Background: I have approximately 6000 *.jpg files which have been resampled to 5.1 X 3.825 inches @ 200 dpi. The dimensions allow printing four to a page with minimal gutters. Two hundred dpi permits full screen display, without stretching images, when viewing slide shows on a 19 inch CRT. I use PP X3, build 13.0.0.0739, on a Dell Dimension 8200 (Windows XP SP2; 1.7 Gb processor; 1 Gb Ram; 50 Gb free hard drive space; and, a 64MB NVIDIA Geforce2 MX w/TV out display adapter).
Problem: Ever since installing Photopaint X3, I’ve experienced a problem with resampled *.jpg files. Files resampled at 5.1 X 3.825 inches @ 200 dpi (using previous versions of PhotoPaint AND even X3) display in the resampling module at 3.24841 X 2.43681 inches @ 314 dpi. Even when re-saved in PP X3 at 5.1 X 3.825, they re-display at the incorrect size and resolution when reopened. Yet, when imported into CorelDraw, or other Applications (e.g. Camedia 4.2), they display/print correctly at 5.1 X 3.825 inches @ 200 dpi. However, if one checks [Properties] in Windows Explorer they are listed at 314 dpi!
Attempts To Fix: All settings in Options were reviewed; PP X3 was reopened with [F8] depressed to reset to default; a Repair, using the program installation disk was used; then Windows Control Panel Remove Software was used---followed by complete Reinstall. All these provided no relief. A Call to Corel Tech Support resulted in the advice to do a manual uninstall, by downloading and using Windows Uninstaller, followed by reinstallation. This resulted in a failure of the Corel Program Disk to install. A second call to Corel resulted in the advice to follow Corel Msg 1606 (rewriting the Windows Registry) as a prerequisite to successful installation. After reinstallation, the Resampling problem still exists—except previously resampled JPEG files now open at 14.1 X 10.6 inches @ 72 dpi. All other aspects of the problem remain.
Isolating the Problem Further: Since the above attempts, I’ve discovered that this resampling problem only exists with digital camera JPEG photos. TIFF files display properly and resample correctly. TIFF files converted to JPEG do as well. JPEG files converted to TIFF and then reconverted to JPEG (bizarre, I know) display properly in PP X3. Thinking the problem might relate to embedded information in the photos from my Olympus cameras, I’ve tested JPEG photos from Nikon and Sony cameras—with the same results problem-wise
Help/Insight: Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Does anyone have insight; or, a fix?
gewemail – I have the same problem. I’m using the same version of PP running on a Dell XPS with 3GB RAM and terabytes of disk space. I’m using a Nikon D100 camera. I don’t think the issue is with the hardware.
I actually discovered the problem by accident. For my own work purposes, I normally use a 3rd party program that can very quickly rename, number and if necessary rotate all the images from a shoot. When opening images that have been renamed (re-saved), all images appear in PP at the expected 300dpi. However, on occasion I want to spot check a couple images and will bring them into PP before the renaming process. When I do this PP ALWAYS reports them as being only 72dpi.
At first this confused me, so as a test I brought the same untouched/unsaved, camera original image into other graphic applications and they reported it was at 300dpi. To further verify everything I even used a small 3rd party app to read the EXIF data of the camera originals and it reported 300dpi. PP was the only application to report a camera original at 72dpi.
As Alfred has pointed out, we have not lost any data… it is simply a bug in PP in reporting the correct ‘intended’ dpi from a camera original on JPG files. If you touch (as in save) this file with any other application… PP will then be fine with it. However, JPG’s have all that dangerous compression going on so saving a camera original JPG will produce some loss of quality. How much, I am not an expert so I’ll let others address this.
Hope that helps,
jim Roberts
PS – as Michael pointed out, JPGs are NOT the best for printing and I use Nikon’s RAW format for print quality… but many of us use our prints for other than printing where JPGs are just fine…. and this point is off topic… (grin)… just wanted to make the statement so this line of comment didn’t continue
Jpg compression can be set to zero for completely lossless saves. Also, I ran extensive tests about a decade ago to determine if repeated compressions at the same level caused further degradation of the image. All my careful testing showed NO, ZERO, NADA, Nothing! Of course, one problem with Paint is that it does not remember the compression as per picture, just whatever you last used on whatever picture becomes the default.
As for the problem that started this thread, I strongly suggest staying in pixels. It is much less confusing and the results are the same. If you know the inches size at a given resolution, just multiply the inches times the pixels per inch to get the size in absolute pixels, which will not change.
To put this in perspective: Adobe's products started out as methods of getting information to physical print media. Thus, purely for historical reasons, PhotoShop still wants to keep everything in inches, millimeters, etc., forcing the user to then arbitrarily convert images to meet a largely irrelevant context. Many magazines still demand everything for an ad be at 300DPI, which is fine, but the real information is solely related to the absolute number of actual pixels. So, we and up going back and forth, much like the silliness of sending CMYK to some magazine publisher, with no assurance that the color output for the final actual print will correspond accurately to the original intent. Everything should remain as RGB until it gets to the final output device. RGB is RBG is RGB. CMYK is RGB interpreted for a particular output device. But tradition rules.COREL probably assumed that long since people would have switched to pixels and RGB instead of trying to second-guess unknown factors at the end point. Thus, they started out with RGB/pixels as the logical digital medium, and it still makes sense. A pixel is a pixel is a pixel. An inch has to be multiplied by pixels per inch to figure out whether it is actually the right size.
BTW, someone mentioned they were using COREL 7... 7 does have a known bug, as I recall. If you do a color blend in CMYK in 7, it reverses one of the registers. There is no fix, I believe. When I discovered it, COREL agreed that it was a new bug and we got a free copy of 8, since they weren't about to do a running change. That was a LONG time ago, but if whoever is reading this, it's worth a shot to check it out.