DSLR and pixalization

[Masha]

Hi Marko,

I got a canon t2i for new years and have been playing with it and so far even on auto, it beats point and shoot 10 times over so we are very happy but i noticed that sometimes some parts of the image get pixalized.

For example i may have an amazing up close photo of monkey (my cat) with the 18-55 lens and it looks amazing -- every hair is defined on his head and face and when the photo is viewed in 'paint' in its actual huge size it looks great but if i view it with any of the regular programs like windows photo viewer, etc. it would bring it up in normal screen size and then his whiskars get pixalized...

this also happens if i am viewing it in paint and decide to zoom out to have the photo fit the screen, it gets pixalized as well... any ideas what i am doing wrong?

I want to be able to post these great photos in a normal size on pets.ca and face book, etc but when i have them in a normal size they looks pixelized...

Many thanks!!

here is an example:

[kathryn]

Looks fine to me. There really isn't one easy answer for this... it all depends on a large number of factors. For one, you need to start shooting on Manual. With a DSLR and shooting on auto that's kind of like buying a race car to just drive it to the grocery store.

For one, it depends on what kind of lens you use, your screen resolution on your computer, the size of the sensor in the camera, your ISO settings.... I could go on and on. Basically, there are too many factors for me to just go say AH-HA, that's it!

I will go ahead and tell you what I think the problem is though.. See, when you view it full size in Paint, you are viewing in in it's full size so of course it's going to look really cool, but when you take something that big and try to shrink it down it can get screwed up.. imagine a nice shirt being shrunk in the dryer.. sometimes things come out all uneven.

What I would do if I was you would be to sign up for a photo sharing website like Flickr or Photobucket.. what you can do from there is to have the websites automatically resize the pictures for you.

For instance-

Here is the full size of a kind of crappy picture of a flower I took the other day

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5296/...701bf01e_o.jpg

Here it is automatically resized by Flickr

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5296/...9d5d2850_z.jpg

And here it is resized by Facebook

http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._4966847_n.jpg

Now, this particular picture was taken in a very dimly light convention center room with almost the same camera as you... Here is the EXIF Data

Exif data

Camera Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS
Exposure 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture f/1.8
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 400
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Orientation Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution 240 dpi
Y-Resolution 240 dpi
Software Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:03:09 23:03:23
Exposure Program Manual
Date and Time (Original) 2011:03:09 17:10:36
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:03:09 17:10:36
Max Aperture Value 1.8
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Sub Sec Time 72
Sub Sec Time Original 72
Sub Sec Time Digitized 72
Color Space Uncalibrated
Focal Plane X-Resolution 4438.356164 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution 4445.969125 dpi
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Manual
White Balance Auto
Scene Capture Type Standard
Compression JPEG (old-style)
Coded Character Set UTF8
Date Created 2011:03:09
Time Created 17:10:36
Global Angle 30
Global Altitude 30
Photoshop Quality 12
Photoshop Format Standard
Progressive Scans 3 Scans
XMPToolkit Adobe XMP Core 5.0-c060 61.134777, 2010/02/12-17:32:00
Rating 0
Metadata Date 2011:03:09 23:03:23-05:00
Lens EF50mm f/1.8 II
Lens ID 29
Image Number 0
Flash Compensation 0
Format image/jpeg
Color Mode 3
ICCProfile Name Adobe RGB (1998)
Original Document ID xmp.did:F0B4E6AD612068119109EB94022620D2
History Action saved
History Instance ID xmp.iid:F0B4E6AD612068119109EB94022620D2
History When 2011:03:09 23:03:23-05:00
History Software Agent Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh
History Changed /
History Parameters from image/tiff to image/jpeg
Derived From Original Document ID xmp.did:F0B4E6AD612068119109EB94022620D2
Color Transform YCbCr

When using a DSLR you should be able to understand all the above gibberish.

If you need any more help, just PM me I'm very bad at explaining things, but what I would really do is just read some DSLR guides online.

[exkalibur]

Lot of this depends of the viewing rendering quality of the software that you use. When resizing to smaller, different algorithm (like, bicubic sharper) need to be used, compared to upsizing.

[.unknown.]

Facebook is notoriously bad for it's compression of photos. Your camera should have come with included software to edit your pictures, if you re-size the pictures using that software prior to posting them you won't lose any of the quality to the compression and built in re-sizing that they do when you upload.

Also, using the supplied software will allow you to view the images at many sizes without the pixels.

[rik]

This picture is over sharpened. If you didn't use software like photoshop check your camera settings. Set in-camera sharpening at zero in Post -processing.

You can "repair" this photos with photoshop-filters-blur-gaussian blur
(amount 0.5)

[rik]

Ooops it is an old thread