Very disappointed with ACDSee 7 image display quality!!

I posted a message a few weeks ago about the lack of image display
quality with ACDSee 6.0 compare to ThumbsPlus and Photoshop album.

At the time, someone from ACDsee kindly posted a message saying 7.0
will be released soon and it contains updated image display routine.

So finally 7.0 have been released. I was very excited and downloaded
it and tried it. Much to my surprise, the "improvements" in image
display quality seems to be rather insignificant and the image display
quality still pales in comparison to ThumbsPlus 6/7 and Photoshop
Album. In fact, I don't see any difference between ACDSEe v6 and v7.

How do I judge image quality? I usually view my image in full screen
mode, fit to screen, kind of like what you see when you do a slide
show. With ACDSee, some of my images appears soft compare to what I
see in ThumbsPlus. If I resize the actual image to my screen
resolution, then the resized image matches what I see in ThumbsPlus,
and is noticibly sharper than what ACDSee displays with the original
image using the new "bicubic" resampling method. Which makes me
wonder, is it really bicubic? Or did they just change the option name?

Picture is worth a thousand words, so I will post one example where
the difference in display quality becomes quite apparent.

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...82300_0128.jpg
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...128_resize.JPG

The picture itself is rather simple, I think the focusing could've
been a little better, but it does show the difference rather well.

1. download both images into an empty folder.

2. using acdsee 6, 7, or whatever version, set to full screen mode,
fit to screen, and view both images. (If your screen resolution is not
1027x768, then you need to resize the original image to whatever
screen resolution you have using acdsee)

3. now, press space bar and toggle between the two images. The
difference in sharpness is very apparent. Pay special attention to the
pearl like necklace and the wood chips next to the lady's foot. On the
resized image, the necklace appears noticeably sharper than what
ACDSsee renders with the larger image.

4. now do the same with ThumbsPlus, you will see that there's no
difference between the display quality of the two images.

I am very disappointed, what ACDsee uses for image display resize is
obviously not bicubic resampling, or some cheap version of it (?).
Come on ACDSee, you cannot spend all your time on adding (useless)
extra features while make no improvements in the core display engine!!

It frustrates me most that when I use ACDSEe to actually resize the
image, it does look pretty good.

Raymond

wrote:
I posted a message a few weeks ago about the lack of image display
quality with ACDSee 6.0 compare to ThumbsPlus and Photoshop album.

At the time, someone from ACDsee kindly posted a message saying 7.0
will be released soon and it contains updated image display routine.


I was the original ACD Systems' poster that you speak of, and I do
apologize. I assumed that improvements made would fix the issue you
speak of.


I am very disappointed, what ACDsee uses for image display resize is
obviously not bicubic resampling, or some cheap version of it (?).
Come on ACDSee, you cannot spend all your time on adding (useless)
extra features while make no improvements in the core display engine!!

It frustrates me most that when I use ACDSEe to actually resize the
image, it does look pretty good.

Raymond

With the detailed instructions on how to reproduce this, we will attempt
to get a better implementation in an upcoming release. Thank you for
supplying us with the images. I will ensure this gets noted in our
system at work.


ACD Systems Homepage: http://www.acdsystems.com
ACD Systems Support: http://forums.acdsystems.com

--
James Addison
http://www.pjsoft.ca

writes:

Picture is worth a thousand words, so I will post one example where
the difference in display quality becomes quite apparent.

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...82300_0128.jpg
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...128_resize.JPG

How are you displaying these? The "resized" image is 768x1024, not
1024x768. Neither one will display at 100% without cropping or
resampling on a 1024x768 screen.

On my machine, the full-size image actually looks better using ACDSEE
2.43 (the "Classic" version). My screen resolution is 1152x960, and
when displayed in normal mode with title bar and status bar, the
full-size 1200x1600 image gets resampled to exactly 600x800, 50%
scale. The 2:1 resampling ratio gives a nice clean-looking image
despite the program using cheap nearest-neighbour resampling. The
smaller image is displayed at 78% scale, which does not give a nice
integer resampling ratio, and there are jaggy edges in the roof, the
pearl necklace looks like it's a string of mismatched sizes and colours
of pearls, and the ground under her feet simply appears weird.

Using Irfanview instead, both images appear identical on screen. (I
have the "Use resample function for fit-options and full-screen mode"
box checked).

Basically, Irfanview can be told to use the same algorithm when
downsizing for screen display as it uses for permanent downsizing of
images, while ACDSEE 2.43 (and 7, by the sound of your report) uses a
faster but poor-quality downsizing for screen display.

Because of this, I use Irfanview as my default single-image display
program, even though it takes a while on my P3-700 system. ACDSEE's
image quality is simply unacceptable for any sort of critical viewing.
On the other hand, I use ACDSEE to browse a whole directory full of
images; its ability to load and decode the next image while viewing
the current one speeds up the process a lot, and I prefer its user
interface. I'd really like to be able to use ACDSEE for everything, but
will not as long as its screen display quality is inferior to other
programs.

It made sense to use "quick and dirty" nearest-neighbour downsampling
when PCs had 25 MHz and 200 MHz CPUs (and Irfanview still does that by
default). But when many people have 2-4 GHz CPUs, they really ought to
be able to use some of that CPU power to get good-looking screen images.
Irfanview allows you to choose that (with a further choice among several
different resampling filters), but it seems ACDSEE does not yet.

Dave

wrote:

[....]

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...82300_0128.jpg
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...128_resize.JPG


....an absolutely fetching dress she has on.


[....]


--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten'

wrote:

[....]

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...82300_0128.jpg
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~chiry/...128_resize.JPG


....an absolutely fetching dress she has on.


[....]


--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten'

James,

Can you help me with the following problem. I have asked this newsgroup
before, but no ones the answer.

After several editing sessions using the ACDSee 6.0 editor I ended up
with several pages in the TIFF image file.

How do I delete the pages that I don't want.

There is nothing in the manual about this.