Adobe support today confirmed me that this is a new feature in PSE 11: When you press F11 in organizer, the full-screen image that you view actually comes from a pre-stored thumbnail with lower resolution. Only after you watch the picture in full-screen at 100%, it loads the full resolution image, which is why there is another loading delay in that step. This has been changed from earlier versions including PSE 10, apparently in order to save memory and make the program faster.

However, effectively this means that after all the work a photographer did, using expensive equipment in order to get sharp, high-resolution images, the PSE 11 organizer lets them watch you in full screen only in thumbnail quality!! (Unless each time you click first to  100% view, and then back to "fit to screen" view.)

They have  taken this up to the next higher support layer, at least. I hope that  they at least make an option to load the full-quality picture right away  when pressing F11. (Like it was in all previous PSE versions.)

Hi,

the image won't load completely after pressing F11, independently on whether you wait for a while or not. It will be based on a lower-resolution thumbnail, and only when you go to 100% view the image will be fully loaded.

I am viewing jpg images, large resolution, 4000*3000 or above.

Yes, it is the same if you use the "slideshow" button instead of pressing F11.

Best regards,

polarhki

- Update:

* Adobe's senior support level has replied to me about this issue as follows:

"Thank you for contacting Adobe.

When you press the F11 button, Organizer 11 uses the Bicubic
interpolation mainly because it is less processor intensive compared to
Bicubic Sharper, and it helps to create the preview on the fly, rather
than based on the thumbnail cache.

When you zoom out from the 100% view, Elements Organizer uses Bicubic
Sharper. This is because Bicubic Sharper is used for image reduction, so
if the 100% view is larger than the available screen space, it will need
to shrink. The Bicubic Sharper images may look more crisp however, Like
any sharpening algorithm, Bicubic Sharper introduces halos and
edge-enhancement artifacts. Those halos are typically slight, but any
further sharpening (which you'll need when preparing an image for print,
for example) will exaggerate them.This is expected behavior. The
Organizer isn't great for determining exact quality, I recommend you to
use Elements Editor for this purpose.

Thank you,
Bobby Johnson,
Adobe Technical Support."


* My reply on this to Adobe is:

"Hello Bobby,

thank you for your reply. Now at least we are talking about the same thing.

Why I am wondering about the choice to use the "Bicubic" algorithm when pressing F11 in PSE 11 is that all previous versions of PSE that I owned (which spans from PSE 6 to PSE 10) did use the "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm right away when pressing F11. So apparently Adobe didn't worry about processor intensity of this algorithm then, and computers are getting all the time more powerful.

It is true that in some situations, the "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm may introduce halos and edge-enhancement artifacts, as you write. On the other hand, especially on smaller resolution screens, the results of the "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm may look more crisp and lively, while the ones of the "Bicubic" algorithm may look more flat and lack fine detail. This is not only my personal opinion, but as I have brought up this topic in several forums, I can see that I am not alone here.

So assuming that the question about preferring "Bicubic Sharper" or "Bicubic" as a default algorithm when pressing F11 is partly a matter of taste, and partly a matter of the hardware the user has available, why can Abobe not give the user an option to choose which one he/she would prefer? For instance, F11 gives full screen view with "Bicubic" applied, and CTRL+F11 with "Bicubic sharper"? Or make this an option in the preferences?

As I am using the PSE organizer also to present pictures to other people (and I know many people who use it that way too), I would like to show them my pictures as sharp and detail-rich as possible. Therefore, I would highly appreciate an option as described above to be implemented in the PSE 11 organizer via an update. It should be fairly easy from a programming point of view, since both algorithms are already contained in the program anyway."


* If you support this suggestion of mine as stated above, please also contact Adobe accordingly! The more support requests they get for this, the more likely it is that they will implement this update! You may mention my case number 0184046323 for reference.

I am also quite disappointed. I spent hours with the Adobe support chat before they actually understood what is the issue. (First they wanted me to reinstall my graphics card driver etc.) Then the "second level support" just told me that I could post this as a suggestion on yet another Adobe web page, all from the start...

It is especially disappointing as the "fix" would be extremely easy to do, since the necessary "bicubic faster" algorithm is already part of the program anyway. And has been used through all previous version for the full screen viewing process. Just make a check box in the options to determine whether to use either "bicubic", or "bicubic sharper", for full screen viewing...