Unsharp Images

[xIITaylorIIx]

I am totally baffled with this problem. For my vendors, I am taking shots inworld at a size of 3000 x 1556 px. I then scale them into a 1024 x 512 px image frame I preapred in photoshop.

Every time I look at the picture inword, its kind of blurry. When I look at other vendors of people's inworld store, I can zoom into the moon and still see a razor sharp image ..... for the love of me ..... what am I doing wrong?

 

P.S. I am very aware of the power of 2 rule

Edited June 10, 2018 by xIITaylorIIx
Typo

[Madelaine McMasters]

Have you tried viewing your textures in another viewer? I always keep a second viewer at the ready for situations like this. Years ago I had trouble viewing my own uploaded textures in Firestorm. The official viewer was fine, unless I'd uploaded the texture from there. In that case, Firestorm would display the texture correctly. Cache clears on both viewers fixed the problem. I came to the possibly incorrect conclusion that uploading a texture had cached it incorrectly.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Madelaine McMasters

[xIITaylorIIx]

Yes, I have, both show the same problem I have noticed this problem for ages now so it must be me as there has been a new installment and new PC in the meantime I did get that right, it MUST be power of 2 right? I mean I cant have like 617 x 439 px?

[LittleMe Jewell]

33 minutes ago, xIITaylorIIx said:

Yes, I have, both show the same problem I have noticed this problem for ages now so it must be me as there has been a new installment and new PC in the meantime I did get that right, it MUST be power of 2 right? I mean I cant have like 617 x 439 px?

Correct.  If you don't create the image that way before uploading, SL will change it during the upload.  So, if you tried to upload a 617x439 image, I'm pretty sure the size you end up with is 512x256, which of course will likely make the image look odd.

 

BTW - Do you know if others see the pictures okay and thus it is just you for some odd reason that sees them blurry?

Edited June 10, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[xIITaylorIIx]

No, other say: Nice picture but a bit unsharp .... so yes, they see the same way as I do

[LittleMe Jewell]

Maybe I have a different definition of sharp/unsharp, as they seem fine to me.  This is what I see when I'm close up on one of your shop's pictures and when I scroll out - I did screen shots rather than inworld photo to clearly show what my monitor shows me:

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

One other question -- what picture format are you saving the pictures as for uploading (bmp, jpeg, tga, png)?

[Chic Aeon]

Darling avatar in LittleMe's screenshot! 

After you resize your photo to 1024 x 512 do you SHARPEN IT SOMEHOW?  When you resize in a graphics program (at least all the ones I have used) the pixels get rearranged (possibly MORE if you are not taking your PHOTO at a multiple of your finished textures - seems likely). You then need to sharpen them before upload. 

 

I frequently use "unsharp mask" since that function has settings I can apply. You can also set parameters within your resizing window (hopefully) that let you define the sharpness.  You can, if these other methods aren't available, just use "sharpen" which I think most ALL graphics programs have.

You also need to export in a lossless format. Most folks use png.  Your graphic WILL look more blurry inworld. Guaranteed>

The other thing that the photos you admire might have in common is shooting the photo at   higher resolution. I shoot at 6000 pixels which is FOUR TIMES what you shoot at. Others use even larger  settings.  

IF you paste into a template, check and see what the resolution is on your template file. Mine are set at 300. 

 

Note that MOST folks will not be zooming into  vendors (many can't do that or  just don't) so while high rez vendor photos are great (and often required) for events, they will make vendor photos load slower (this not at the OP, just the general readership) :D.

 

 

[xIITaylorIIx]

3 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

One other question -- what picture format are you saving the pictures as for uploading (bmp, jpeg, tga, png)?

PNG

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Darling avatar in LittleMe's screenshot! 

After you resize your photo to 1024 x 512 do you SHARPEN IT SOMEHOW?  When you resize in a graphics program (at least all the ones I have used) the pixels get rearranged (possibly MORE if you are not taking your PHOTO at a multiple of your finished textures - seems likely). You then need to sharpen them before upload. 

 

I frequently use "unsharp mask" since that function has settings I can apply. You can also set parameters within your resizing window (hopefully) that let you define the sharpness.  You can, if these other methods aren't available, just use "sharpen" which I think most ALL graphics programs have.

You also need to export in a lossless format. Most folks use png.  Your graphic WILL look more blurry inworld. Guaranteed>

The other thing that the photos you admire might have in common is shooting the photo at   higher resolution. I shoot at 6000 pixels which is FOUR TIMES what you shoot at. Others use even larger  settings.  

IF you paste into a template, check and see what the resolution is on your template file. Mine are set at 300. 

 

Note that MOST folks will not be zooming into  vendors (many can't do that or  just don't) so while high rez vendor photos are great (and often required) for events, they will make vendor photos load slower (this not at the OP, just the general readership) :D.

 

 

I used teh same size again and tried 600 DPI and its already much sharper ... never ever had to use 600 DPI before lol, anyway, will give it another few tries, thank you all

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

Grab a copy of XNview from https://www.xnview.com/en/

Save your textures as square, max 1024x1024 like any game developer.

Make sure your jpg settings are this.

Trust me on this, saving to a compressed jpeg format at 75% makes your images smaller and they demonstrably load quicker.

I create event posters inworld, some get shown at The House Of V...which averages 80 guests and a whole tonne of lag.

Quite proudly my posters load before the rest of the club because they're lean & lag immune.

[Fionalein]

Compressed pictures load faster but might take more time processing... (not sure if this has a negligible effect or not on lag, any GPU gurus around who can tell us more on that one?)

Edited June 20, 2018 by Fionalein

[Rolig Loon]

It shouldn't make much difference at all, since images uploaded to SL are all automatically converted to JPEG2000 format, which is compressed.  If it does make a difference, I expect it will mean a slight loss of resolution since a file that started as JPG will be compressed twice in the process.  Others more versed in the technical details will know, I'm sure.

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

It's only for content delivery, as in from Linden lab server to you.

Your graphics card chooses what to do with them once they're on your machine, but generally any GPU overhead is insignificant compared to the memory & bandwidth savings.

Having spent a few years on the grid though I have little faith in people's ability to find the true cause of the lag they suffer, they always blame something else.

Pic from a recent Twitter conversation.

[Klytyna]

On 10 June 2018 at 9:25 PM, xIITaylorIIx said:

I used teh same size again and tried 600 DPI and its already much sharper ...

The DPI settings in image file formats are only used when PRINTING the image, as a way of setting the printed size on the paper.

DPI has NO effect on the quality of the image on screen as a general rule.

On 20 June 2018 at 9:10 PM, AlexandriaBrangwin said:

Make sure your jpg settings are this.

Trust me on this, saving to a compressed jpeg format at 75% makes your images smaller and they demonstrably load quicker.

Default compression for JPG's is usually 80 in most apps, which is why people who don't understand image file formats often complain about JPG's having "poor quality".

As for your twitter post example of 75% vs 100%, try it on 90-95%, which was always more than adequate compression for reducing 2k x 3k renders from over 2mb down to the gallery upload limits  of less than 1 mb.

HOWEVER... In terms of SL, your use of compression 75%, has NO effect on CDN delivery speeds, because...

SL automatically converts ALL uploaded images into lossless JPEG-2000, regardless of your JPG compression settings, so why lose quality with poor compression, when it generates no end user benefit, and reduces image quality.

On 20 June 2018 at 9:32 PM, Fionalein said:

Compressed pictures load faster but might take more time processing... (not sure if this has a negligible effect or not on lag, any GPU gurus around who can tell us more on that one?)

Image file formats are unpacked by software, in the CPU usually, and sent to the GPU in bitmap format, file formats are ways to STORE and TRANSMIT images, internally, they are always unpacked into rgb or rbga bitmaps for actual processing, and as previously mentioned, all SL images are in JPEG2000, compressed format anyway.

On 20 June 2018 at 9:41 PM, Rolig Loon said:

I expect it will mean a slight loss of resolution since a file that started as JPG will be compressed twice in the process

JPEG2000 is a lossless format, so theoretically, the lossless compression wont lose much quality, the biggest hits would be from...

1. Making your original image too damn big, resizing routines vary from app to app, some image editors are, surpriingly not that good at it, I tend to prefer using the lancos b filter in irfanview, with the resample option, to relying on editing apps. Remember, resizing an image downwards is an averaging process, half the size means averaging 4 pixels intop 1, turning 6k x 6k, down into a 1024 x 1024, will probably be the biggest hit in quality, unless you also...

2. Make poor choices in export format, such as, for example, a JPG with a quality setting of 75% Stick to modern image formats that are designed for digital online use like PNG, the PNG version features LOSSLESS compression, has the ability to use an Alpha channel, for transparency, works in all web browsers, so it's ideal for your store blog, or the listings on the MP, and doesn't throw away image quality, and can be imported into SL quite happily.

3. Remember that factor of 2 stuff, SL always resizes, clumsily, to the NEXT lowest factor, always manually resize before uploading, to factor 2 sizes, in a decent resizing app, don't rely on SL's rather lame resizer messing up your image for you.

 

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

I know what the science says, but you're ignoring the fact that my textures outperform everyone elses.

And that's confirmed by others so you can't say I had the texture cached.

[Alyona Su]

Textures (actual texture or pictures) in SL are the first and foremost lag problem in SL.

Always prepare your pictures as though for the Internet in 1995. Seriously. For vendors you want them to rez FAST - that means maximum 512 pixels, 256 is even better. The way to keep them sharp-looking is to run a sharpen filter (twice, sometimes) after shrinking the image. The same is true for object textures. NO ONE is going to notice all that super-fine detail you've added and why you think you need to upload 1024 pixel images (anything larger is shrunk to that by SL anyway, or at least, it used to be)

High-resolution vendor pictures are why they remain grey blocks forever and why most people with experience will shop Market Place first (and often only there). When I had an in-world store I'd actually put four products on one 512x512 image (one in each 256-pixel corner) - they rezzed FAST and four products rezzed simultaneously. @AlexandriaBrangwin gets it, (and I'm sure knows what I'm talking about).

CREATOR PRO-TIP: Your in-world marketing pictures should be 512 Pixels or smaller. The quality difference is barely negligible when done correctly. Get a clue.

Edited June 22, 2018 by Alyona Su

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

Colour space equation helps too.

You saw above I had mine at 2x2 1x1 1x1?

Those are the pixel groups the software sampled colours in.

The 2x2 meant the red channel was only recorded every 2 pixel by 2 pixel square, so the resulting red colour data was only half the size for the image.

It makes anything red appear a little jagged at times but not so you would notice.

2x2 2x2 2x2 means the colour data for the whole image is half...so you could upload a 1024x1024 and still have it cost as much as a 512x512 in terms of data delivery and system graphics handling.

Moving textures from memory to the graphics cards video memory is faster if it's lighter.

 

Also...tried uploading the same detailed wood texture to SL at 1024x1024 4 times, 25% 50% 75% and 100% JPEG.

...then I saved them back onto my computer from Firestorm.

The results were................telling!

Edited June 23, 2018 by AlexandriaBrangwin
Adding pic