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Why do pictures in Safari look like total crap? (with proof)

T

TetheredHeart

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 24, 2012
24
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I noticed after going back to Safari after a while and browsing Flickr, that people looked weird and dead and in general the picture quality was extremely poor. So I took comparison screengrabs between Safari and Opera:


29ymmmd.jpg


^^^^Safari, looks like total crap.




m7gdv5.jpg


^^^^Opera, looks infinitely more alive.

P.S. you should drag and drop to browser and open with preview to really compare, or better yet open this link in both browsers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zaramovane/19110815721/

EDIT: I have found out that Safari uses bilinear interpolation for resampling images during scaling. What was Apple thinking?????????
 
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Looks the same to me. Nonetheless Safari occasionally has a few hiccups when you've got a large uptime.

Have you tried restarting your Mac with the option Reopen windows when logging back in disabled? Then try again?
 
Yes, it's still the same. And if you can't tell the difference, or even worse, don't care, then I don't know what to say. :-(

Anyway, I'm back to Opera for good, this is just a public service announcement. But I think it would be a big deal for Apple to fix this.
 
I opened up Safari on my external monitor. Without zooming the page, the pictures look great, but immediately upon zooming they look like crap, just like on the MBP Retina display. So it's definitely a problem with the Safari scaler.

Edit: When opened up with Preview and zoomed, although the colors are different the scaling is good, so it's not global.

Edit2: When comparing in image software, the resampling algorithm used by Safari looks like bilinear interpolation, a very poor method for pictures.
 
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I see no difference at all to be honest, but hey if the minor differences in image quality on the net is your thing you go ahead and use what suits you best.
 
I checked both in safari and Chome and Safari looked better, the image in Chrome had a bit more (tiny really) pixillation
 
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TetheredHeart said:
Yes, it's still the same. And if you can't tell the difference, or even worse, don't care, then I don't know what to say. :-(

Anyway, I'm back to Opera for good, this is just a public service announcement. But I think it would be a big deal for Apple to fix this.
Click to expand...

The below responses by other posters would indicate this issue may be isolated to your computer. So just a few things to ensure:

- OS X is fully up-to-date
- Safari is fully up-to-date
- Volume is OK (verification through Disk Utility)
- May be worth trying a permissions repair and restarting
- Ensure any Flash/Java plugins (where applicable) are also fully up-to-date

Just shooting in the dark really but it's worth checking the above.
 
Updated Yosemite and Safari. Still uses bilinear. :-(

maflynn said:
I checked both in safari and Chome and Safari looked better, the image in Chrome had a bit more pixillation
Click to expand...

And that's good. Dunno about Chrome, but Opera uses bicubic, Preview does too. Safari looks to use bilinear. Bicubic is much more widely used is photo editing because it is much more sophisticated and produces more natural and detailed results, as can plainly be seen in the samples I've provided.
 
TetheredHeart said:
s can plainly be seen in the samples I've provided.
Click to expand...
Well it seems most of us are not plainly seeing any degradation in Safari. That's the issue while I'll not dispute what the browsers use , it seems most of us (who responded) are not seeing any issues with safari.
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
I see no difference at all to be honest, but hey if the minor differences in image quality on the net is your thing you go ahead and use what suits you best.
Click to expand...

Minor differences? Not at all, a huge difference. And if the vast majority of people nowadays don't care about "details", the people who do are all the more important, because however our awareness, everything affects us all.
 
maflynn said:
Well it seems most of us are not plainly seeing any degradation in Safari. That's the issue while I'll not dispute what the browsers use , it seems most of us (who responded) are not seeing any issues with safari.
Click to expand...

Well MacDawg sees a difference, although he has poor taste.
 
I've disabled JavaScript, also loaded images directly in browser. Same difference, same fake and unnatural smoothness. I also have font smoothing turned off.
 
Did you label those the right way around? On my iPad the one you marked as Safari looks loads better, there is no comparison.
 
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I picked out a dozen or so recognizable spots with Apple's Digital Color Meter.app.
It can't tell the (RGB) difference between the two images.
 
steve23094 said:
Did you label those the right way around? On my iPad the one you marked as Safari looks loads better, there is no comparison.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm talking about Safari on a Mac, but really good to hear the iPad Safari renders pictures better. :)

Thank you.
 
How does it look in Firefox? I am looking at in Safari, non-Retina, and it looks pretty good. Same with FF and Chrome. I attached a screen shot of the image you posted from Safari.
 

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  • Screen Shot 2015-07-01 at 11.37.48.png
    Screen Shot 2015-07-01 at 11.37.48.png
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TetheredHeart said:
Minor differences? Not at all, a huge difference. And if the vast majority of people nowadays don't care about "details", the people who do are all the more important, because however our awareness, everything affects us all.
Click to expand...
The vast majority certainly matter. These are web browsers -- not applications used for critical photo manipulation. The majority of people won't notice a difference and it does not matter for them. The people who do notice are not more important. The matter is more important to those people. However, those people are a small niche.

If Opera is better for you then use it.
 
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