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That picture I showed is approx 14MP, don't recall the exact pixel dimensions, but it's showing it on a 2560x1440 and riMac at the same time, in correct "actual size" or "1:1" as Lightroom refers to it. My version of Preview does NOT do that. Here's an example, both on the riMac: Preview on the left, Aperture on the right. Both at "actual size" per the View menu. For some reason "actual size" in Preview means 200%. And BTW Preview is set in prefs to view images at 1:1.


Image

dyn is incorrect. You are correct. Actual size in Preview is zoomed in. It's clear as day.
 
And thank you WilliamG, our house troll, for this nice flame!

I've tried both fullscreen and windowed mode but in my case the pictures zoom in correctly in both Preview and Aperture (when using "actual size"), meaning I don't get what's in the screenshot at all. In my case Preview and Aperture show the exact same thing.

Something strange is going on since it is not doing the erratic behaviour on all machines. Did you guys do a complete Time Machine restore or something? I've set this Mac up brand new, only thing I transferred were things like music, docs and apps but not the settings.
 
And thank you WilliamG, our house troll, for this nice flame!

I've tried both fullscreen and windowed mode but in my case the pictures zoom in correctly in both Preview and Aperture (when using "actual size"), meaning I don't get what's in the screenshot at all. In my case Preview and Aperture show the exact same thing.

Something strange is going on since it is not doing the erratic behaviour on all machines. Did you guys do a complete Time Machine restore or something? I've set this Mac up brand new, only thing I transferred were things like music, docs and apps but not the settings.
Whoa there, trolling and flaming? I think he was just stating what it appears that everyone but you are seeing. I thought that since you state that Preview and Aperture show the same thing that perhaps they are both wrong, but I took a look at an image in Aperture, and it does indeed show it correctly, as does Lightroom. It is absolutely the case, however, that when I choose View>Actual Size in Preview, it displays the image at 200%. I have no idea why Preview works correctly for you.
 
dyn what are your settings in Preview's prefs?

EDIT: counterintuitively, setting the pref in Preview to "size on screen equals size on printout" instead of 1:1 you get better results. But still the image is blown up a bit bigger than in Aperture or other applications. Graphic Converter has an oddity too: if you use "actual size" you don't get correct results, but 100% works as expected.

I think there is something going on with the applications making a phone call to a system parameter that is giving wonky results, or it can't decide to press one for retina "best" or two for native 5120x2880.
 
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I have it set to 1:1. Could be I'm just lucky (knock on wood), dunno why mine is different.
 
And thank you WilliamG, our house troll, for this nice flame!

I've tried both fullscreen and windowed mode but in my case the pictures zoom in correctly in both Preview and Aperture (when using "actual size"), meaning I don't get what's in the screenshot at all. In my case Preview and Aperture show the exact same thing.

Something strange is going on since it is not doing the erratic behaviour on all machines. Did you guys do a complete Time Machine restore or something? I've set this Mac up brand new, only thing I transferred were things like music, docs and apps but not the settings.

First, please don't call me a troll, "house" or otherwise. I fail to see how I've become that, but I'm open to a discussion of how this is via private message. I've had the 5K iMac for a while now, and am fairly confident in my ability to discern how Preview works on my system. And hey, for the heck of it, I'll provide some proof in this response.

Whoa there, trolling and flaming? I think he was just stating what it appears that everyone but you are seeing. I thought that since you state that Preview and Aperture show the same thing that perhaps they are both wrong, but I took a look at an image in Aperture, and it does indeed show it correctly, as does Lightroom. It is absolutely the case, however, that when I choose View>Actual Size in Preview, it displays the image at 200%. I have no idea why Preview works correctly for you.

Yep.

I'm enclosing a video to show what I'm seeing, which is indeed an image at 200% when Preview is set to show actual size. Unless there's some setting we're all missing, it is NOT iMac Retina aware. Preview is not Retina aware. Period. Lightroom 5 is, however.

http://vid10.photobucket.com/albums/a127/wgrose/IMG_4211_zps5nxarz6a.mp4
 
First, please don't call me a troll, "house" or otherwise. I fail to see how I've become that, but I'm open to a discussion of how this is via private message. I've had the 5K iMac for a while now, and am fairly confident in my ability to discern how Preview works on my system. And hey, for the heck of it, I'll provide some proof in this response.

I'm enclosing a video to show what I'm seeing, which is indeed an image at 200% when Preview is set to show actual size. Unless there's some setting we're all missing, it is NOT iMac Retina aware. Preview is not Retina aware. Period. Lightroom 5 is, however.

http://vid10.photobucket.com/albums/a127/wgrose/IMG_4211_zps5nxarz6a.mp4

I can vouch for this, I've noticed it since I upgraded my rMBP to Mavericks over a year ago. Still looking for an alternative to Preview.
 
I can vouch for this, I've noticed it since I upgraded my rMBP to Mavericks over a year ago. Still looking for an alternative to Preview.

I'm really surprised that Apple hasn't addressed this. Then again, Apple has been slipping lately in terms of software/bugs/etc.
 
I'm really surprised that Apple hasn't addressed this. Then again, Apple has been slipping lately in terms of software/bugs/etc.

I've always thought it was intentional. When ML came out, Retina was this big new thing they would have wanted to show off, but by the release of Mavericks Retina was commonplace on the rMBP lineup. So they may have decided instead of showing off Retina like in the ML Preview to make Actual Size more familiar to those who used non-retina in Mavericks. Just a theory, but it would explain why they haven't fixed it in such a long time.
 
I've always thought it was intentional. When ML came out, Retina was this big new thing they would have wanted to show off, but by the release of Mavericks Retina was commonplace on the rMBP lineup. So they may have decided instead of showing off Retina like in the ML Preview to make Actual Size more familiar to those who used non-retina in Mavericks. Just a theory, but it would explain why they haven't fixed it in such a long time.

Perhaps...

In any case, to view a 5120x2880 at native resolution is as simple as opening it in Preview, hit Command + (to zoom in ONCE), and voila, it's correct. Then you can view full screen with the green button and it's 1:1.

*Edit*

Correction below.
 
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Perhaps...

In any case, to view a 5120x2880 at native resolution is as simple as opening it in Preview, hit Command + (to zoom in ONCE), and voila, it's correct. Then you can view full screen with the green button and it's 1:1.

In YOUR system/machine it's correct perhaps, in mine it's not. See the photos above. I even made an image at the ppi of the riMac and cropped it at 2" wide. So that's 436 pixels on it's horizontal axis.

I opened it in both Preview and Aperture. It should be 2" wide on the screen in both applications. It isn't; in Aperture it's 2", in Preview it's 1 15/16".

And see the photos above. Glad it works for you though.
 
Perhaps...

In any case, to view a 5120x2880 at native resolution is as simple as opening it in Preview, hit Command + (to zoom in ONCE), and voila, it's correct. Then you can view full screen with the green button and it's 1:1.

I will often go into Actual Size and zoom out twice, three times if it sticks to the window size like in Zoom to Fit. This will usually get any image into HiDPI display.
 
First, please don't call me a troll, "house" or otherwise.
Then don't act like one.

I fail to see how I've become that...I've had the 5K iMac for a while now, and am fairly confident in my ability to discern how Preview works on my system.
You are not the only one with an iMac 5k and the ability to discern how Preview and others apps works on their system. Again, I'm not seeing the issue some of you are having. That should raise questions about how and what but instead you opted to flaming. The fact that someone has a different observation does not make them false. Period. The only correct reaction to that is asking the famous "why?" question.

Unless there's some setting we're all missing, it is NOT iMac Retina aware. Preview is not Retina aware. Period. Lightroom 5 is, however.
False. It is only so on certain machines. It is NOT on all machines since my machine is doing fine. Period. Again, the only correct reaction to this is asking the question "why?" and certainly not the trolling response you are giving. Others are having problems, I don't. Why's that? I don't know, as far as I can tell I haven't done anything different. Only thing is a clean install. Maybe it's an addition to Preview by some other application.
 
In YOUR system/machine it's correct perhaps, in mine it's not. See the photos above. I even made an image at the ppi of the riMac and cropped it at 2" wide. So that's 436 pixels on it's horizontal axis.

I opened it in both Preview and Aperture. It should be 2" wide on the screen in both applications. It isn't; in Aperture it's 2", in Preview it's 1 15/16".

And see the photos above. Glad it works for you though.

My mistake! :) What I meant was it's possible to display the image where you can hit Command + once to make it full screen 1:1. That only works if you have the image a certain size on your screen to begin with, whoops!

Anyway! The (theoretically) correct way to make it display 1:1 for everyone using their 5K iMacs in 2560x1440 HiDPi (as it came out of the box) is to open a 5120x2880 image in Preview. Go to View: Actual Size. Then click the green button in the top left to full screen it, and zoom out twice (Command -) twice. You can zoom out twice before going full screen, as well.

That *should* work for everyone.

----------

Then don't act like one.


You are not the only one with an iMac 5k and the ability to discern how Preview and others apps works on their system. Again, I'm not seeing the issue some of you are having. That should raise questions about how and what but instead you opted to flaming. The fact that someone has a different observation does not make them false. Period. The only correct reaction to that is asking the famous "why?" question.


False. It is only so on certain machines. It is NOT on all machines since my machine is doing fine. Period. Again, the only correct reaction to this is asking the question "why?" and certainly not the trolling response you are giving. Others are having problems, I don't. Why's that? I don't know, as far as I can tell I haven't done anything different. Only thing is a clean install. Maybe it's an addition to Preview by some other application.

Yes, dyn. You have the only machine in the world where Preview works correctly, yet you haven't shown any kind of evidence to support your assumptions. All you do is go around labeling people as trolls and accuse them of flaming which - by the way - is pretty hilarious (I just said you were "incorrect". I can't see how that's considered a "flame.") Carry on. It's good for a laugh.

If, however, you'd like to contribute something to the thread, I'm more than willing to listen. Until then, perhaps just stop with your labeling and accusations?

I will often go into Actual Size and zoom out twice, three times if it sticks to the window size like in Zoom to Fit. This will usually get any image into HiDPI display.

Yes, I found two times zoomed out (after hitting Actual Size) for 5120x880 does the trick. I'll chat with Apple later today about it.
 
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I'm heading out for the afternoon, and since I have to walk right by the Apple Store on my travels, I'll test out 5120x2880 images in Preview on an Apple Store 5K iMac, too, just to be 101% sure. I have them on a thumb-drive right now, ready to go to work. :D Will report back later.
 
I think that for some reason Preview thinks 1:1 is retina, which means twice as big, like user interface items.

The "print" setting forces it to consider dpi, which is normally used in printing, but not in screen viewing (at least pre retina). But those dpi's, as set in photo metadata, can be all over the place. It worked for me with that 218 dpi because it forced Preview to use that, but it is perhaps still a calculation, hence the very small discrepancy I was seeing.

But the "actual size" and other settings may not mean what I assume they mean in other programs, like Aperture and Lightroom. After all it's not an image editing program. I have no idea what it's doing (I resize in Preview to 10", then view in "actual size" and I get something different). So I'm just gonna ignore it.
 
There's a lot of confusion in this thread on how Retina works...

Mac OS X will measure everything in points on a Retina display. It's important to note that points and not the same thing as pixels. When an app reports what size it is running at on a Retina machine, it will do so in points. On a Retina Mac at default settings, there are two pixels for every one point.

The 2560x1400 resolution mentioned in the first post is not measure in pixels, it's measured in points. So the setting means it is going to lay out a 2560x1400 point UI on a 5120x2800 display. Basically every point will be twice as dense in pixels on the screen. That's Retina. Duh. So it's totally normal for a Retina iMac to report it's window sizes at 2560x1440 while it's actually rendering at 5k.

Preview is actually drawing the image at Retina, but it's defaulting the window's point size to the pixel size of the image. A 100x100 pixel image will be opened in a window that is 100x100 points, which is really a 200x200 pixel window. My guess is this was done to keep people sane as they moved between a Retina and non-Retina display. You might change displays and suddenly the window size totally changes, which may not be helpful for most normal users.

This is why changing the zoom works too. If you have a 100x100 pixel image, you want the window showing at 50x50 points, which is 100x100 pixels. That's perfect alignment.

This isn't a bug, or Preview not being a Retina app. It's simply a call Apple made to keep window sizes consistent across machines. The actual content in the window will be rendered at Retina, but there is a possibility that the window zoom will default to something that scales the image beyond it's native pixel resolution.
 
You are not the only one with an iMac 5k and the ability to discern how Preview and others apps works on their system. Again, I'm not seeing the issue some of you are having. That should raise questions about how and what but instead you opted to flaming. The fact that someone has a different observation does not make them false. Period. The only correct reaction to that is asking the famous "why?" question.


False. It is only so on certain machines. It is NOT on all machines since my machine is doing fine. Period. Again, the only correct reaction to this is asking the question "why?" and certainly not the trolling response you are giving. Others are having problems, I don't. Why's that? I don't know, as far as I can tell I haven't done anything different. Only thing is a clean install. Maybe it's an addition to Preview by some other application.

I can confirm it behaves like this on any Mac running Mavericks or later in HiDPI mode including my rMBP, Retina iMac, and even the headless Mac mini which does Screen Sharing in HiDPI. Not including about Retina screenshots, which Preview seems to distinguish from other images. Unless you somehow got the Mountain Lion version of Preview.app to run on your Retina iMac :p
 
There's a lot of confusion in this thread on how Retina works...

Mac OS X will measure everything in points on a Retina display. It's important to note that points and not the same thing as pixels. When an app reports what size it is running at on a Retina machine, it will do so in points. On a Retina Mac at default settings, there are two pixels for every one point.

The 2560x1400 resolution mentioned in the first post is not measure in pixels, it's measured in points. So the setting means it is going to lay out a 2560x1400 point UI on a 5120x2800 display. Basically every point will be twice as dense in pixels on the screen. That's Retina. Duh. So it's totally normal for a Retina iMac to report it's window sizes at 2560x1440 while it's actually rendering at 5k.

Preview is actually drawing the image at Retina, but it's defaulting the window's point size to the pixel size of the image. A 100x100 pixel image will be opened in a window that is 100x100 points, which is really a 200x200 pixel window. My guess is this was done to keep people sane as they moved between a Retina and non-Retina display. You might change displays and suddenly the window size totally changes, which may not be helpful for most normal users.

This is why changing the zoom works too. If you have a 100x100 pixel image, you want the window showing at 50x50 points, which is 100x100 pixels. That's perfect alignment.

This isn't a bug, or Preview not being a Retina app. It's simply a call Apple made to keep window sizes consistent across machines. The actual content in the window will be rendered at Retina, but there is a possibility that the window zoom will default to something that scales the image beyond it's native pixel resolution.

That's exactly my theory as indicated in one of my earlier comments. To keep switchers sane in the Mavericks version of the app. That being said there really needs to be a way to toggle between 72 PPI and 144 PPI for people who want the 144 PPI setting. Just one more option under the "Define 100% scale as" setting in Preview's preferences would do just fine and wouldn't make the preferences seem overly complex either.
 
There's a lot of confusion in this thread on how Retina works...

Mac OS X will measure everything in points on a Retina display. It's important to note that points and not the same thing as pixels. When an app reports what size it is running at on a Retina machine, it will do so in points. On a Retina Mac at default settings, there are two pixels for every one point.

The 2560x1400 resolution mentioned in the first post is not measure in pixels, it's measured in points. So the setting means it is going to lay out a 2560x1400 point UI on a 5120x2800 display. Basically every point will be twice as dense in pixels on the screen. That's Retina. Duh. So it's totally normal for a Retina iMac to report it's window sizes at 2560x1440 while it's actually rendering at 5k.

Preview is actually drawing the image at Retina, but it's defaulting the window's point size to the pixel size of the image. A 100x100 pixel image will be opened in a window that is 100x100 points, which is really a 200x200 pixel window. My guess is this was done to keep people sane as they moved between a Retina and non-Retina display. You might change displays and suddenly the window size totally changes, which may not be helpful for most normal users.

This is why changing the zoom works too. If you have a 100x100 pixel image, you want the window showing at 50x50 points, which is 100x100 pixels. That's perfect alignment.

This isn't a bug, or Preview not being a Retina app. It's simply a call Apple made to keep window sizes consistent across machines. The actual content in the window will be rendered at Retina, but there is a possibility that the window zoom will default to something that scales the image beyond it's native pixel resolution.

That makes perfect sense in that scenario. One would hope that by the time a 5K Thunderbolt display shows up that Apple will give options. That said, it's still a little peculiar. After all, I'm going to guess that *most* of us iMac users only have an iMac, and not an external display connected to it. For us, it makes no sense at all.

That's exactly my theory as indicated in one of my earlier comments. To keep switchers sane in the Mavericks version of the app. That being said there really needs to be a way to toggle between 72 PPI and 144 PPI for people who want the 144 PPI setting. Just one more option under the "Define 100% scale as" setting in Preview's preferences would do just fine and wouldn't make the preferences seem overly complex either.

Yes, and yes. :)

FYI, I just got out of the Apple Store and can, without any doubt, confirm (again) that Preview is not working "correctly" for 5K iMac-only users.
 
That makes perfect sense in that scenario. One would hope that by the time a 5K Thunderbolt display shows up that Apple will give options. That said, it's still a little peculiar. After all, I'm going to guess that *most* of us iMac users only have an iMac, and not an external display connected to it. For us, it makes no sense at all.

I think most of Apple's use cases around Preview are going to be for supporting traditional users, and keeping window sizes consistent makes sense for normal users. Imagine the support calls: "I bought this new iMac, and now when I open up my photos they appear in these tiny windows! My old iMac didn't do that!"

Could eventually be a preference, but Preview is also not meant to be professional photography software, so to me it's perfectly reasonable that if you're going to be consistently that picky, you should be using pro photo software.

If you want to just have an image be pixel to pixel accurate just to show off your display, just muck with the zoom settings.

It also doesn't fit with the way resolution independence is designed on OS X. Window sizes are generally physically supposed to stay the same, they just contain more pixels. When you're on a Retina display, icons in the Finder don't become half the size simply because there are more pixels.
 
I think most of Apple's use cases around Preview are going to be for supporting traditional users, and keeping window sizes consistent makes sense for normal users. Imagine the support calls: "I bought this new iMac, and now when I open up my photos they appear in these tiny windows! My old iMac didn't do that!"

Could eventually be a preference, but Preview is also not meant to be professional photography software, so to me it's perfectly reasonable that if you're going to be consistently that picky, you should be using pro photo software.

If you want to just have an image be pixel to pixel accurate just to show off your display, just muck with the zoom settings.

It also doesn't fit with the way resolution independence is designed on OS X. Window sizes are generally physically supposed to stay the same, they just contain more pixels. When you're on a Retina display, icons in the Finder don't become half the size simply because there are more pixels.

That makes perfect sense. Just a shame when a lot of us use this screen for high-res photography and would like to, at a glance, have things look "right" in Preview. But yep, there are probably a lot more people who aren't into photography, who will just complain that things are too small. Can't please everyone! :)
 
There's a lot of confusion in this thread on how Retina works...

Mac OS X will measure everything in points on a Retina display. It's important to note that points and not the same thing as pixels. When an app reports what size it is running at on a Retina machine, it will do so in points. On a Retina Mac at default settings, there are two pixels for every one point.

The 2560x1400 resolution mentioned in the first post is not measure in pixels, it's measured in points. So the setting means it is going to lay out a 2560x1400 point UI on a 5120x2800 display. Basically every point will be twice as dense in pixels on the screen. That's Retina. Duh. So it's totally normal for a Retina iMac to report it's window sizes at 2560x1440 while it's actually rendering at 5k.

Preview is actually drawing the image at Retina, but it's defaulting the window's point size to the pixel size of the image. A 100x100 pixel image will be opened in a window that is 100x100 points, which is really a 200x200 pixel window. My guess is this was done to keep people sane as they moved between a Retina and non-Retina display. You might change displays and suddenly the window size totally changes, which may not be helpful for most normal users.

This is why changing the zoom works too. If you have a 100x100 pixel image, you want the window showing at 50x50 points, which is 100x100 pixels. That's perfect alignment.

This isn't a bug, or Preview not being a Retina app. It's simply a call Apple made to keep window sizes consistent across machines. The actual content in the window will be rendered at Retina, but there is a possibility that the window zoom will default to something that scales the image beyond it's native pixel resolution.

True, but in photography it's a bit different. LR, Aperture, Graphic Converter and others that are retina aware will make a retina adjustment for UI features, but NOT for the photo. Hence the result you see in the pictures we've posted. What we'd like is for a photo preview application (ahem) from Apple to behave in the same way.

I appreciate your defense of Apple, but even smartphone pictures are much larger these days and the benefit of a retina screen is that you can see more of the photos at once without scrolling. A common thread in reviews, for example, was how you could edit 4k video in full view and still have the controls visible. There's just no need to go big, if you will, with photos or video as opposed to say icons, menubars, etc. Maybe with PDFs, which I guess is what Preview was designed for.

I'll just find an alternative I guess. So far it's Graphic Converter. Wonder if the some-day-it-will-come Photos app will be better than Preview at this; hope so.
 
"Points" vs Pixels.

Since the advent of HiDPI "retina" displays, we now have two measurements of bitmap images on-screen.

Think of 'points' as virtual pixels.

Your Retina iMac (at best for display settings) has 2560 x 1440 points.

Because Preview is not retina-aware, it will show your 3K image as it would on a non-retina 2560 x 1440 display because Preview doesn't know the difference between a pixel and a point. It sees the 3K image as having 3000 points, which is more than what fits inside 2560 points.

If Preview was retina-aware, it would look at the image dimensions in pixels rather than points, and know that 3000 pixels easily fit inside 5120 pixels.

It's easy to get confused about things like 'scaling', 'retina', '@2x', '@3x' and 'HiDPI images' etc.

The best way to think 'retina' is that all the images/elements on-screen are made twice as big as they would be on a normal 27" display, with 4x the pixels, and then shrunken down to fit into 27 inches of display with the exception of photos/designs/artwork/images etc - they are not made twice as big, nor given any extra pixels, but they are shrunken.

Trust me as a web designer and UI designer, it's easy to over complicate this. But it's all really quite simple, and Apple has augmented HiDPI in a really great way.

EDIT - It seems someone else above has also explained this really nicely. Sorry for the double up of info. Will leave my post as a different, albeit very similar explanation.
 
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EDIT - It seems someone else above has also explained this really nicely. Sorry for the double up of info. Will leave my post as a different, albeit very similar explanation.

No apologies necessary. I knew this, but I have to keep reminding myself over and over. It doesn't help that "actual size" doesn't mean what it seems to mean. And I even recall a post by someone who had considered returning his riMac because he wasn't getting "native" resolution.

Apple's scheme is quite brilliant. And the scaling, which used to be absolutely verboten, is quite nice on the retina machines, especially if you need that extra "space."
 
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