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Post by fernwood on Mar 9, 2020 14:45:28 GMT -5
Need help with ID for contents of the Creatology Tumbling recharge pack my daughter found. These are smalls to the extreme. Range in size for about 1/8" to 1.25". Lots of nice Tigers Eye and Rose Quartz. I do not know what the ones on the lower left of last photo are in addition to the green and orange ones. Those are about 6.5 to 7.5 hardness. Thanks.
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Post by fernwood on Mar 9, 2020 14:46:31 GMT -5
Now why do these appear to be in focus on my computer before I post them here. Looking at them after posting, they are blurry.
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rockstock
spending too much on rocks
Member since April 2019
Posts: 472
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Post by rockstock on Mar 9, 2020 15:37:16 GMT -5
Peach/orange and green Aventurine?
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fuss
spending too much on rocks
Member since October 2018
Posts: 250
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Post by fuss on Mar 9, 2020 18:48:07 GMT -5
Now why do these appear to be in focus on my computer before I post them here. Looking at them after posting, they are blurry. Are you resizing the images in photoshop or some other editing software before you upload them here? if not it could be this website re sampling them, I dont know, I have just used the flickr method here in the past.
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Post by fernwood on Mar 9, 2020 18:58:46 GMT -5
Yes, I have been using a 2002 version of PSE which in the past worked fine. My phone camera results in huge files which I must resize and then use unsharp mask. Then save as for web. The editing software on my Iphone is incompatible with my computer. I do not have internet access on my phone.
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fuss
spending too much on rocks
Member since October 2018
Posts: 250
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Post by fuss on Mar 9, 2020 20:11:58 GMT -5
Are you using the Cloudinary option to post images here?
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Post by fernwood on Mar 10, 2020 6:12:13 GMT -5
Yes
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Post by rockjunquie on Mar 10, 2020 7:24:01 GMT -5
I agree with aventurine.
They don't really look blurry to me. Not the greatest macro focus, but not blurry.
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Post by fernwood on Mar 10, 2020 7:36:26 GMT -5
I agree with aventurine.
They don't really look blurry to me. Not the greatest macro focus, but not blurry.
I take that as a compliment as my phone does not do macro. Yes, looks like they are aventurine.
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hummingbirdstones2
fully equipped rock polisher
Vince A., 1958-2023
Member since August 2018
Posts: 1,461
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Post by hummingbirdstones2 on Mar 10, 2020 7:44:18 GMT -5
Try one next time without the Unsharp mask.
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Post by fernwood on Mar 10, 2020 7:46:03 GMT -5
My phone camera does not have a size setting. Photos are about 25 MB. When I resize them, they become blurry. That is why I am using the unsharp mask.
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herb
spending too much on rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 442
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Post by herb on Mar 10, 2020 14:16:06 GMT -5
My phone camera does not have a size setting. Photos are about 25 MB. When I resize them, they become blurry. That is why I am using the unsharp mask. 25mb for an image! Sounds like your phone is saving the images as bitmaps. See if there is a setting for saving them as jpegs. Resizing an image shouldn't really cause any blur. I see the images you posted are jpeg. Did you save them as jpegs after you resized them? If not Cloudinary is probably converting them to a lower quality jpeg. I also see that the image sizes are 432 x 432 which is pretty small. Aim for a size of 600 to 1000. Part of the problem is probably that the tiny image is getting scaled back up again to display on your screen. So you are losing details by shrinking the image so small and then losing more details when the image is scaled back up for display. You mentioned you use "save as for web" try just normal save as. The for web option can cause blurring because it is simplifying some of the image details in order to get a smaller file size. If you are saving them as jpegs, the quality level you use can also have an effect. Dont know what PSE uses but my old version of photoshop uses a 1 thru 10 quality scale. I usually choose 7.
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Post by knave on Mar 10, 2020 15:04:11 GMT -5
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Post by fernwood on Mar 10, 2020 15:19:38 GMT -5
My phone camera does not have a size setting. Photos are about 25 MB. When I resize them, they become blurry. That is why I am using the unsharp mask. 25mb for an image! Sounds like your phone is saving the images as bitmaps. See if there is a setting for saving them as jpegs. Resizing an image shouldn't really cause any blur. I see the images you posted are jpeg. Did you save them as jpegs after you resized them? If not Cloudinary is probably converting them to a lower quality jpeg. I also see that the image sizes are 432 x 432 which is pretty small. Aim for a size of 600 to 1000. Part of the problem is probably that the tiny image is getting scaled back up again to display on your screen. So you are losing details by shrinking the image so small and then losing more details when the image is scaled back up for display. You mentioned you use "save as for web" try just normal save as. The for web option can cause blurring because it is simplifying some of the image details in order to get a smaller file size. If you are saving them as jpegs, the quality level you use can also have an effect. Dont know what PSE uses but my old version of photoshop uses a 1 thru 10 quality scale. I usually choose 7. They are saved as jpg's. Default size is 42" by 42" for square. Was educing to 12" by 12". I am saving in PSE at an 8. \Will be experimenting more tomorrow.
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reynedrop
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since February 2020
Posts: 204
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Post by reynedrop on Mar 10, 2020 22:07:16 GMT -5
Sizing by inches (or cm) is misleading when you're dealing with computer images. Visual resolution is based on two things: pixels and length (inches, size, etc). Pixels are the two-dimensional dots of color and are generally square. The iPhone 11 has a resolution of 1792 x 828 pixels and a "ppi" (pixels per inch") of 326- this means that every inch of the screen is broken down in 326 pixel lengths, so every square inch is 106,276 pixels. They claim a screen size of 6.1" though so something in the math isn't working out (1792 pixels / 326ppi = 5.5"). Compare that with their iPhone 11 Pro. Screen size is 5.8" (smaller), but it claims to have a "resolution" of 2436x1125 with 458 ppi. So each square inch on the iPhone 11 Pro has 209,764 pixels. That is over TWICE the number in the regular iPhone 11. Those numbers just state what the display is capable of. But consider this: - Every pixel is ONE color only
- For a color to show up on a screen, the computer has to produce light. This means there has to be a very, very, VERY tiny "thing" to emit that light and be capable of a wide range of colors.
- That means that the iPhone 11 Pro can show SMALLER pixels than the regular iPhone 11.
So let's say you have an image that is 500x500 pixels with a ppi of 200 pixels per inch. That would end up being 2.5" x 2.5" in what we would measure/see. If you shrunk that down to 250x250 pixels (1.5" x 1.5"), you still have 200 pixels per inch, but now your photo has an issue: You can't store the 500 pixels of data. You only have 250. So it has to "combine" FOUR pixels into one (remember, pixels are two-dimensional squares).
So, if you were to then take your photo at 250x250 pixels and INCREASE the size to 500x500 pixels, your computer has to "make up" the other pixels. There are some complex algorithms for "upscaling" images, but for a basic display that doesn't "upscale," you end up with a "pixelated" image. What that means is you may still have 500x500 pixels, 2.5" x 2.5" and 200 ppi, but your pixels LOOK bigger. If you had a line of 250 pixels, all ranging from 1-250, and you re-sized it to 500, it would look like: 1-1-2-2-3-3-4-4-5-5-6-6-7-7... You get the point. Now, upscaling software/algorithms have improved, especially for TVs, but in general things "blur" when the actual image has contrast.
NOW, some screens do not have the same resolution. If you take a beautiful, high-resolution photo and put it on a display that has low resolution, your display CANNOT show off all of the pixels. So you either a) get less "clear" ("low-res") photo (because it's keeping the same size in inches and losing pixels), or b) you get a MASSIVE image (because it's keeping the same size in pixels and gaining size in inches). When you get a MASSIVE image, it probably also looks "pixelated." Again, this is because of the apparent "pixel size."
Let's take this photo of Oreo. This is 1536x2048 pixels:
This is the same photo, but 768x1024 pixels.
Now, even smaller, this is 384x512 pixels.
The size you see on all of them may be different because of how big these are. The inches are kind of irrelevant
But what happens when we try to blow up that small picture back to it's original size?
Hopefully you can see how pixelated this has become. This is without any any "upscaling" software, but I find that most editing softwares do have some kind of blurring factor.
And finally: I stole this (screenshotted it) from a pdf I found about human eye resolution. .
Ican't make this point with the photos of Oreo because I can't figure out how to make bbcode make the photos all the same exact size. But you can see from this that when you have a lower "ppi," even if the image is the same size, you get a blurry-looking photo. So, again, if you are resizing an image and losing pixels, and then upscaling the photos to a bigger size in inches, you may be "gaining pixels," but the pixels you gain won't be the same as the first image- the contrast that we see isn't "sharp" in the lower-resolution (because the "grey" pixels are more pronounced). I don't know if I'm doing a good job explaining that.
ALL of this to say: 42" x 42" doesn't really mean a whole lot on its own. The ppi matters. I have no idea about your photoshop software, but focus on pixels.
Now, let's look at this image of yours:
When I upload this into an editor, the size is 432x432 pixels. On a phone screen with a pixel density of 326ppi (iPhone 11), that would be 1-3/8" x 1-3/8" On my computer screen, measured with a tape measure, this images is 3-1/16" x 3-1/16". This means the "pixel density" is 141ppi (this is actually what my screen currently is capable of). If I sit 2 feet away from my screen, my eyes see at a max pixel density of ~300ppi, but this is smaller depending upon the viewing angle. Your image has a smaller density, so as I look at it from a straight-on view, it looks blurry because it is LESS "sharp" than my eyes see. If I get closer to the screen, it gets blurry as my eyes can view more and more pixels. If I back away from the screen, the image looks sharper.
Now, going back to screen "resolution." The iPhone 11 is 326 ppi... but the iPad (2019) has a ppi of 264. The Macbook Pro Gen 3 15" version has a ppi of 226. That means if your image has a ppi > 226, your screen won't display it at any sharper/better quality than an image at 226ppi. So like, if you had a 250ppi image and a 300ppi image, they would look the same, although the 300ppi would be "larger." That said, if your computer has to scale it down anyway to fit it on the screen, the images would look slightly different as your computer would have to determine which pixels to get rid of (as it can only display 226 per inch instead of 250 or 300). I hope that makes some sense.
As I mentioned, by computer screen has a max ppi of ~141. When I sit very close, yes, my eyes have a better visual acuity (can see sharper) than my screen allows. This means naturally, images will appear blurry or less sharp. To make an image look more "sharp," it's not necessarily about increasing PPI but changing the contrast between pixels (you can see that in the photo of the different-resolution "K"s). This is what the "sharpen" function does on a photo editor. That said, you may still notice some granulation/distortion in the photo unless you are at a further distance. And if your camera "takes" photos at a certain resolution but doesn't actually have the PPI YOU are seeing at in person, your photos may look grainy or blurry.
Just for kicks, here's your photo sized down 66% (238x238). This shows up physically smaller on my screen too, so hopefully it does on yours as well. When you size it down, the overall contrast between individual objects seems to go up, creating a sharper image. For me, because my computer will ONLY show at a max of ~141ppi, it looks sharper/less blurred because my computer has to choose pixels to "delete," and inevitably deletes some of the blurry-looking pixels.
New software is better at upscaling because it is better at determining what should be "blurred" and what should be clear, sharp marks.
TL;DR: You can't magically add pixels that aren't there. If you have a small # of pixels but a high image size, you didn't make the picture "sharper" or higher resolution; you essentially just zoomed-in on what you already have. You can make an image appear sharper by making it smaller, but it will never appear sharper by making it larger. If the image on your phone (or camera) is smaller in inches or cm than the image on your computer, it most likely will look blurry.
If you want your images displayed at 3"x3", you would want ~900x900 pixels (~300ppi) to have your image look nice, clear, and sharp on a cell phone or iPad display, and for computers, ~600x600p (~230ppi) is definitely good enough. Most people though want their images bigger than 3" on a computer screen. A 900x900p photo would look good enough as a 4"x4" image even on modern computer screens.
My personal preference is to keep my maximum length (height or width) of an image at somewhere between 700-1000 pixels. I just find this is small enough to be non-obtrusive for most computer resolutions but big enough to look nice and sharp on a phone.
Sorry that was so long. I get wordy and am not sure when I am explaining myself well enough or not.
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Post by fernwood on Mar 11, 2020 5:05:40 GMT -5
Thanks. I am starting a topic for this in the Technical Help forum.
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