After looking at Omke's screenshots, even though there was no fit/fill comparison, it is clear that his previews are pretty sharp, especially the church.

 

The difference between the trees and the church should be significant, the trees are DNG, Raw from camera with ACR set to only sharpening to preview and the PSD file is a finished file with applied complex sharpening

I've just tried the "Use Software Rendering" Bridge preference for the first time.

 

That setting is needed when your graphic card (especially the VRAM amount) is not sufficient

Meanwhile, I want to know why hardware rendering is producing a softer preview. I shall have to investigate my graphics card properties, and do some googling.

 

See above, you might be on to something. Minimum requirement for CS5 is:

102 4x 768 display (1280 x 800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL video card, 16-bit color, and 256 MB of VRAM

And for CS6 they are the same but with addition to VRAM: 512 MB recommended.

I bought a new Graphic Card this year ( ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB VRAM) My older one (from Nvidea, don't remember which type) had only 256 MB and I wasn't able to use Open CL in CS6.

The new ATI did speed up things a lot

I am using an ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 1GB of RAM, which is a less powerful version of the 5770, but well within system requirements, so I doubt this is the problem. I am also using the latest driver, although I have witnessed this preview softness issue for at least a couple of years.

Well, upgrading Grading Card as the easy solution of the problem did indeed sounded to good to be true

Does Hardware Rendering let the graphics card do the Fit to Screen resizing, I wonder? Certainly, setting software rendering improves preview sharpness. I'm leaving this on for the time being.

 

I have no knowledge about that subject.

I have installed ATI Catalyst Control Center and changed all user settings to their highest quality, but none of it seems to make any difference to hardware-rendered preview sharpness.

 

Here we part again, my only action for latest drivers is upgrading Mac OSX and I have to say that is an easy job

And how about an other easy solution, since I'm under the impression you use Windows why not switch to Mac...

(I know, also to good to be true but nevertheless it was worth a try)

I just came across this thread, and have the same experience as Yammer P and others - full screen previews are often fuzzy, and inadequate to assess proper focus, requiring a click for 100% preview.  I have enabled full-screen, High-Quality, etc. to obtain the best quality.  I have seen this for quite some time, both with CS5, and now with CS6, and have often speculated to myself that it's a mismatch between the resolution of the full-screen preview, and how it is 'scaled' on a particular display.  I have not tried disabling hardware rendering, but will try that when I'm home.

And I haven't experimented with this systematically, so can't be sure, but it seems that the softness issue is worse after I crop an image (despite the fact that I do see that the preview image is re-created).

I'm just wondering if any other solution has been found to this issue?  As many have commented, this is a pretty crucial, fundamental area for photographers use of this program, and it really needs to be definitely fixed and addressed for any who encounter this problem.

I would have PM'd Yammer P on this, but that doesn't seem to be an option in this forum?

Thanks.

Thanks for the quick reply.  Unfortunately, it's what I was expecting - no definitive solution.

The important thing, as you've pointed out in a prior post, is to be aware of this, and make sure to check at 100% before discarding an image because it appeared soft on the full screen preview.

I have set up an "idea" at photoshop.com feedback. Please support this by adding your +1s.

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/generate_monitor _size_previews_to_fit_in_bridge

I don't know if i have understand well,

Presently, Bridge generates "monitor size previews" based on the longest dimension of your display. This causes poor sharpness with full-screen 3:2 and 4:3 landscape-format images on widescreen displays and projectors, due to resampling to fit.

 

It would be better if it generated a preview size which fits the display exactly (e.g. 1200 pixels tall on a 1920x1200 display), or, even better, a user-defined display window (e.g. 1400x1050 for a projector). This way, a cached preview could be displayed at 100% and retain sharpness.

but is this feedback just talk about widescreen display, my two screen are old but realy good screen and format 4:3, and i always have the matter in all of my pictures

Ok thanks.

It realy is amazing, that choice of adobe is totaly inapprehensible, because if i understand well, it is a choice.

It is just a lost of time in the picture work and select process. I was thinking that  adobe photoshop and bridge were developped to increase the product.

Am I wrong ????????

You says that the picture is soft and not sharp, but my hq preview are always not just soft but realy fuzzy and not a little. It is realy not acceptable that we have to display the picture at 100% to know if it is realy sharp or fuzzy.

Photoshop isn't a freeware, and it is expensive... I like it but it is a little too much, i can't believe this choice. 

Am I wrong ????????

 

Here is the problem, I say you are wrong because I have tack sharp HQ previews (see my screen shots in post 35 -page 1- of this long thread) but for some reason you still don't have this behavior.

You says that the picture is soft and not sharp, but my hq preview are always not just soft but realy fuzzy and not a little. It is realy not acceptable that we have display the picture at 100% to know if it is realy sharp or fuzzy.

 

If you are sure you have the latest update for Bridge (at this time 5.0.2.4) and your Graphic card drivers are al up to date I would try to reset Bridge totally.

As a Mac user I don't know the same locations on Windows but you can see this location in the preferences of Bridge (cache / location and inhere you will see the path to find it).

Quit Bridge and delete the cache file for Bridge manually by dragging it to the trash. Reset the preferences again by holding down control key and choose reset preferences.

Then when Bridge has started first reset your workspace and try a folder with a few images (best prepare this before) and see if works correctly this time. By default Bridge is set to always HQ preview and this should also be the case after resetting preferences.

Also check if your central cache file is on the same disk as the application (your start up disk).

Export cache to folder is not the best way to use cache and it is preferred for full screen to set the option for monitor sized previews to on but not all users do profit from this as Yammer P already stated.

Here is the way I see it.

As I have already shown, hardware rendering of full-screen previews can produce poor results, and make it difficult to judge image sharpness. The 'poorness' varies with resampling amount (in a chaotic way, due to quantisation effects), and graphics hardware.

This would not be a problem if Bridge produced true "monitor-sized" previews. But it doesn't. It produces previews based on primary display pixel width, THEN makes the graphics chip resample (on the fly) to fit the display exactly. This is where the error is introduced in some cases.

It's difficult to tell how sharp Omke's full-screen preview is because it was resampled for this forum, and there is no fill-screen version for comparison. So, I'm still not 100% convinced that Macs are immune.

Wow! They are very soft. Much worse than mine, but not so bad it looks like a cache problem.

Having said that, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. Are the first two images actual-size pixel-for-pixel sections of full-screen previews (shrink to fit)? Is there any/much difference with Software Rendering (preferences/advanced)?

infos@guewen.net wrote:

 

Display resolution : 1600 / 1200

Pictures : with canon 40d (10 Mega Pixels) : 3888 x 2592

with canon 7d (18 MP) : 5184 x 3456

with canon 1ds Mark ii (16 MP) : 4992 x 3328

By my calculations, your monitor-sized previews will all be 1600 x 1067 pixels, which should fit in your 1600 x 1200 display exactly. You can verify this by looking in subfolders of this folder:

C:\Users\-username-\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Bridge CS6\Cache\1024

(the path is shown in Bridge preferences/cache settings)

If they are not this size, then something is wrong. Try looking at them using your other photo viewer, full screen. Are they just as bad?

I have pretty much stayed out of this discussion as "fuzzyness" seems so subjective.  The some of the pictures shown exhibit fuzzyness but what is the "standard".  And the pictures themselves may or may not be sharp to start with, or just difficult to see the less than sharp intpretation.  I would be more inclined to use a standard test imagae which everyone could download and then send in a test shot at XXX magnification on full screen.  Here is a link to one I tired.  It is a 1.8 meg jpeg.  http://www.gpsinformation.org/jack/photo-test/pics/iso-rag.jpg

Here is a screen save taken at full screen using space bar.  I use embedded thumbnails, 100% previews off.  Is this fuzzy?

Message was edited by: Curt Y  Here is the website if the above does not work.  http://www.gpsinformation.org/jack/photo-test/pics/lens-tests.html

I don't see any difference with or without software rendering.  But then I am probably not as critical as you.

If you are sure you have the latest update for Bridge (at this time 5.0.2.4) and your Graphic card drivers are al up to date I would try to reset Bridge totally.

 

yes i did it about 3 days ago

 

Quit Bridge and delete the cache file for Bridge manually by dragging it to the trash.

i did it

Reset the preferences again by holding down control key and choose reset preferences.

 

?? I don't understand how you reset preferences

Also check if your central cache file is on the same disk as the application (your start up disk).

i did it

Export cache to folder is not the best way to use cache and it is preferred for full screen to set the option for monitor sized previews to on but not all users do profit from this as Yammer P already stated.

Nothing has changed

Here are my screenshots, converted to PNG and from my 30" Cinema display (2560 x 1600 pixels, looks very sharp to me, hope the DNG on this page will reflect what I see on my system

Preview panel:

And full screen (option to generate monitor sized preview set to on and my 1024 cache folder shows files with 2560 pixels at the longest side ):

infos@guewen.net wrote:

 

The screenshot 1

The screenshot 2

 

I don't know now the difference whith software rendering, the other is fastone image viewer

The first screen shot is pretty awful. I thought mine weren't so good, but yours and Curt's make mine look fantastic.

One observation: your "screenshots" are 1601 x 1068 pixels. You already said your screen was 1600 x 1200 pixels. Something is not quite right there.

 

One observation: your "screenshots" are 1601 x 1068 pixels. You already said your screen was 1600 x 1200 pixels. Something is not quite right there.

because it is a screenshot of 2 screens, i let one pixel of the second display when i cut it.

Omke Oudeman wrote:

 

Here are my screenshots, converted to PNG and from my 30" Cinema display (2560 x 1600 pixels, looks very sharp to me

Omke, the most effective way to show sharpness is to compare your 'spacebar preview' with a 'Fill slideshow'.

Try Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-L first, and set to "Scaled to Fill", then "Play" the image and do a screen capture. This effectively displays the '1024' cached jpeg at 100%.

You can then compare the sharpness of the 1024 jpeg and the full-screen preview. In a perfect world they should look exactly the same.

I must admit though, that I'm more than a little jealous of your 30" 2560 x 1600 display, and suspect that you may have a natural advantage with such a high resolution.

because it is a screenshot of 2 screens, i let one pixel of the second display when i cut it.

Meaning you have bridge running on 2 screens??

This is a whole different matter because there ave been more issues with dual screens. Have you tried to exchange screens, On a Mac there is a setting to make one the main screen, must be also something in Windows I would think, can you try to change them or view the panel on the other screen to see if this has the same result?

Omke Oudeman wrote:

 

This is a whole different matter because there ave been more issues with dual screens. Have you tried to exchange screens, On a Mac there is a setting to make one the main screen, must be also something in Windows I would think, can you try to change them or view the panel on the other screen to see if this has the same result?

I run on two screens of differing sizes. My primary is 1920x1200, my secondary is 1280x1024. In Windows 7, you can select which screen is the "main display", and then decide whether to "extend" or "duplicate" the desktop (or use only 1 display). I would imagine that the only sensible option for photo work is "extend".

"Duplicate" might be useful for projectors, but I have seen what happens when "duplicate" is used with two different-sized displays, and it isn't pretty.

Guewen has two 1600x1200 displays, so, as long as this statement is correct, and both display sizes are set correctly in Windows then it should work just fine. Unless of course there is a graphics driver issue.

Omke,

On the new Thunderbird display, you can remove the glass and not have it. And you can use http://www.macframes.com/ to frame the monitor. I decided to go with an NEC MultiSync PA241w monitor because I am still using a MacPro. I had the 23" Apple Cinema Display. I can say that I too have to press the spacebar to get 100% previews and was part of this conversation but just got tired of looking for the reason. Prior to CS6 I did not have this problem. I have not tried Scaled to Fit versus Scaled to Fill. I just press the space bar. I blame Apple and just move on. But you can get the new monitor and remove the glass that is held on by magnets.

Randal