Photo degradation on Galaxy s 4g

[JPScott19]

Hi All,

So I just got my SGS4G and I noticed something very strange. When I import photos from my computer and look at them in the gallery there is a very noticeable difference in quality and resolution, I mean big time.

I have attached two photos for you guys to look at. One is a crop from the original photo and looks okay. The other is what the samsung did to the photo when I cropped it using the gallery. Mind you that thew photo degradation was already visible when I did this but I wanted to see if it was just the gallery compressing a thumbnail for quick viewing. But it appears that the phone actually changes or uses different information from the photo and makes it look bad.

Something else to be noted is that the original file, when taken back off the phone to my computer looks just as good as the true original when viewed on the computer. Very weird stuff going on and it doesn't make sense.

If you have an explanation or solution please let me know!

Thanks!

 

[MattMJB0188]

Hi All,

So I just got my SGS4G and I noticed something very strange. When I import photos from my computer and look at them in the gallery there is a very noticeable difference in quality and resolution, I mean big time.

I have attached two photos for you guys to look at. One is a crop from the original photo and looks okay. The other is what the samsung did to the photo when I cropped it using the gallery. Mind you that thew photo degradation was already visible when I did this but I wanted to see if it was just the gallery compressing a thumbnail for quick viewing. But it appears that the phone actually changes or uses different information from the photo and makes it look bad.

Something else to be noted is that the original file, when taken back off the phone to my computer looks just as good as the true original when viewed on the computer. Very weird stuff going on and it doesn't make sense.

If you have an explanation or solution please let me know!

Thanks!

I just dragged and dropped a full size image onto the SD card and the picture doesn't look distorted at all. I don't know exactly how you are getting your images onto your phone but you might want to try the drag and drop method and see if that makes a difference. I have several images on my SD card, mostly for wallpaper and they all look just as they did on the computer with no loss of quality.

 

[JPScott19]

I just dragged and dropped a full size image onto the SD card and the picture doesn't look distorted at all. I don't know exactly how you are getting your images onto your phone but you might want to try the drag and drop method and see if that makes a difference. I have several images on my SD card, mostly for wallpaper and they all look just as they did on the computer with no loss of quality.

Thanks for the reply. I'm just dragging and dropping the images onto my phone vis usb onto the sd card in the phone (in the camera folder). The image in the gallery app seems to be the problem. I downloaded a different app for viewing pics (it was called "Just Pictures") and the images looked just fine when using that app. So something hinky is going on with the "gallery" app on the phone.

Here is another example. This photo is a photo taken from the camera on the phone. The original file is included (you will know it when you see it) and the other is a cropped version made using the gallery app. Notice the huge difference in quality. The cropped pic that the gallery made is only 640x480, that makes no sense at all since I cropped the whole image of the original 5 megapixel photo.

Anyone else having this problem? It is frustrating and makes no sense why even a picture taken by the phone's camera looks so bad in the native gallery app when the original file, if taken from the camera directly is in good shape.

 

[MattMJB0188]

Thanks for the reply. I'm just dragging and dropping the images onto my phone vis usb onto the sd card in the phone (in the camera folder). The image in the gallery app seems to be the problem. I downloaded a different app for viewing pics (it was called "Just Pictures") and the images looked just fine when using that app. So something hinky is going on with the "gallery" app on the phone.

Here is another example. This photo is a photo taken from the camera on the phone. The original file is included (you will know it when you see it) and the other is a cropped version made using the gallery app. Notice the huge difference in quality. The cropped pic that the gallery made is only 640x480, that makes no sense at all since I cropped the whole image of the original 5 megapixel photo.

Anyone else having this problem? It is frustrating and makes no sense why even a picture taken by the phone's camera looks so bad in the native gallery app when the original file, if taken from the camera directly is in good shape.

I wish I could be more help. I looked at my pictures in the gallery and they are fine. I even went to details and checked and my pictures are showing a resolution of 2560x1920 in the gallery. For some reason my camera was automatically set to 640x480. Once I set it to 5MP my pics were fine.

 

[JPScott19]

So when using the gallery app, you can zoom into a pic and see all the resolution and quality? and if you crop the whole picture and save it as a new picture using gallery does your resolution stay the same? Cause mine changes (as you can see) to 640x480 when I crop and save using gallery (from the original camera photo of 5m)?

 

[MattMJB0188]

So when using the gallery app, you can zoom into a pic and see all the resolution and quality? and if you crop the whole picture and save it as a new picture using gallery does your resolution stay the same? Cause mine changes (as you can see) to 640x480 when I crop and save using gallery (from the original camera photo of 5m)?

When I cropped it the resolution changed. Picture still looks good though. I cropped a 5MP pic and the new cropped resolution is like 502x357. Are cropped images suppose to retain their original resolution?

Are you experiencing any lag throughout the phone at all?

 

[JPScott19]

When I cropped it the resolution changed. Picture still looks good though. I cropped a 5MP pic and the new cropped resolution is like 502x357. Are cropped images suppose to retain their original resolution?

Are you experiencing any lag throughout the phone at all?

Nope, no lag here. If you were to crop a 5m image (about 2500x2000) like the way I did, which was cropping the entire image and saving it new, it chould retain all resolution if the program is working correctly. Cropping is simply taking part of a picture and making it it's own photo.

500x357 is not good at all (about .17 megapixels). Even if you cropped the 5m photo to 1/4 is still 625x500 (about .31 megapixels) which isn't great but still better than the results I'm getting with my phone automatically making a full photo crop/copy 640x480 (or .3m) instead of keeping it at it's original resolution, or 5m, 8m or 12m depending on the photo I used.

I read that some others are having the same issue and they think it has something to do with the new version of the gallery app. Hopefully they fix it. But fortunately I found a couple apps that do a good job with the photos so I should be okay. But I find it surprising that this happens on T-mobiles "fastest" and most tech advanced phone.

 

[brix2]

I have the same issue, and I had tried multiple sizes. They all looked crappy. I was also looking through the gallery app, but it doesn't make sense. Regardless of how I sized the image. Looking at the file info for the specific image on the phone, it had been resized and the file size had even changed...it's like the phone would resize the image instead of leaving it intact?

 

[brix2]

I seem to have alleviated the problem with my photos, though I am not sure if this will help or not.

I was dragging images through DoubleTwist, using the pictures function. From what was a 1MB file, was reduced to 27kb. That should not happen.

Instead, I went into the actual phone itself through my computer, into the main directory, and dropped the files into the "Images" folder. I double-checked that the files did not change in doing so, my Finder told me the same info.

I checked the images, still using the Gallery app, found the images sharp and gorgeous. The file info informed me the size did not change after all.


I am using large images that no one would want to use to hog their space, if you have the ability to use Photoshop, I have been saving my images out above the 480 x 800 resolution, at 96dpi.

 

[yacoub]

Have the same problem. Your workaround works. Hopefully DoubleTwist fixes the bug though.