Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
vivekman2006 wrote:I am not sure if this is the right thread for my observation, but searched the forum and couldn't find another thread. Please let me know if there is another ongoing discussion for the issue.
The photos on Airliners.net look pretty terrible on Retina display Macs. I have observed this for all photos irrespective of their size/resolution. The same photos look fine on older non-Retina Macs. It is as if the photos are being "stretched" or "zoomed in" beyond 100% Is this the same issue being discussed above? Or has anyone else experienced the same issue?
Is this a site related issue or is there something I can do on my Mac to make the photos look like they are supposed to look like?
Vivek
dvincent wrote:It depends on the browser you use.
If you use Safari, it understands retina and non-retina elements. If a photo is "non-retina," it will get a 2x scaling. It might look a little softer, but it won't be blocky as it's not nearest-neighbor. This is the system-level scaling algorithm, it's the same if you opened the image up in Preview.
dvincent wrote:For images to look good on Retina displays, people would need to start uploading at least at 2x native resolution. So if you're used to 1024 wide, you'd need to upload at 2048 wide... which a.net forbids. Uploading at higher resolutions is difficult because screeners screen on 1x screens, not 2x screens, and a 1920x1080 on a 1x looks much, much larger than on a 2x where it appears at "half size" but twice the pixel density. Images tend to look better with more pixel density, and things might actually screen BETTER at 2x versus 1x... but that's a different kettle of fish.
dvincent wrote:The site would also need to be rewritten to detect 1x or 2x displays, and how to handle images at certain resolutions. Say anything that's less than 1920 wide doesn't get the 2x treatment. This isn't impossible to do as major photo sharing websites are able to handle this... but this website is held together by bailing wire and speed tape.
dvincent wrote:On the other hand photographers might not want to upload 2048 wide images, as that starts getting to around 4MP and you could make a reasonable small print out of it and people may not be interested in giving away that kind of quality. People might want more stringent watermarking capabilities if such things were offered.