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[ephotoadmin]

Hi All,

My finished albums and previews photo's show grain dotted skys and skin tones on people. When I click on the file previews I do not see this degration in quality. I have a very fast machine 3.2Gh SCSI drive, 2GB Ram, & 256MB Video ATI Radeon 9800 (1600x1200 viewing) with the settings set according to the board here. And it renders opengl 3d theme images exeptionally fast and super smooth. I'm using the "Maximum Quailty Settings". Movie files that I've created in other photo products work remarkably well and crispy in the movie show theme.

I've been checking the boards here because I recently patched my 3D-Album CS to 3.14 from 3.11-upgrade.exe in hopes to fix the problem.

All photos are from a 4.0 Megapixal Camera with min. image properties of 1600p x 1200p, 180 dpi, 24 Bits.

Question is do I have to convert all my photos to 1024x768 32bit to eliminate the grain?

[rsnow]

I can't give you a specific answer with the info you've provided. I would suggest you try converting a copy of one of the photos and see what difference it makes.

Also, just as a point of info, displaying on a monitor or tv does not need anything more than 72 dpi.

[ephotoadmin]

Yes, I converted the photos for a project to the standards specified 1024x768 but that did not help much. But - After looking at other peoples demos; I've notice there picture quality was grainy also. Maybe my video cards on my servers are picking up to much. Or maybe thats how the product outputs the pictures rendered in the album. (if anyone has a hack. please .. share..
Here are some the original example images that I used to create a test album:
(ie: the first two demo gif pictures grabbed in 3d-album CS)

gif1 - [color=red]Removed for Space[/color]
gif2 - Removed for Space

I have some clouds..

Here is my first test album online:

Web Album
(i'm gonna cry..) the pics look so bad.. but everything else looks great!!

Now here is the same images, but rendered and stream with another product. (I wish I could get the output of clouds to show this crystal clear.. which I could - if I left the images at 1600x1200 or higher depending on camera)
(high bandwith and flash 7 player needed)

Other Product 1

Other Product 2

(testing different flash rendering plugins)

Should I test the product on another machine? I have anther high end machine which has a 256mb Nvida TNT ultra. Or should I give up and expecit this will be the highest quality I can get out of the 3d-Album CS product.

Regards,

And thanks in advance if you can help me.

(also does anyone know if albums can be uploaded to a Virtual Web Server on ports other than port 80?)

[rsnow]

This is just one person's opinion but I viewed all the samples you put into your posting and I really couldn't tell that much difference in the quality of the pictures. I have been using CS for over a year in making DVDs and have had no problems with picture quality. Maybe there is something different when making things for the web.I haven't done much in that area so I can't offer any help there.

However, computer monitors and tvs can only show a certain number of lines of pixels and that anything more than that is extra info that has to be processed unnecessarily. That is why the size (1024x768) etc. is more important than the dpi. The dpi (dots per inch) is intended to tell a printer how close together to print the ink dots. The size measurement refers to how many vertical lines and column rows of pixels are used to make up the picture. This the reason that an 800x600 picture does not fill up a monitor screen set to 1024x768. This is also the reason that if you zoom in on the 800x600 picture it becomes pixelated...the computer has to fill in by adding more of the same colored pixels around each of the original pixels.

I know, this really doesn't have anything to do with your problem. Except that using too large picture files, just adds to the burden of causing the computer to reconfigure the picture to fit on the screen. In other words, a 1024x768 at 72 dpi will look just as good on screen as an 1180x820 at 300 dpi. Assuming of course that all other factors are equal.

[Styler]

Ephotoadmin,

The problem is that your gif image has a transparent color. I checked the first GIF file, the transparent color is ( red=37,green=37,blue=38 ). 3D-Album picture loader handles the transparent color. Any pixle in that color will be transparent. The grains you see in your picture are actually the transparent spots where you can see the default grayish paper color.

Please re-save you GIF file to remove the spec of the transparent color. You can try 3D-Album image editor. Load file in 3D-Album image editor. Choose the "Selection" tool (the second button in the vertical toolbar). Right click on the value of the "pixmap" attribute in the left panel. Choose the "Set Transparent Color" menu. In the color selection dialogue box, click the Null color box (the first color box with a "X"). Then save you file.

For scenery photo, I suggest you use JPEG instead of GIF. JPEG gives richer colors than GIF.

[ephotoadmin]

Rsnow,

Just wondering which video card you have?


http://www.3d-album.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=348

[rsnow]

The one I was viewing with was a nvidia geforce MX 400.