Image Browsers

Being not very computer minded I am hoping someone can help.
When looking at photos on the copy of silkypix I got with my K100D super, I am noticing a sort of "jagged edge" to some straight lines like roofs or cables etc. At 100% they are not there, but when I want to look at the photo in full then there they are. Is there a setting or something I can change or must I put up with this?

Rob

When I look at images at "fit to screen" on my copy of the Pentax browser software the magnification is automatically set to 22.92% and yes, it does show jagged lines. These will disappear at magnifications that are straight divisions of 100%, ie; 50%, 25%, 12.5%, etc.

I find a good compromise for browsing to be 25%, I get nice smooth images and just lose a tiny bit of each picture top and bottom. This is in no way unique to the Pentax software, all image editing/viewing programmes will have difficulty displaying images at sizes that are shrunk to an "odd" percentage.

This is entirely due to the quick way the image is scaled.

Some software has options for adjusting scaling quality varying from quick to best. You may find an option to adjust it.

Properly scaled images shouldn't lose quality.

Either I double-click to get a 100% view or I just ignore any jagged lines while working in Silkypix (full version).

To see what the final image will look like, I create TIFF or JPEG - of the desired size* - and view it with IrfanView**. Then I go back to Silkypix if any further work is needed. After it's been done once, the conversion and resizing procedure is repeated with just two clicks - so it's not a lot of hassle.

* A size no larger than will fit my screen

** A free, versatile and fast image viewer

There may be one but I haven't noticed a setting like that in Silkypix yet. Trouble is that, even on a fast computer, Silkypix is already pretty slow at creating an image due to the amount of work it does. I've just got used to it.

Thanks for that everyone

I've just tried in silkypix at 25%, 30%, 40% & 50% and I'm still getting the same problem.

It's also worth noting that Silkypix updates the image while you are looking at it.

When you change a setting, the view goes "scrunchy" (for want of a better word), and then it will update the image in blocks according to the noise reduction and sharpening settings you have set. Depending on the speed of the computer, and the combination of settings this could take up to 20 seconds.

Also worth mentioning is that even Photoshop goes odd when viewed at non-divisible zoom sizes (eg 33%). In PS you should view at 50%, 25%, 12.5% etc to get a real feel for the image.

And finally, anything other than 100% is an approximation of the image You should use those non-100% views to judge colour, composition, etc - but not the detail

There is more to it than that... but that might help
Matt

It might be worth noting that for browsing images (i.e. just look what's there or find a certain pic) SilkyPix is not the best application.
For this purpose I use Google's Picasa which is pretty quick and does show RAW files.

Try Faststone or IrfanView. Both free, and to my mind rather better than Picasa.

They both display Raw files.

G