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Graphic distortion and garbled ‘moire’ effect on transparent overlays:

Sowelu

Sowelu

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 15, 2008
873
1,151
New York City
I don’t know about anyone else, but that garbled ‘moire’ graphic distortion that is visible on all of iOS 7’s transparent overlays is distracting. Especially when you type in your password, pull the Notification sheet down and in Reminders.

It’s everywhere there is a transparent overlay, but it’s more noticeable when darker wallpapers are applied. Is this a bug? A graphics limitation? Is this supposed to be better than the linen? It looks incredibly ugly and broken.

I can’t be the only one that notices this and is bothered by it. What are the chances of Apple addressing this in an upcoming release? It's most obvious on iPads.
 
What particular device would this be on? What, if any, visual accessibility settings are enabled?

Don't think most people see this kind of thing.
 
Sowelu said:
I don’t know about anyone else, but that garbled ‘moire’ graphic distortion that is visible on all of iOS 7’s transparent overlays is distracting. Especially when you type in your password, pull the Notification sheet down and in Reminders.

It’s everywhere there is a transparent overlay, but it’s more noticeable when darker wallpapers are applied. Is this a bug? A graphics limitation? Is this supposed to be better than the linen? It looks incredibly ugly and broken.

I can’t be the only one that notices this and is bothered by it. What are the chances of Apple addressing this in an upcoming release? It's most obvious on iPads.
Click to expand...

I can't quite make out what you're describing by your screenshot. Are you referring to the smokey glass effect in which whatever is behind the transparent window is blurry? If so, this is by design. If you don't like it you can turn it off by turning on "Increase contrast" in Settings > General > accessibility.
 
As I mentioned in my post, I am speaking about the moire/wood grain effect/distortion found on some of the transparent overlays. It should look like clean, blurred, matte, smoky glass, but instead it looks like a heavily compressed JPG image.

It’s not as noticeable on the iPhone, but very noticeable on the iPad (4, Air, Mini). I’ve noticed it on all iDevices running iOS 7. I certainly hope Apple has a fix for this. They poked fun at the linen, so I find it odd that they'd replace it with what looks like a heavily compressed and distorted graphics. Not much of an improvement.

No accessibility options are selected. I like the transparencies, I just wish they didn’t look like crap with when dark backgrounds are selected. They should be smooth.
 
Sowelu said:
As I mentioned in my post, I am speaking about the moire/wood grain effect/distortion found on some of the transparent overlays. It should look like clean, blurred, matte, smoky glass, but instead it looks like a heavily compressed JPG image.

It’s not as noticeable on the iPhone, but very noticeable on the iPad (4, Air, Mini). I’ve noticed it on all iDevices running iOS 7. I certainly hope Apple has a fix for this. They poked fun at the linen, so I find it odd that they'd replace it with what looks like a heavily compressed and distorted graphics. Not much of an improvement.

No accessibility options are selected. I like the transparencies, I just wish they didn’t look like crap with when dark backgrounds are selected. They should be smooth.
Click to expand...

I don't see what you're seeing in that screenshot, nor do I see anything in my devices running iOS 7.1.

The transparency looks just the same as it did in 7.0-7.0.4.
 
Tyler23 said:
I don't see what you're seeing in that screenshot, nor do I see anything in my devices running iOS 7.1.

The transparency looks just the same as it did in 7.0-7.0.4.
Click to expand...
You don't see the wavy lines surrounding the keypad? That's not compression within the picture that I took, that's what it actually looks like on the iPad screen.
 
Sowelu,

I didn't really see anything in your photo either. It would be better to post a screen capture than a photo of the screen.

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Sowelu said:
You don't see the wavy lines surrounding the keypad? That's not compression within the picture that I took, that's what it actually looks like on the iPad screen.
Click to expand...

Have you tried a different wallpaper?
 
Are you referring to this?
The only thing I can see is checkerboard-like pattern on the blurred layer.
 

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chabig said:
Sowelu,

I didn't really see anything in your photo either. It would be better to post a screen capture than a photo of the screen.

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Have you tried a different wallpaper?
Click to expand...
You can't see those wavy lines surrounding the keypad?

A screen capture wouldn't do any good. You have to capture it on the device itself. The pic I posted clearly shows the issue.

Changing my background image to a lighter one would make it less obvious, but that's not really fixing the problem.

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LastOneToKnow said:
Appears to be gradient banding to me. Yuck.
Click to expand...
Thank you! That's the term I was looking for. Banding. It drives me insane in any image so it was shocking to see it throughout iOS 7. It looks bad.
 
Sowelu said:
You don't see the wavy lines surrounding the keypad? That's not compression within the picture that I took, that's what it actually looks like on the iPad screen.
Click to expand...

If that's the case, you either have an anomoly of a bug, or there's something wrong with your screen.

Haven't seen any other reports of that, nor am I affected by it.
 
I've seen it on all my personal devices and on every display model that I checked out at the Apple Store. It's not my display, it's the way iOS 7 displays some of the transparent overlays.

On your iPad, choose a darker wallpaper for both home and lock screen, and then slide to unlock. Make sure brightness is at least 75%. You don't see any banding on the screen with the number pad? You can also see it on the left hand side of 'Reminders' as well as on the notifications pull down.
 
Sowelu said:
You can't see those wavy lines surrounding the keypad?

A screen capture wouldn't do any good. You have to capture it on the device itself.
Click to expand...

Yes I see the wavy lines. They look like banding caused by your choice of wallpaper. And yes, I'd like to see a screen capture taken directly from your device. It would show up much more clearly than a photo.

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Sowelu said:
On your iPad, choose a darker wallpaper for both home and lock screen, and then slide to unlock. Make sure brightness is at least 75%. You don't see any banding on the screen with the number pad?
Click to expand...

Nope. I don't see it.
 
chabig said:
Yes I see the wavy lines. They look like banding caused by your choice of wallpaper. And yes, I'd like a screen captures taken directly from your device. It would show up much more clearly than a photo.
Click to expand...
The banding is caused by something within iOS 7, not because I chose a darker background image.

GUI's shouldn't show banding. I expect to see that from cheap wallpaper sites. It shows with all wallpapers applied, just more noticeable with darker ones.

Taking a screen shot would not show this problem. I am not sure how else to stress this. A screen shot will show a normal screen, the way it's supposed to look. The issue is that the banding is seen when looking at the device.
 
Sowelu said:
Taking a screen shot would not show this problem. I am not sure how else to stress this. A screen shot will show a normal screen, the way it's supposed to look. The issue is that the banding is seen when looking at the device.
Click to expand...

If it's a software issue, a screenshot would absolutely show it. The only time a screenshot would not show it is if it has something to do with the display.

That said, I messed around with mine. I think it might do that on wallpapers that have been scaled up to support motion. Try selecting one of Apple's stills. They're large enough that they don't get scaled.
 
A screen shot won't work in this case because the issue is the way the device is showing iOS 7's transparent overlays. So either Apple needs to adjust the images within GUI or tweak the graphics hardware (drivers) in their devices to remedy this problem. However, for the hell of it, I'll see what a screen shot looks like on my MacBook when I get home this evening.

This banding is also obvious when reduced motion is turned on and scaling is turned off. I see it with Apple's stock wallpaper and with all shades of backgrounds. Perhaps I am more sensitive to it than others. I find it very distracting and hope that Apple will quietly address it in a future update. It takes away from their clean design aesthetic.
 
You can argue with me or you can take a screenshot and see it for yourself. I have. This has nothing to do with your display. It's the software. It does show. But I don't notice it.
 
I stand corrected, it does appear in a screen shot. I automatically assumed it was the way the device was generating the transparent images as I couldn't imagine that Apple would overlook something like this.

Here's a screen shot of the lock screen using Apple's stock wallpaper and all default options selected. You can see the banding throughout (this one's not as bad as with other wallpapers):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqr1stbicn1173t/ios7banding.png

Let's hope there's a fix for this for those of us who notice it, and are distracted by it. It's really bad on certain images.

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Here's another with a darker background:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3sad0xe0886anm1/iOSbanding2.png
 
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