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eziduzzit
Participant
June 20, 2020
Question

PNG MADNESS!!!

  • June 20, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 922 views

Can anyone possible explain why a PNG (MacOS Mojave) screenshot 310x126 pixels (37kb) is almost the same visual size as a Photoshop PNG 144 x 54 (8kb) when placed into Apple Mail? Makes NO SENSE!!!

 

Not only are they both almost the same size but the screenshot PNG is crisper and clearer!

 

I can open both files in Photoshop and the settings look identical. What am I missing here?

 

I attached a screengrab of both placed into an email. The screenshot is the one on the left. 

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1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 20, 2020

This should be in a FAQ somewhere, it's asked so often.

 

With a retina screen on your system, all your standard consumer-oriented applications scale up image files to twice the linear dimensions. They do that so that they display at the same screen size that people are used to from old low-res screens.

 

The applications do this automatically when they detect a high resolution screen. This is the industry-accepted workaround to ensure the same images are usable everywhere, regardless of screen technology.

 

So a 144 x 54 pixel image from Photoshop is displayed as 288 x 108 screen pixels in these other applications.

 

What makes people complain most of all, is when text is part of the image and baked into the image pixels - as opposed to live vector text over the image. Because native text is vector, it can be scaled indefinitely and be just as crisp. But if the text is part of the image it can't be scaled without getting blurred.

 

What I'm getting at is that Photoshop has nothing to do with any of this. This is a hack performed in the operating system and the native Mac apps, to get around the problem of different screen technologies.

 

Photoshop just does what it always did. It still maps one image pixel to one screen pixel.

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    eziduzzitAuthor
    Participant
    June 20, 2020

    @D_Fosse... what you say makes sense BUT the question is... as Photoshop users... how do we replicate this when working on files for clients OTHER than just using a screenshot of your work. I would have thought Photoshop would have a setting/plugin/export feature... to allow us to replicate this. I have so many clients wanting PNGs for their email signature. Right now the best option I have for delivering a good crisp logo with copy is a screenshot. It feels so out of control. As a 25+ year user of Photoshop, I like to know that I have full control of my images and exactly how they're produced. If a junior designer were to ask me, I would now say... create your art in photoshop, take a screenshot of it and deliver the screenshot. Sounds crazy. 

     

    Now, if anyone knows how to incorporate vector files into an email signature that works with all email programs... that would be the salvation I was looking for!

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    eziduzzitAuthor
    Participant
    June 21, 2020

    As I'm saying: the other applications scale up. They do it on their own. Photoshop doesn't have anything to do with that. There are no Export settings.

     

    The screenshot has already been scaled up, so it shows the "new" and double pixel dimensions.

     

    This is a workaround, a hack, performed by those other applications.They don't need to meet critical standards, they just need to keep the user happy.

     

    Photoshop can't do any of that. It has to be accurate. It can't do any ad-hoc scaling - this is a professional image editor used for critical purposes. It displays one image pixel to one screen pixel. On a retina screen, there are more screen pixels, so each screen pixel is that much smaller. So the image is smaller. That is the whole problem that this workaround tries to get around.

     

    It's not a particularly good workaround, nobody claims that. But it's the only one that actually works.

     

    But again, it can't be emphasized enough: Photoshop has nothing to do with any of this. It ignores the whole issue and just displays as accurately as it can.


    And lastly, 

    I'm with you! Get what you're saying about Photoshop. Here's what I'm wondering... PNG vs PNG... how do we see the info in the file of the screenshot PNG that gives it the retina info.  If we could find that... then we could apply that info to our Photoshop files achieving the same results. With all the hackers/hacks out there surely someone must know how to access that file info. We can see everything else about image files. Why not that?

     

     

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