so bad without it, but pictures that shouldn't have a border get one, this is not a proper solution.

Cheers,

Andy

dennismullen wrote: »

Firefox ver. 25 just came out and the problem is still there.
How much money were you talking about?

Cheers,

just because ff25 is out doesn't mean the problem isn't theirs.

Still think it's foolish to make 1px borders in photoshop.