Image Quality Viewer vs. Canvas

I have created images in Photoshop 200dpi 10"x6.66" and used a plugin called cardflow to animate them. Theylook great in the Viewer but very low rez in the Canvas. How much resolution do I need?

anglerpages wrote:
I have created images in Photoshop 200dpi 10"x6.66" and used a plugin called cardflow to animate them. Theylook great in the Viewer but very low rez in the Canvas. How much resolution do I need?
Welcome to the family.
IN addition to the posts you have read so far, this topic comes up often and there are literally hundreds of similar threads. If you search for them, you will find several helpful suggestions and explanations. There is also a section in the FCP manual that details how dpi and pixels are related. It's a rough concept for print people to grasp but your video window is only about 800x500 pixels. If you bring in an image that's 1600x1000 pixels, it's going to be scaled down to fit, throwing away 3 out of every four pixels, or you're only going to see 1/4 of the image through the window if you leave it at 100%.
bogiesan

Similar Messages

Loss of image quality after rotate canvas

PS7 on Win XP
Windows Explorer and some software bundled with digital cameras [Canon and Panasonic] warn when rotating a picture that there may be loss of image quality. Presumably it must re-compress the jpg image file?
In order to avoid that problem, I have been rotating image files in PS7, since no such warning comes up there.
Is there loss of image quality by rotating or cropping in PS7? I usually save jpg files at quality level 10.
TIA
Bruce

Have seen this posted several months back. Try a search to see if you can dredge up this issue. If not successful, come back and someone with more memory cells than I can answer it.

Image quality in canvas

Hi,
Once the project is rendered is the image quality in the canvas the same as the final product? How about when it's digital cinema desktop?
I shoot on mini-dv.
Cheers,
Tom

Yes, but you can only see it properly on a video monitor or when viewed at 100%.
Not usually, the computer monitor resolution is usually a lot greater than the DV resolution of 720 pixels across.

Still image quality loss b/t viewer and canvas?

When I import a still (I've tried jpg, tiff, etc), the image quality is perfect in the viewer, but as soon as I lay it down on the timeline it is blurred and foggy. What am I doing wrong? Please, any advice would be helpful, as this is for a job and I can't hand this in as is...

I'm sorry, I just realized someone else posted a similar quesiton. I jumped the gun.

Help with partial image loss from Viewer to Canvas

Hi--I'm brand new to FCP and would really appreciate any help with my problem. I'm creating 2 second video clips composed of four still images (15 frames...or 500ms each) laid back to back, then rendered. Very simple, I know. The individual images are tiff files that look great in the FCP Viewer. But in the Canvas, part of the image is missing. Specifically, in the center of each image there should be a + sign, about 1cm square. This + should remain constant thoughout the short movie, while the items around it vary (from image to image). (This is a psychology experiment, and the center + is a fixation cross.) The problem is that in the Viewer the + sign is intact, but in the Canvas (and the resulting rendered video), only the vertical bar of the + is present! This is true for every individual tiff, and for the resulting movie. The items around the fixation cross are fine. My question is WHY on earth does the central horizontal bar get "lost" between the Viewer and the Canvas? I've read the manuals, but obviously I've got something set wrong. Also, there is a considerable overall reduction in quality between the viewer and canvas, even though I'm trying my best to maximize video quality. Everything looks a bit blurry. Truly, all ideas are welcome. Sorry if it's obvious. Thanks.
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

steve, i'm viewing on my 23" cinema screen. i read up on quality and know that this is a no-no; that i should only judge quality when viewing on an ntsc monitor or good tv. the problem is that i'll ultimately be displaying these videos on my Dell LCD, so i've got to maximize what i've got. thanks to the discussion boards i have a short list of things to try now. thanks!
-heather

Different pic quality in viewer and canvas

Hi guys,
I've noticed a lower quality in the picture in the canvas window compared to the viewer window. In the viewer the image is clean and sharp, however not so in the canvas. The image is slightly degraded. What gives? Have I set something up incorrectly etc.?
Thanks in advance for your replies.
Cheers,

The Viewer window displays media in it's native resolution and quality. The Canvas window displays media at the Sequence resolution and only displays a proxy of full quality.
In order to view full quality of any media in the Timeline, make sure the Sequence is fully rendered and you're viewing on a properly calibrated, external TV monitor.
-DH

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

Image quality in Viewer vs Full Screen

I've seen lots of discussions about this in earlier version (pre 1.5x), but they seem to be backward from what I'm seeing. I have an extremely noticable difference in image quality in the viewer vs full screen. At first, I just thought my images weren't any good. Then, I brought the same raw files up in Photoshop and they were pretty good. I looked in Aperture in Full Screen mode, and it was close or equivalent to Photoshop.
Is anybody else seeing the image be downright bad (looks horribly out of focus) in the viewer but good in full screen? I'm not talking about the thumbnails.
I'm using an iMac G5 20". I know that my video card is probably underpowered for this, but that should only affect speed (which is mostly tolerable).
iMac G5 20 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I think I read in the manual that Aperture uses a different type of on-screen sharpening for windowed, full screen, and show master. Probably trying to speed it up in windowed by using a cheaper method.
They all should look the same when viewed at 100%.
And for what it's worth, I think Aperture does a lot better job than most programs when viewed at odd sizes. I don't have much to compare it to, but iPhoto and Adobe Elements look awful in comparison.

Very Poor Image Quality In Viewer, JPEG Artifacts

I upgraded to Aperture 3 some time ago, and purchased a new Mac Pro specifically for this application. I am an amature/ sometime professional photographer and I have been using Aperture since Version 1. This weekend I finally had some time to sit down with Aperture 3 for some serious work with my scanned film images. These are large TIF masters scanned in with my Nikon CoolScan 9000. Some are medium format black & white Tri-X Pan images, others are 35mm, also black & white Tri-X Pan. Everything scanned in on the Nikon is at the maximum resolution for the master, on the theory that I can always bump it down later if that's necessary.
I am noticing vastly lower image quality in the viewer then with Aperture 2. Specifically, I am seeing massive JPEG artifacts in the viewer image then I have ever seen before. The images also render darker in the viewer then before. These artifacts do not appear when I export my images (say as JPEGS for posting to a web page), or when I print them. The quality of the exported and print images seem just fine and the exported JPEGS are completely free of the artifacts I am seeing in the viewer.
I have tried rebuilding the previews several times, experimenting with different quality settings. I have experimented with different proof profile settings. My printer is an Epson Stylus Photo R1800 and I have tried various paper settings for it as well as other proof profile settings such as the Adobe and Apple RGB settings and the generic grey profiles. Every time I change a setting I have forced a rebuild of the previews to no detectable effect. Nothing I do seems to have any effect whatsoever on the image quality in the viewer which remains relentlessly the same as it always was.
This poor viewer image quality is making it very difficult to work in Aperture 3. I suspect there is a setting somewhere like an easter egg in this new Aperture I haven't found yet but it is becoming very frustraiting and I could use a pointer because, again, nothing I have tried has changed the image quality in the viewer in any way I can detect and the photos look perfectly awful there...darker and loaded with JPEG artifacts. Things export and print just fine, but I need to see what I am going to get in the viewer or I can't do my work.

I interpret this as ... Eventually you should be looking at the Master with the Version changes applied. I'm assuming at this point, you aren't looking at the Preview. Since you don't need Previews to view and edit your images.
Yeah...that's sort of what I gleaned from that text. I was experimenting with the preview settings because I couldn't see any other way to fix the problem. What I'm hearing now is that the problem has no fix. If you scan in black & white film negatives (or anything else that's monochrome I suppose) with the color space set as gray scale you are asking for trouble. The sense I get from the text Gomez Addams referred me to is the behavior in that case is unpredictable, and furthermore film photographers aren't the customer base Apple is trying to cultivate with this product.
Aperture is designed to work with images from digital cameras which use an RGB color space...
Okay...fine. I have several digital cameras I occasionally use for professional work and I am here to tell you Aperture is an absolute blessing for that work. I do shoots every now and then for a local community newspaper and I would not want to live without this product. I remember back when I was a teenager in the 70s being up all night in the darkroom to get an assignment I'd had to cover right before deadline, and then go to my day job the next morning without any sleep. This is much better. And even with the personal art photography it is good to be able to just scan things in and make adjustments in the computer. You can do so much more. I would not want to go back.
But I reckon I need to find something I can rely on for my film work, or at least my black & white film work because as I read this Apple is not supporting film photography with this product and black & white film photography in particular and some of us still use film. No...scanning in my Tri-X negatives in the CoolScan as color produces weird results and anyway Photoshop and GIMP for goodness sakes seem to handle grayscale files just fine. Plus, I've already got thousands of those negatives scanned, I am not rescanning all that in RGB just to satisfy Aperture. The color slide film scans don't seem to be a problem, but that's now. I think I'm being told not to count on That always being the case either.
Aperture is designed to work with images from digital cameras...
Okay...fine...film is old technology after all, Nikon isn't even making their film scanners anymore...check the prices on the few still new-in-the-box ones left out there. My CoolScan 9000 is selling for twice on the second-hand market what I paid for it new and new it wasn't cheap. And yet it's not economically viable for Nikon to continue making them. Film is dying. But I still like working with film and film cameras and I reckon I'll keep doing that until I can't get any more of it and my stash of Tri-X Pan bulk rolls runs out.
Thank you all very much for your help. I think I see what I need to do now.

Trouble with the image quality when viewing under 100%. First time posting on the forum.

Hello everyone. I am sorry we have the get acquainted this way but I am having some issues and this is one of my last options of getting help.   Allow me to explain the problem.    When viewing a file under 100% zoom, everything looks jagged like the anti aliasing is missing. Once I zoom in to 100%, everything looks the way it should. The saved file ( jpeg format for instance) is okay. I can zoom out and it still looks true to the image. The problem is related to photoshop. I installed my latest GPU drivers twice just to be sure and it was not from that.   This problem started last night and I don`t quite know how to solve it. If I work on small resolution images, it isn`t such a bad problem because I will be working on 100% zoom, but I am working on high resolution images/ paintings. Somewhere around 8000x5000 pixels thus, working at 100% is not that doable. I attached an image that shows this issue. The one on the right is the zoomed out version and the one on the left is the zoomed in version. Yes, the noise is affected by this, badly, but this started last night. up until then everything looked good even with noise or an out of this world sharpness. I can`t imagine what I could have done to trigger this.
   This being said, I am at the mercy of the more knowledgeable folks from around here. I do hope I posted this question in the right section. This is my first post here so sorry if I messed something up.   Looking forward to your replies.

Here is a simplistic view that I feel may help you understand reality.
The only time you're looking at your image pixels in Photoshop is when you're zoomed in to 100%,   There your look at the actual image pixels Photoshop has for your image at your displays resolution.
At any other zoom level you are looking a scaled image that has more or less pixels than your actual image these too are displayed at your display resolution.
The scaling done by Photoshop is done for displaying your image is done for good performance not for the best image quality a quick interpolation.   Therefore at some zoom levels image quality looks poorer than at other zoom levels.
High resolution Display have now add a new wrinkle.   User interfaces were designed for displays with resolutions around 100 PPI elements like text, icon, and other things like checkboxes, buttons etc. were created so there size would be useable are this more or less fixed 100 PPI resolution.   While Photoshop was designed to scale your images so you can work well on it is was not designed with a scalable UI. Photoshop can not scale its user interface independently from its image display display window for you displays high resolution. Photoshop's Image display area has the same resolution as the rest of Photoshop User Interface. Just like there is only one resolution in all layers in a document. CC 2014 2xUI changes that. PS UI is scaled to 1/2 resolution the image Area is at the displays actual resolution.
Photoshop CC 2014 2x UI scales all of Photoshop User Interface including the image display to 200% which is 1/2 your display resolution effectively cutting you display pixel count to 1/4 its actual pixel count.   Your once again running on a low resolution display.     If your display has a native resolution 200 PPI you're running it at 100 ppi if your display has a 300 PPI resolution you're running it at 150ppi.    Which defeats the reason of having high resolution. Which is you would like to be able to edit your images at print resolution. Adobe cc2x UI scales the UI but not the image window soa inage is 216ppi on the Surface Pro 3 the UI is large and dpoes not fit. screen
To be able to edit your images at print resolution you need a display the has a print resolution and you need and application the can scale its image display and its UI independently.
Current there is no OS interface for having multiple resolutions areas on a display and applications like Photoshop can not scale UI and Image independently. OS and Photoshop can scale what is displayed. Adobe Photoshop executable is coded in a way that it tell Microsoft Windows OS that it will handle display scaling so it can using your displays native resolution. Currently Only Photoshop CC 2014 Provides you with the option of running you display at half resolution.
Windows can scale you display to many resolution and as several presets. like 100%, 125%, 150% and like Adobe 200% half resolution.    You can make a Windows Registry and add an External Photoshop Manifest file the tell's Microsoft Windows to handle display scaling. I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 m windows machine. Its LCD has a 216PPI resolution. Windows 8.1 had 4 preset for scaling its LCD.
Surface Pro 3 LCD Display 12" IPS display 3:2 aspect ratio 9.984603532054124" Wide, 6.656402354702749" High 216.3330765278394 PPI
Microsoft Preset Display scaling
100% 2160x1440   216 PPI
125% 1728x1152   173 PPI
150% 1440x960    144 PPI SP3 Default setting
200% 1080x720    108 PPI
Most user these days has 1024x768 or better displays and Web pages are often authored for 800x600 pixels pages. So the give you a better handle on Resolution and scaling I have edit a 800x600 document with 25x25 px grid one my Surface pro 3
using Windows 4 scaling presets and captured the 2160x1140 scaled screens Only at the 100% preset does the image window have a 216ppi Also note @ 2x UI Photoshop UI doe not fit on screen
Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 2xUI Scales the UI to a display 1/2 resolution but does not scale the Image area uses actual screen resolution. Photoshop Help system info show the screen i 1/2 resilution 1080x720 but scalet the imase to the real resolution 2160x1440. however the image window is the 216ppi the ui 108ppi via scaling

Poor Image Quality -- Design View & Published Content (CP8)

If I prepare a high-quality image, picture perfect, sharp, sized to let's say 500 x 500 px in Photoshop (max JPG quality setting) and then dump into Captivate, I find that Captivate significantly degrades the image quality. It changes the sharpness of the image and destroys exposure settings like colour saturation and hue. Even if I publish to an LMS with 24-bit, no compression, it still looks degraded.
Is there any way to improve image quality?

I am on PC, not on Mac and have used this feature all the time since (not totally sure) version 5. Maybe it is a Mac bug?
This is a screenshot, I imported a Photoshop file 'IconsTips' and choose to import Layers as images, you'll see the folder with 6 images.

HDV image quality problems on capture

Hey gang! I just got my first tape shot on a Sony Z1U, and I'm trying to caputre with the M10U deck. My problem is that the footage looks fine in the camera, and looks the same when played from the deck (via component video) to two different monitors. When I capture, the image is remarkably different - darker, with muddy colors, lousy skin tones. I'm using the HDV 1080i easy setup, and I've recalibrated my cinema display to its default (calibrated was even worse!) I've also tried using HDVxDV to capture, and iMovie to see if there was something screwy with my capture settings. Any ideas?

The computer monitor is the LAST thing you want to use to judge your image quality. It will never give you a true representation of what your footage looks like:
Shane's Stock Answer #2:
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
1. Disable overlays on the canvas
2. Make sure you've rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24787
DV (and especially HDV) footage requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or NTSC monitor routed thru your camera or deck.
HOWEVER...that is the stock answer for DV, but helps explain why your quality looks bad. Unfortunately, HDV does not allow you to view your timeline in real time like DV does. HDV, being HD, requires an HD card and monitor solution:
Shane's Stock Answer #25 - HDV external Monitor Viewing
To view HDV on an external monitor you are going to need to purchase a capture card, like the ones Decklink or AJA offer. They will both play out HDV in real time. The catch is that you cannot view this on a regular TV or NTSC monitor. Since this is HD, an HD monitor will be needed.
HDV cannot be played out of FCP via Firewire because it's Long GOP structure is too taxing on your processors to spare the system resources needed to drive an external monitor.
(Wow, two Stock Answers in one post. I think this is a first.)

Poor Image Quality In FCE With Photoshop Imports

I'm using scans created in Photoshop in my current FCE project, and am extremely disappointed with the image quality. All scans are 72 pixels/inch, 720x534 pixels (changed to 720x480 for import), sharpened with Unsharp Mask. In Photoshop, they look terrific. Imported into FCE and viewed in the viewer, they look terrific. When dropped onto the canvas to add to the timeline, suddenly they look like crap. The sharpness is gone, the edges are pixelated, and most are rendered unusable. What happened? Can I fix it? Thanks in advance.
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5) FCE 1.0.1

Really!? I'm surprised, as those numbers come from the Apple Pro Training Series book on FCE. But ok, I'll redo my images at 720x540. I should still make a version at 720x480 for import, to avoid "squeezing" the image, right? Should I avoid sharpening the image at all, or just cut back on the amount (or does this depend on the image)? When you say "the canvas is a reduced display output," do you mean that this reflects the compression that occurs with the DV format? Thanks, Tom, for your help.
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Image quality reduced when scaled down on black background

I am trying to view two tracks at the same time so I have scaled them down. Once I rendered them, the quality was horrible and then I changed the background to checkerboard instead of black, which worked, but I would like a black background for viewing, so how do I fix the poor image quality problem?

I'm guessing you're making this judgement in the Canvas. You really can't. Check it on an external CRT, and make sure your render settings are all set to their highest. Just because it plays back or evven has a proxy render doesn't mean you're seeing its highest quality.
Are you saying that when you put them over a different background the quality improved? I don't know why that would be, bbut if it works then try putting a slug on V1 as a black background.
Or by checkerboard you mean you set the Canvas to a different mode...?

Reduced Image Quality

So... I've perused through looking for help on this, and it seems like many people have had this problem, but I'm not sharing in their successes.
I have an image (a group photo) that I'd like to include in a sequence (DV NTSC), and when I view it in the browser it looks stellar, but when I edit it into the timeline it looks pixelated and blurred.
I know that you're not supposed to judge image quality by looking at it in the canvas, but shouldn't an EXPORTED DV sequence look better? It doesn't.
Rendering the image doesn't help (any rendering should occur when the whole sequence is exported anyway); it clearly has something to do with the inherent reduction of quality when the high-res image is edited into my DV sequence. I've tried editing the image to an uncompressed sequence as a test with no luck.
I have some titles whose quality is also degraded when they are edited into the sequences (and exported).
I'd love some help with this.

DV degrades the photo. If you have a 3000x2500 image at 600dpi, you drop it into a FCP DV sequence it becomes 720x240 at 72dpi, and adopts the DV 5:1 compression.
Nothing you can do to avoid this...except for when you lock picture then take your DV sequence, drop it into a DV50 or uncompressed 8-bit timeline and render. Your picture will look much better.
But that only works if you are making a DVD. If you go back to DV tape then there is nothing you can do.
Shane

Image Quality Viewer vs. Canvas

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