Image Quality in iTunes

I noticed that there is a huge difference in image quality when my podcast is viewed from my .Mac site in Quicktime and when it is viewed in iTunes. iTunes looks really, really bad. Can anyone account for this? And is there any way to make the podcast look better in iTunes?
If you want to compare for yourself go to:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=214604232
and
http://rss.mac.com/igot2n0/iWeb/Fauxtography/Podcast/rss.xml
TC

I always do a two step export method:
First, I export as a "self-contained" Quicktime Movie (same codec as the sequence), and then
Second, I open that file in Quicktime (Pro) and do the final export there. Using this method may help you because the QT export box is easier to use, in my opinion.

Similar Messages

I just set up a new computer running Windows 8.1. When I go to my icloud photostream, the pictures are in PNG format NOT JPG. When I open and upload photos from the photostream, the resolution is so low that the image quality is terrible. Help?!?

I just set up a new computer running Windows 8.1. When I go to my icloud photostream, the pictures are in PNG format NOT JPG. When I open and upload photos from the photostream, the resolution is so low that the image quality is terrible. Help?!?

Hey Sierra, You can do just what you have stated. My question, what is your "other"? If it is over 1.5 GB you most likely have corrupt files. Doing a Restore to New, Factory restore should correct it. Just make sure you make a full backup of all information on your iPod to your computer before you restore, so you don't lose your stuff, contacts, videos, pictures, non-iTunes music, etc, use the cable and connect with your computer. Then, via cable, connect to your computer, run the Restore to new, don't use your backup. Treat this iPod as if it was your first one ever. When restore is done, set up and add what info you wish to install on this iPod. The music apps etc you purchased should be on your computer, if not you should be able to retrieve purchased apps and music from iTunes. Any music, videos, apps not purchased from iTunes will be lost to you if you do not save them to your computer or the cloud first. When your done, make a current Backup and you should good to go. Hope this helps. Good luck. Cheers.

Poor Image Quality Transfered To iPhone

Hey guys,
I'm pretty new to aperture after switching from iPhoto and have run into the following problem.
I have iTunes set up to sync certain projects in my library over to my iPhone. The problem is the image quality being transferred is rather low and alot of pictures on my iPhone look grainy/pixelated. If I go into Aperture I can see the file just fine in full quality.
Any tips on how to get the quality transferred to the iPhone better? Thanks

Aperture mainly uses previews for sharing with other applications (so you can use them in iLife/iWork, see them in Finder, easily upload albums to Apple TV via iTunes, etc.). None of these functions work if you don't have previews generated for them.
Given there's a fair bit of space overhead to Previews, and given I found after a year+ of use that I had to manually create previews for what I wanted to see, I found it was easier for me to just do this fully manually and export JPEGs.
But have a read of the Previews section of the Aperture documentation. See how they're described, and see if it's functionality you want. If not, there's no reason you have to use previews at all. I don't.

Web page image quality to printer

I have an Epson cx7800 which I have aligned and cleaned the heads.
The image quality of the print from my G5 iMac to the printer is sort of like a double image of the colored text (for instance, the word DVD will be printed twice, in a blurry fashion, in red and yellow). When I just copy a page from the printer, the quality is fine. It's just the images I'm getting from the Mac to the printer that are poor.
I get this same problem when I print a CD cover from iTunes.
Is there any way I can improve these images?
Thanks.

Suggest that you contact Epson by phone, email and/or check out their Epson cx7800 Troubleshooting Guide link for answers. Did the printer come with a manual?
You posted no system info. Therefore, I also suggest that you also cross-post in one of the "Printer Forums" of whichever OS you are using.
Good luck!

Image quality with ATV 3rd gen

Hi. I have a 2nd gen ATV and am very happy with it. I use it to stream movies from my iTunes library on my Mac, and occasionally from Netflix. I recently bought the 3rd gen ATV. Over the weekend I used the 3rd gen ATV to stream portions of some movies from my iTunes library to see if I would notice a difference in image quality on my 47" LDC TV. Some were better (the 1080i HD ones) than with the 2nd gen ATV, most looked about the same, but it surprised me that a few looked worse.
I don't know how to describe the ones that looked worse. It's not an issue of pixelation. I believe Hollywood produces films on 35mm or 70mm format, whereas TV and home movies often are on lower quality 8mm or 16mm format. With the 3rd gen ATV, the movies that I thought looked worse seemed to have the appearance of lower quality 8mm / 16mm movies, rather than of higher quality 35mm / 70 mm movies. The characters and images on the screen looked more plastic somehow, with less depth. Any yes, I am talking about 2D images, not 3D. The movies in question were purchased from the iTunes store in SD format. They look better on my 2nd gen ATV than they do on my 3rd gen ATV.
Has anyone else had this experience? Is there a setting I am missing somewhere on the 3rd gen ATV that might cause this affect? Thank you

SD movies need to be scaled to fill your screen.
If your TV has a 1080 screen and your Apple TV is set to output at 1080, then your Apple TV does all the scaling.
Your Apple TV 2 has a maximum output of 720, therefore your TV had to do some of the scaling.
If your TV is significantly better than the Apple TV at scaling, this may account for what you say.

Poor Image Quality on Finished Project

I've seen similar questions before, but no responses. I put together a movie using still pictures, titles, and audio from iTunes using iMovie. I then export it to a .m4v format and import it into iDVD (the newest version). It looks perfect when I view it on my computer, but when I burn it (which works as it should), I get very poor image quality watching it on my TV. The images have red shadows that stretch and cover the faces. Some of the pictures are just more red than they should be, but others are just terrible. Even using the highest quality encoding, the problem persists. PLEASE HELP. Thank you.

Hi
a. make a DiskImage first and test this with Apple DVD-player.
(File menu and down "Make a DiskImage")
b. I only use streamingDV - no .m4v or like (may be it works - I don't know)
else
*Not knowing the origin to Your problem - General approach when in trouble is as follows.*
• Free space on internal (start-up) hard disk if it is less than 10Gb should rather have 25Gb
• Hard disk is untidy. Repair Permissions, Repair Hard disk (Apple Disc Util tool)
• Delete iDVD pref file - *or rather start a new user/account* - log into this and re-try
iDVD pref file resides. Mac Hard Disk (start-up HD)/Users/"Your account"/Library/Preferences and is named.
com.apple.iDVD.plist
While iDVD is NOT RUNNING - move this file out to desk-top.
Now restart iDVD.
• Program miss-match. iDVD 5.0.2, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.5.5 - is OK - DON’T work under Leopard
• Program miss-match. iDVD 6.0.4, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.5.5 - is OK (might work under Leopard)
• Program miss-match. iDVD’08 v. 7.0.1, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.5.5 - is OK (might work under Leopard)
• iDVD (08) v7 Locate theme folder. Move out iDVD1, iDVD 2 and eventually iDVD4 folders to desktop - re-try
• Try a Cleaning CD/DVD that cleans the laser lens on the DVD burner/player
iDVD 6.0.4 and iDVD 7.0.1 are compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Last resort. from Craig. Solved the problem!! Finally!!
I deleted every iDVD application and folder from my boot drive,
emptied the trash and then installed iDVD 08 using the customize option
and I am up and running.
If You do a re-install be sure to get rid of all iDVD old parts AND then EMPTY the Trash-basket !
Yours Bengt W

IDVD and poor image quality on TV

I imported old VHS/VHS-C tapes into iMovie via Elgato Video Capture, using standard 4:3. I then edited my project iMovie and "shared" it to iDVD. However, on TV, image quality is horrid. What am I doing wrong?

As Old Toad writes BUT
• Share to Media Browser - AND as Large - not HD or the other resolutions as quality will degrade.
• burn on high quality media - I only use Verbatim DVD-R (as they play on more DVD-players)
• Set down burn speed to x4 = Less burn errors
• Encoding quality matters - I use Pro Quality most
else read my long long list on this.
DVD quality
1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)
• Best Performances
(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audsio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.
About double on DL DVDs.
2. Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.
5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)
8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on.
• DVD is a standard in it self. It is Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not
deliver anything better that this.
HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.
These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.
Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need
_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component
_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored
_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback
The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player
Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality
• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.
• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.
iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09
Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09
(x4 by some and may be even better)
2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.
Region codes.
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.
1 = US
2 = EU
unclemano wrote
What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.
I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.
I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.
For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk
• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver
• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)
• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off
• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)
• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set
pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show
Yours Bengt W

Firefox mage quality and resolution was superb when I used XP and Vista. Now that I have Windows 7, however (with the Firefox 3.6.3 version), the image quality and resolution is poor. Please help me!

I am using the Firefox 3.6.3 version with my new Windows 7 operating system. When I used all the previous Firefox versions in my XP and Vista operating systems, image quality and resolution was excellent! However, now that I have upgraded to Windows 7 and Firefox 3.6.3, the image quality and resolution is poor (unacceptable for downloading purposes).
== This happened ==
Every time Firefox opened
== I first activated my new computer and installed the Firefox 3.6.3.

All my images are pixelated in firefox 3.6.3
http://www.dcgdcreative.com
Not only on my site but on most sites I view.
The issue is not solved by resetting the zoom text view (ctrl+0)
The issue is not resolved by starting in safemode with add-ons disabled
The problem seems to only affect .jpeg files and only on Windows 7 on my desktop; as I have viewed several sites using windows XP with my laptop, no issues.
I had the same issue with IE8 and was able to fix the problem with by setting up the compatibility view for all sites. Issue fixed no problems at all. But nothing similar for firefox?
Whats the deal?

I want to make a copy of slide show create from my own photographs and with a an audio track behind them. I have carefully followed the iDVD tutorials and burnt the result to a disc but image quality is very poor. What is wrong?

I want to make a DVD of a slide-show with an audio track behind the photographs. I have carefully followed the iDVD video tutorials but the result is far from satisfactory. The quality of the images on the resulting DVD are blurred and indistict although the original photographs are of a very high quality. Where am I going wrong? Would I have better results from a different program than the inbuilt iDVD and if so so what programs have others found to be better? I should be grateful for some expert guidance.

Hey Falcopebo,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Looks like you have image quality issues when using iDVD to burn.
iDVD 7.0: Burned DVD has interlacing, pixelation, or image quality issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4078
A standard DVD made by iDVD is made to the standard DVD resolution of 720 X 480, which is smaller than most HDTVs and monitors. When expanded to fit the entire screen or monitor, the image will distort slightly due to upscaling to fit the screen or monitor.
Have a nice day,
Mario

HT1338 What is the best online storage for photos. Specifically one that allows the original image quality to be downloaded should your hard storage goes belly up

What is the best online storage for photos. Specifically one that allows the original image quality to be downloaded should your hard storage goes belly up

I'd put them on an external hard drive(s) and burn them to a DVD as well (at least 2 - 3 copies on different drives/media); I prefer having control and a local solution instead of relying on a server and the possibility of someone (who shouldn't be) downloading my work.

NOT happy with image quality of Lightroom 1.1

Sure, LR now launches faster and the interface looks a bit nicer. And the more capable sharpening controls and the clarity slider which mimics contrast enhancement with USM are nice additions, but has anyone else notice what happened to the image quality?
First, while formerly LR and ACR struck a great balance between detail and noise suppressionerring on the side of maintaining detail even at the expense of slightly higher noise levelsit appears the goal for the redesign has been to minimize the appearance of noise at all costs. It just so happens that yesterday afternoon, I'd shot some available light candids (up to ISO 800) of the staff at a local health care facility and was intent on using them as a trial run on Lightroom 1.1. Well, the difference in image quality jumped right out at me: there was no granular noise at all remaining, even in the ISO 800 shots, but neither was there any fine detail. I use a Canon 5D, and while I'm accustomed to slightly higher levels of chroma noise, images up to ISO 1600 in even the worse lighting are always full of fine detail. Fine structures like strands of hair and eye lashes have now lost their delicacy, and have instead become coarse, unnaturally painterly analogs. Looking into shadow areas, I can see the results of what seems to be luminance noise smearing at work, obliterating noise and detail along with it. I never used Raw Shooter because I'm a Mac user (2x2GHz G5 w/2GB RAM and 250GB HD), but if this is the result of incorporating Pixmantic's technology, the result is not a positive one from my standpoint. The images I shot yesterday are to be cropped to 4:5 proportions, then printed 20" x 25", at which size the processing artifacts and lack of fine detail in these LR1.1 conversions becomes even more apparent. I've even tried turning off all image processing options: Clarity, Sharpening and NR (neither of which I ever use in RAW conversion, anyway)... It simply seems this noise smearing is part of the baseline RAW processing, and it really, really bites. Am I missing something? Is there some way to actually turn off this processing that looks uncomfortably like the "watercolor" noise reduction that Kodak and Panasonic use for their compact digicams. Yuck!
Secondly, is there a way to get back the suppression of hot and stuck pixels that LR used to perform? Now, my high ISO files are riddled with them, the same as they would be when converted with Aperture or Canon's DPP. Default suppression of hot and stuck pixels was a major advantage of LR/ACR, and contributed in no small bit to my adoption of LR as my standard tool for RAW conversion due to the amount of high ISO, low light photography I do. What's even worse, is that the random-color speckles are now smudged into the image along with all the other noise data that's being smoothed out, resulting in images that looks more like impressionist paintings than photographs.
I thought about reinstalling LR1.0 and just continuing to use that, but if LR1.1 is an indication of the direction Adobe is going to take in the development of the software, I really don't see the point of continuing to use the softwareparticularly when I had a few existing problems with LR1.0 that were never resolved, such as crashing during the import of photos from a memory card and progressively slower preview rendering as the size of my library increased. So, I'm probably going to go back to using Aperture, which is itself not free of IQ foibles, but certainly looks much more attractive now in comparison to LR1.1.
Anybody notice the same things with IQ? Anybody got any suggestions of how to get more natural-looking conversions before I remove LR and go back to Aperture?

Jeff,
I mean no disrespect. But I would like to see samples of 1.1 compared to 1.0 of the same image (ISO 400, and/or 800), because I do not want to convert my library to a catalog until I know whether or not I like the image quality. Why is it so hard to get one good sample. That is all I am asking. I would just rather not jump through hoops to go back to 1.0 if I do not like 1.1....That is all
And yes, after well over 400 printed articles I can tell what an image will look like in print when I view it 1:1.... I can tell if the eyelashes or pores on someones face, the detail in a rug, or wood grain will be detailed on the off set printed page if I look at the image at 1:1 and see smudging...this means to me that the most detail possible is NOT going to translate to the page. If however I CAN see detail in those types of areas, clearly (ie no smudging), than I know that I will see those fine details on the page. If these fine details were not important than we would all still be shooting with 3 and 4 mp cameras. Those fine details that are only visible to our eyes at a 1:1 preview on screen, are important on the printed page.
Oh, and I am not chest thumping. You can check my history here, I do not have a history of that type of activity. I am simply asking to see samples before I update....
I am very discriminating Pro, not some over testing, too much time on my hands, complaining , over paid amateur who only has time to complain that their test chart is out of focus. Or that they can measure toooo much noise at ISO what ever, instead of actually making photos. I actually make my living taking photos. And my clients have come to expect a certain level of quality from me. They comment all the time how much higher quality my images are than some of the other photogs they use. And I am still shooting a D60, where as these others are shooting 5d's and D2X's.
Jeff, I am not against you or Adobe. Matter of fact, I LOVE LR. It has changed my work flow in a very positive direction. I think it is wonderful. I just want one sample.... I am asking nicely: Please with sugar on top :)
If you can't give me a sample, than please at least reassure me that it will be easy to go back to 1.0 for the time being. Is it as easy as uninstalling 1.1, reinstalling 1.0 and recovering my DB from a current backup? If so, than fine, I will go this route........... If not, than I am hoping for a sample.
Thank you very kindly Jeff for engaging in this lively conversation. I do appreciate your comments and participation on this forum. And please note that none of this is said with attitude or malice. I know that some times a writers intent or emotional state is easy to misinterpret in a forum like this. So please know that I am calm and not angry, just curious about image quality.
Ok. I will shut up now. Thanks again

Secondary Display image quality is poor (at 1:1) in Library module

I'm not a frequent user of the Secondary Display feature, so I can't say state whether this particular issue is new in 2.3RC or if it also was seen in a previous version. I submitted a bug report since I searched but did not find any previous mention of this sort of thing. Anyone else notice this?
Here's my problem: When I'm using LR's Develop module and activate the Secondary Display (SD) window, the SD images for all zoom ratios seem identical in quality (sharpness. color) to the images seen in the main screen--as expected. However when I switch over to Library module and use 1:1 zoom, the SD image becomes relatively degraded (i.e., quite blurry/pixelated) compared to the main window. When SD is set at the lower zoom ratios (still in Library module) its quality seems fine--i.e., more or less indistinguishable from the main screen. It's only when SD is used at 1:1 in the Library module that it appears "buggy".
I'm using a Mac Power PC G4, OSX 10.4.11.
Phil
P.S. I should mention that the image quality at 1:1 zoom in Library Module's Secondary Display is not only worse than the main Library screen, it's also significantly worse (less sharp) than seen in the Develop module--and that's certainly not unexpected.

>Gordon McKinney:What happens is the second display doesn't render a 1:1 for optimal sharpness.
For me it isn't just sharpness. I can make a change that is fairly radical and have it show up immediately in the main monitor--both in the navigation panel and in the main display panel. The image on the 2nd monitor remains unchanged.
If I then use the history panel to move back to the previous state and then re-select the final state the image on the secondary display
usually, not always gets updated. Sometimes it takes a 2nd or a third cycle from previous to latest history state. This 'missed update' in the 2nd monitor doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it does happen quite often.
LR 2.3RC, Vista Ultimate x64, 8GB DRAM, nVidia 9800 GTX+ with latest drivers.

Adobe Premiere Elements 11 - HOW DO I KEEP THE IMAGE QUALITY WHEN I RENDER?

I'm using Adobe Premiere Elements 11, on a Windows 8 PC and when I "render" still pictures, some videos and simple effects -- they lose quality and get grainy --
HOW DO I KEEP THE IMAGE QUALITY WHEN I RENDER?

Molnar are you receiving that error during the download or install process? Also which operating system are you using?

How to prevent degradation of image quality when pasting for collage?

I am trying to do a collage (of family heirloom old pharmacy jars and bottles) from – eventually – about a dozen separate images in Photoshop CS6. (A variety of sizes, resolutions, qualities and file types will go into the collage, but I wish to retain the image quality of each component at its original level or very close to the original level, even those in some cases the original quality is marginal.)
I have set up in Photoshop a “background document” at 300 dpi of the right dimensions to paste into my InDesign document (5.1 X 3.6 cm)
I have tried >six approaches, all of which have resulted in a degradation of the subsequently pasted-in image (not just slight, but very obvious).
Clearly I’m missing something fundamental about image quality and handling images so that degradation is minimised or eliminated.
(1) (1) Using an internet video as a guide – using Mini Bridge to open all the images in PS6 as tabs along the top of the workpage. Then dragging the first one into the base document. It comes across huge – ie I only see a small fraction of the image. Any attempt to Edit/Transform/Scale (to 14% of the pasted image, which in this case is a jpg of 3170 x 1541 at 1789 dpi, 4.5 x 2.2 cm) results in an image that looks horribly degraded compared with what I pasted (open in another window).
(2) (2) Same thing happens if I have each image as a new layer on top of the base document.
(3) (3) I tried changing the image that I had put into Layer 2 into a Smart Object and then resized it. No further ahead – it still looks horrible.
(4) using a different image [an 800 dpi JPG 3580 x 1715 Pixels, print size (from dpi) 11.4 x 5.4 cm which despite those parameters is of barely acceptable quality] I have tried (a) changing the resolution to 300 dpi, (b) keeping the number of pixels the same (which results in a dpi of over 3000 but doesn't fix the problem; (c) changing the dimensions to a length of 3 cm [about right for the collage] .... but no matter what I do, by the time the image is positioned correctly on the layer, the image quality has gone from barely acceptable to absolutely horrible. That usually happens during the final resizing (whether by numbers or shift-dragging the corners of the image).
Grateful for any step-by-step strategy as to how best to accomplish the end – by whatever means. (Or even in a different program!). Basically, even though I've used images for many years in many contexts, I have never fundamentally understood image size or resolution to avoid getting into such messes. Also, I'm on a very steep learning curve with Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator all at the same time - these all seem to handle images differently, which doesn't help. [Not to mention MS Publisher, which I'm locked into for certain other things...]

For the individual images, don't worry about the ppi or as you call it dpi (ppi is the correct term BTW) only worry about the pixel dimensions. If the pixel dimensions gets too low, it will look horrible as there is not enough data to work with.
Therefore the final document that will house all the other images must be large enough in pixel dimensions to handle the smaller images at a high enough dimension that they will look good.
That being said, if you can load your images in as smart objects as any scaling that takes place samples the original sized document. Making it possible to scale it down to a size that is barely visible and then reset the size back to where it was and have no loss of data.
Where the ppi will come into play is when you are ready to print the final document, that is when the ppi will tell the printer at what size to print the document on the page.
If your collage will span more than one page, you may want to do this in InDesign. All images are linked to their respective container (similar process as smart object in theory) Though I beleive smart objects are embedded which is debatable.
In both InDesign and Illustrator, scaling the image in the document affects the ppi of the image, scaling down would increase the ppi whereas scaling upward would decrease the ppi as the number of pixels (the pixel dimension) has not changed.
With photoshop, you have a choice, when scaling the entire document, you have the option to resample the image, doing so affects the pixel dimension and in that instance would degrade the image when scaling downward and bluring the image when scaling up. As photoshop is removing pixels when scaling down and guessing the neighbor pixels should be when scaling upward.
But, when resampling is off, the pixel dimensions do not change and therefore there is no degration or bluring.
Why this happens has to do with simple math.
inches x ppi = pixels
Knowing any two of the above forumula will give you the third.
When resampling is enabled, the pixels can change and when it is disabled, it is fixed so only the other two values can change.

Image quality poor when using "fit in window" view

Hello,
i´m getting familiar with PS CS3 Demo and what buffles me is the poor quality of the downsized view of large images. I loaded a 8 MP JPEG image from a digital camera and it looks good in 100%, but when i choose to view the whole image to fit the window (33,33% in my case), the resulting "downsampled" image is very jaggy and pixelated. I use a freeware image viewer called Xnview that gives me a far superior view when viewing large images downsized - i can even choose to select a "HQ" mode so those images get resampled to look better. It it normal that PS does not offer such a thing (or did i not see it?) and delivers such poor visual quality or is there something wrong with my PC?
Thanks for your help.

Though 6.735, 12.5, 25 and 50% views usually are OK too. "Image quality" is great, though sometimes deceivingly so. I guess I don't understand sampling enough to tell you why 33% looks bad (rounding errors, I suppose). But 66% makes sense. You're trying to stuff 3 pixels into the space of 2.
Dave, what are the advantages to these nearest neighbor views instead of bicubic (or even bi-linear). Just speed?
J

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