MacBook Pro Retina display resolution problems

[Ignacio Yufera]

I just got a Retina Display MacBook Pro 15" and am quite puzzled about the screen resolution. At the default screen res, photos look awful. Apparently, the way retina display functions makes the effective res down from 2800x1800 to something like 1490x900; it is necessary to manually change the res to at least 2048x1280 (ideally back to 2800x1800, using third-party software!), but then screen elements become ridiculously small.

I have read reports by photographers who LOVE the retina screen... Am I doing this wrong? Anyone else having this kind of trouble?



http://macperformanceguide.com

[arash_hazeghi]

No you are not doing anything wrong. The MBP ritna display is useless for photography IMO and those "photographers" just don't know what they are talking about. As of today only a handful of apps like PhotoShop support the display in native mode i.e. 2800X1800. Anything else is interpolated and scaled so it will look terrible. Even in native mode pixels are way too small for telling critical parameters such as sharpness...

It doesn't work for me either so you are not alone :) too bad because it's a great machine otherwise.

[Ignacio Yufera]

Thanks Arash, just what I thought. I passed the machine to my wife...

[Sabyasachi Patra]

I am happy that a day before the Retina was announced, I moved in and bought the 17 inch Macbook Pro. They have shelved the 17 inch. Due to the increased resolution the font will look smaller in the retina. I guess you need to adjust that. Is there a way to selectively adjust the font?

[Roger Clark]

Even in native mode pixels are way too small for telling critical parameters such as sharpness...

I don't understand this. Given a print, one at 72 ppi and one at 300 ppi, people can easily see the 72ppi print is soft. The "retina" display just moves display technology closer to print resolution. And to evaluate sharpness on a computer, just zoom in to 200% if you are having trouble seeing small details.

FYI Sharp has developed a new LCD technology that about doubles the resolution (pixels per inch up to 498 ppi) of the retina. Reports say people could tell the Sharp display appears noticeably sharper than the retina. They are reportedly introducing a 31.5 inch 8-megapixel monitor and smaller higher density monitors and LCDs for smart phones and tablets next year.

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

Print and display are two different technologies, it's difficult to compare them directly. If you go to an Apple store and look at the retina displays it is easy to see what the problem is....judging critical sharpness at non-native size is very difficult IMO.

I personally can't tell the difference when things get smaller than 120dpi for display which is the standard professional SIPS panels. Retina is 220dpi.

For prints, 72dpi made a big difference vs. 300dpi in the past because there were gaps between the printed dots in the old printers. Today's high-end printers print almost a continuous stream of droplets regardless of input resolution....

[Roger Clark]

Print and display are two different technologies, it's difficult to compare them directly. If you go to an Apple store and look at the retina displays it is easy to see what the problem is....judging critical sharpness at non-native size is very difficult IMO. .

I agree that interpolated (non-native size) monitor views suck. My wife has a retina display (ipad), and I think it is great--photos are stunning.

I personally can't tell the difference when things get smaller than 120dpi for display which is the standard professional SIPS panels. Retina is 220dpi.

For prints, 72dpi made a big difference vs. 300dpi in the past because there were gaps between the printed dots in the old printers. Today's high-end printers print almost a continuous stream of droplets regardless of input resolution....

I've done blind tests with prints made at 150, 300 and 600 ppi (starting testing over 10 years ago). In good light (e.g. bright office light), more than 90% of people can tell the 600 ppi print is sharper than the 300 ppi print, and in dim light (e.g. indoor room would a couple of 100-watt equivalent bulbs) everyone could still see the difference between the 150 and 300 ppi prints, but most could not tell the difference between 300 and 600 ppi. With a backlit computer monitor, the monitor is the light, so seeing the difference between 120, 220 and 500 should be easy for most people.

Roger

[arash_hazeghi]

Detail looks very sharp but way too small. Even photos that are slightly out of focus look sharp on retina. If you process photos on retina they will come out soft on other screens and in large prints. It's not ideal for critical photography work IMO.

[Roger Clark]

Detail looks very sharp but way too small. Even photos that are slightly out of focus look sharp on retina. If you process photos on retina they will come out soft on other screens and in large prints. It's not ideal for critical photography work IMO.

So you are saying that the retina has a higher MTF. We had the same problem in the transition from CRTs (low MTF) to LCDs (higher MTF), and there is a fair variability in MTF among LCD displays. One needs to process for the target viewing device.

Roger

[Tom Graham]

Unless I stand corrected, I read dpi as "dots per inch" which refers to printers and their dot ink patterns/resolution. While ppi is "pixels per inch" which are the number of light sources or receptors for monitors/TVs or cameras. DPI and PPI are not interchangable terms.
Tom

[Roger Clark]

Unless I stand corrected, I read dpi as "dots per inch" which refers to printers and their dot ink patterns/resolution. While ppi is "pixels per inch" which are the number of light sources or receptors for monitors/TVs or cameras. DPI and PPI are not interchangable terms.
Tom

Yes, Tom. I only referred to ppi, whether print or monitor. it takes several dpi to make a printed pixel with printers like inkjets. Different printers and their drivers also influence MTF on the print with some printers delivering finer detail than others.

Roger

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Roger, Tom, Arash and Ignacio,

dealing with the same prob, more or less. What I have found on the Internet was this: http://www.planetquark.com/2012/03/14/132-ppi-72-dpi-264-ppi-what-image-resolution-should-you-use-the-for-new-ipad/

*****
132 ppi? 72 dpi? 144? 264 ppi? What image resolution should you use for the new iPad with Retina display?


Bottom line, what resolution is ideal for the iPad and what to do now for the NEW iPad (with Retina display)? And I am sure, like the original poster, most of us heard the rule to use “72 dpi” (which should be ppi of course) when designing for screen. The 72 dpi you hear a lot results from 1) the misunderstanding about dpi and ppi (dots and pixels) and 2) monitors historically having a resolution of 72 ppi. By the way, modern monitors have much more — the Retina display of the new iPad uses 264 ppi.
So what’s the best resolution for designing for tablets?
If you are interested in the background and exhaustive explanation, then please read this excellent blog post, which my colleague Sarbjit referenced: The Myth of DPI
If you just want to hear the bottom line, my advice is:
Forget resolution. Use pixels.
That means if you want to use a picture fullscreen on the iPad 2, make sure it has 1024 x 768 pixels. For the new iPad? Twice as many pixels in both directions (2048 x 1536 pixels). Resolution? It doesn’t matter: use any. (For Print of course that’s a completely different story.)
*****

My question is: Do we have now to resize all the images which go into our website for retina displays, that the images are displayed good as well ?

Ciao
Anette

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Anette,

I do not understand what your question is.

I cannot work on a retina display because as I said detail/images are too small when viewed at native size. Here is an example, the image you see is 1500 pixels wide which is 60% width of my 30" LCD. This is how small it becomes on a small 15" retina display when viewed at native size (1:1). It is useless IMO.


Most photos become as small as postage stamps on this screen. To get around this Apple runs their display at a virtual resolution of 1400 pixels. It interpolates photos and then expands them to fill the screen. They look terrible and pixelated to my eyes. it is like taking the image above and expanding it by 2X on each side using a linear interpolation.

Retina is great for text rendering because text is vector graphics and there is no pixalation. But IMO it ruins bitmap graphics.


Good luck

[Tom Graham]

Perhaps I'm just restating A_H point, but perhaps the way my (old) monitor works as an a example may help???

My monitor is a NEC2070NX, 1600x1200pixels. Its screen size is 16x12 inches. Thus its resolution is 100 pixels per inch. (But is "resolution" the correct word to use? Should it be "density"?)
Now lets say were talking BPN, an image of 1024 wide. On my monitor it is 10.24 inches wide, nicely viewable size for me. (And I actually measured it with a ruler).
But if I had a Retina display of 264ppi, the 1024 wide image would be shown as 3.9 inches wide. Rather small as A_H shows.

Going the other way, if on a Retina I work on a nice size image appearing 10 inches wide, it will be 2640 pixels wide. So for BPN it will have to be resized to 1024 pixels.
Which perhaps begs the question of how did BPN choose an image width of 1024 pixels? (But no matter, I'm happy with it as is)

I read (quickly) the article AM refers to "The Myth of DPI" - http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010...e-myth-of-dpi/
It does not however (I think) say anything about computer monitor/screen resolution. Only about screen size.
So I did a google on "monitor screen resolution" and of the six or so referred listings I looked at ALL talked about screen size, XXXXxXXX pixels.
But one article said pixel resolution has come to means size but what you really want is pixel density.
Another google for "density" was more helpful, many listings discussing pixel density. This led me to references on ppi or ppcm (cm - centimeter) for many makes of monitors.
Anyway . . . . .

Tom

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Tom and Arash,

Arash, my question is very simple. For the iPad retina the size is 2048px longest side, that this iPad Retina shows your images best.
Now my question is. If I want that my images are best shown also on the new iPad, do I have to put my images on my website with 2048px longest side?
To figure that out.
I posted an image on my website with 1800px longest side, went down to the Apple shop and took a Retina Laptop and the new iPad Retina. Opened in both devices the same image on my website. Fun part was that on the iPad, (not the Mini, that has no Retina) I could see a bit quality loss. But the Retina on the Laptop showed it perfect.

But that you cannot work with images on a Retina Laptop is quite some crap. There I really do wonder, if "Apple did not calculated that in the box"!
That is quite strange to me, since over here in Europe they made such a big deal when it came out, that photographers would love it. But when I hear that you get a post stamp on a big file, well never will get one than.
Or I just grab a raw file and stop by again at the shop and have a look of what you are talking about. I am sure the boys will love this in the shop. I sired on a big discussion yesterday with your prob. Sadly I had no file in my pocket, bugger. But will check next week.
Thought of buying myself a little Laptop with Retina to take along trips, but now, I better check it through>

Hope you can find a solution.

Tom, I am digging a bit deeper in what you have written above. That is quite interesting, but there must be a solution somewhere

Ciao
Anette

[Anette Mossbacher]

Arash, found this one:

http://www.zdnet.com/sizing-up-the-r...on-7000000089/

Of course, Adobe Photoshop CS (or any other version) isn't yet compatible with the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Tobie offered an interesting side-by-side comparison of images in the Retina-compatible Preview application and Photoshop CS6. He predicted a free update for CS6 but not for CS5.

When Apple announced the Retina display MacBook Pro, one of the applications which they demonstrated with it was Photoshop. But not a release version of Photoshop. The current release version of CS6 opens images at the same size, and the same resolution, as on a non-Retina display MBP. In comparison, Apple’s own Preview app opens images at half the width and height as 100 percent view, and displays all the pixels in the image at that size.

He writes that the Retina gamut is impressive, very close to sRGB, and much improved over the previous MacBook Pro screen. When combined with its other features, the Retina makes a big difference for photography.

This gamut normalization and enlargement will do wonders for using MacBooks for photography work, and will even make advanced image editing possible. Other factors that are improved on the new Retina display will also be important, including its much improved viewing angle, and its reduced reflectivity. The Retina display is, simply put, the biggest advance ever, in laptop screens for photography and video work; and would be even without the resolution increase.

In a post on calibration and photography, Tobie said that the Retina Display fits into the Standard Gamut, White LED backlight category for hardware calibration systems.