Nancy,
Photo images are nothing but pixels (squares with one color out of a potential of 16,777,215 colors). Your monitor only has pixels as set in your Display setting . Your Gateway is a Windows machine so Right Click on your Desktop (nothing open), click PROPERTIES, SETTINGS and since I suspect you’re using XP, on the left side, you’ll have a resolution slider. the higher the resolution, the smaller (and finer) the pixels will be. If your grasphics card has enough internal memory you should be able to run highest color mode (24 or 32bit color) as well as best resolution for your screen. If your monitor is 17", use 1024×768 for most standard sized resolution. In any case if it comes to having to choose highest resolution or highest color mode, go for color. Remember that only the size of a pixel on screen is set by Display setting and as long as you aren’t disabled with vision, standard settings will be fine for photo viewing if over 600×800.
Are you sure that your focus is OK? How does Text look in WORD? Unless you have a bad photo to start with, or unless you RESAMPLE a photo, you should NOT get a blurred image. This especially is true if you can view the image on another computer (regardless of PC or MAC, CRT or LCD monitor). Resampling will give you a less sharp image because the pixel colors are true, but compared to adjacent pixels will tend to "blend". I’d say you are having either monitor trouble and probably focus troubles.
Bob
Try right clicking on desktop, choose settings and under color quality find 32 bit and select it. If this doesn’t help check back.
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Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/ wrote in message
I just installed Photo Elements 2.0 on my PC running Windows ME. At
first I got a message about a defect in my monitor calibration software. After being on the phone with Gateway for 40 minutes, I was told to uninstall and reinstall, choosing custom installation. He told me to customize with highest resolutions. (I never did see anything that allowed me to do that.)After reinstalling I no longer get that message, but my digital photos are not sharp. The color does not seem to be true either. (In order to see if I had defective software, I also installed it on my Mac G4 PowerBook running OSX. There is no problem. My photos are sharp and true-to-color.) Any suggestions for me?
Thanks,
Nancy
My color is already set at 32 bit. Changing the screen resolution didn’t help. My photos have not been resampled. They appear okay in another photo program that I have — Photo Studio.
I don’t know how to adjust the focus, if that is a problem. I looked through all the settings on my monitor and focus wasn’t one of them.
Any more suggestions? This is driving me crazy.
What’s the resolution of the images? Image>Resize>Image Size.
The images are all 72 dpi, because I usually use them for my web page. However, as I said, the images look fine in my ArcSoft Photo Studio. I remembered that I also have Adobe Photo Deluxe 3.0, which I don’t usually use. When I open my image in that program I have the same problem — untrue color and blurring around the edges.
Nancy
Nancy, are you trying to print the images? If so, 72 dpi won’t work; you need at least 150 ppi, preferably 240-300.
Chuck
No, I’m not printing them. I’m just opening them in Elements so that I can work with them. They don’t look good to begin with, so any improvements I make won’t look good either! (Usually when I print, it’s after I’ve inserted the picture into a Word document for use with first graders and it works just fine. If I were printing an actual photo I know to print it at a higher dpi.)
Nancy
Nancy, I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to imply any lack of knowledge on your part re resolution. I should have gone back and re-read the thread before I answered.
What are the pixel dimensions (length and width in pixels) of the images you’re viewing? (Image>Resize>Image Size is the best place to find that information)
No offense taken, Chuck, as I’ve been known to do really stupid things–often! The pixel dimensions on the original photos from my camera are around 1280 x 960. The original photos look no different than those that I have already sized either through Photo Studio or Elements.
Nancy
Nancy, those are good-size images; they really shouldn’t look fuzzy in Elements if they look sharp in other apps. I’m as puzzled as you are….hopefully someone will come along here that has some ideas.
Chuck, thanks for trying. Maybe I’ll just have to use it on my school G4 Powerbook and forget my PC. Oh, well — such is technology!
Nancy
