Requesting a new sticky thread

[Seiseki]

Could we have another sticky in the pixel art board titled READ FIRST: Zoom function.
"The forum has a zoom function where you right-click images to zoom in on them, please don't post images that have been resized. Post your work in the original resolution"

Because there are so many people who don't realize this.

[Crow]

Too many stickies. I added a portion about it in the sticky of the Pixel Art board.

[Seiseki]

The problem I think, is that there is only one sticky on the relevant board and it links to other stickies on other boards..
Most people won't go that far to read because they think it's just common sense rules and such.

[Arne]

1: It doesn't work well in some browsers (blurs in chrome, and I use various script blockers since I'm paranoid).

2: Everyone should post their images at the size they are actually meant to be viewed at, which probably isn't ant size. Why the extra step of clicking on the ants? It's easy enough to flip flop back and forth with a scaling macro when doing editing.

[ptoing]

It would be interesting what everyones resolution is. Mine is 1920x1200 atm. And it will only get higher.

I do not mind clicking on stuff a bit, or you could use some browser plugin to zoom.

[Crow]

1440x900 here. Yea, I'll probably be implementing an alternative for Chrome/Webkit soon, as there won't be support for the nearest neighbor stuff

[Ai]

2: Everyone should post their images at the size they are actually meant to be viewed at, which probably isn't ant size. Why the extra step of clicking on the ants? It's easy enough to flip flop back and forth with a scaling macro when doing editing.

As ptoing implies, this is not really 'doable' because everyone has different resolution displays. I'm probably on the lower end of the resolution equation, with 1680x1050 native resolution on a 96dpi screen; it wouldn't surprise me if a number of the more 'serious artist' types here have 2560px+ or more screens with 125dpi+ resolution.
Or worse, multiple screens with differing DPI.

Not to mention that edits are important here, and 1x1 pixels greatly facilitate them.

As far as browser plugins go, I can recommend ImageZoom (Firefox). You just need to adjust the "Zoom in/out factor" to 200% in the preferences. It also does rotation which occasionally proves useful. My only critique is that scroll-to-zoom (ala Reddit Enhancement Suite) doesn't really work at all when you have a tablet with no scroll wheel, and there's no alternate method of access, so I normally have to use the menu (right click, hit Keypad + or -).

[Anarkhya]

I'm also blocking scripts but it isn't an issue for me, temporarily allowing the zoom script is just two clicks away when I fire up my browser. As for the resolution 1280*1024 96dpi 19'', and I rarely look at (or even push) pixels at 100% zoom, it just "doesn't feel right" to me anymore, so I end up click zooming to view everything at 200%.

Having the ability to zoom in also does greater justice to pixel pieces that use dark values, it bypasses the cons of the bright SMF default skin.

[Ai]

^ me too. An option to set default zoom percentage would make things friendlier; I really don't bother viewing anything here at 100%.

Some way to set the zoom level for individual "[img]" tags would help too  (eg "[img zoom=2]"), it would let post authors set what they think is an appropriate default zoom level for the image, without impacting peoples ability to do edits.

Edit: BTW, screen -dpi- is far more relevant to the question of 'will my image show up at the intended size' than actual number of pixels or physical dimensions.

[Mathias]

1920x1080  X2

[Arne]

24" 1920x1200 + 22" 1200x1920 here.

2x'ed pixel art will look OK or Great on pretty much any common PC monitor in my experience, but I haven't been using high PPI retina displays for work or surf (i.e. smartphone or MacBook). 4x can sometimes look a bit too chunky and overly jaggy so in emulators I often stay at 2x Windowed. 1x is vulture neck + squint unless you're using an ancient 640x480 CRT or something.

A zoom argument or just [img2x] [img3x] would be nice though. Personally I type out forum tags by hand so shorter would be better.

However, I sometimes cross-post so I much prefer baking in 2x. Most art forums don't have 2x scripts, and since I hand type all HTML for my pages, already having the image in 2x speeds things up, and I won't have to worry about which browser or script blocker someone is using.

[Ai]

24" 1920x1200 + 22" 1200x1920 here.

2x'ed pixel art will look OK or Great on pretty much any common PC monitor in my experience, but I haven't been using high PPI retina displays for work or surf (i.e. smartphone or MacBook).

I agree with this, including the caveat.

3x is a bit less reliable, depending on how large the source is (3x 320x240 -> 1280x960)

So you just meant ballpark levels of accuracy in reproducing picture size, then.

4x can sometimes look a bit too chunky and overly jaggy so in emulators I often stay at 2x Windowed. 1x is vulture neck + squint unless you're using an ancient 640x480 CRT or something.

A zoom argument or just [img2x]http://[img3x] would be nice though. Personally I type out forum tags by hand so shorter would be better.

However, I sometimes cross-post so I much prefer baking in 2x.

Ah, and now we see what it's really about.

It looks like you can make an image that links to another image in BBCode (eg. the first one being 2x, and the second being 1x), although on Pixelation this effectively disables the click zooming.
EDIT: I take that back. looks like the url tag works in preview, but gets stripped off the actual post. Confusing.
I guess the best multires solution is just putting a '1x' link next to the image.

Personally I use a shell script with ImageMagick to generate 2x versions when needed. Thanks for the idea, I just added BBCode and html template generation to it. Now if only there was a decent CLI upload tool I could hook it into.

[Mathias]

. . .
3x is a bit less reliable, depending on how large the source is (3x 320x240 -> 1280x960)
. . .

But it wouldn't do that. It would just do it like it does now - blowing up images with a multiplier equal to the image. Percentage-based.

Like dis


So [imgx3] blows it up 300%, not 3x.

Right?

[Seiseki]

but 300% and 3x is the same thing 

[Mathias]

Oh you're right, same effect. I was really thinking.
But also, I guess I was just saying that this tag, if implemented, would just have the same effect as the current script.

Or . . .

are we talkin' server-side image processing? Where, if scaling was applied to the image, it's not just styling, but that the image is actually processed and its size permanently changed? If a tag handled that, it would just be applied once and then it's done. Would it remain in the post's BBC markup?

Mehhhhh what do I care, I use Chrome haha . . .

[Ai]

I was just saying that this tag, if implemented, would just have the same effect as the current script.

That's what I intended when I wrote that suggestion, yes.

I just realized I derped the math though, it should be 960x720, which is less problematic (although it may still take up a majority of the vertical space on smaller screens).

[Arne]

Yes, I think that there's a great degree of tolerance for which sizes work well for pixel art (ignoring special cases of for-TV pixel art). I'd argue that in most cases, 2x and 3x (300%) falls within this tolerance whilst 1x and 4x (400%) does not. A pixel artist probably doesn't "intend" to have his sprites viewed 1x. Stuff can of course be saved (losslessly compressed) to 1x and several bytes can be saved, but I'd sacrifice those bytes myself, for presentation's sake.

I'm not saying that the zoom script is useless. I just prefer to have the images 2x'ed as default myself. Scaling an image before saving it is not an inconvenience for me. Here be aforementioned Photoshop macros:



No clue if Graphics Gale supports something like that. Never used it.

[ptoing]

I think your pixelart should look good at 1x. And it should look good at 4x and higher. I personally do not have problem with 4x and larger pixels. I like it chunky. If that does not work for you, as far as games go, make something like a good scanline filter and take off the edge (pun intended).

One big drawback from posting stuff on here at 2x would be that the zoom would be like 2x, 4x, 8x, compared to the original 1x.

[Anarkhya]

I think your pixelart should look good at 1x.

Interesting point, theoretically.
I personally don't like how some of my pixels look at 100%, especially those I made with a 200% target output, at 100% I just don't recognize what I drew, everything seems to lack texture, now I'm wondering if this highlights an issue in drawing or not..

[Helm]

I've never seen a single piece of pixel art that I thought looked bad at 1x but better at 2x or more.

[ptoing]

Yeah, agree with Helm here. If you got some pixelart you made you think looks better in 2x than in 1x, please post it here, I would like to have a look.

[Arne]

To me it's about readability and presentation which I think suffers at small sizes. You can still read an e-book with a font set to 3pts but it's just not very pleasant even if the story doesn't suffer. When I work in PS I find that keeping a 200% or 300% zoomed copy of my canvas next to my 1600% working one is ideal... at 1x or 16x I can't quite judge what's happening to the pixel cohesion and neighboring. I have to use a similar approach for human faces which I also keep in a separate window comfortably zoomed. It's a hightech version of backing away from the painting.

My urge to view (most) pixel art at 2x is as strong as... keeping a certain distance from a painting in an art museum. On top of all this there's of course the appeal of visible pixels.

[Helm]

I also often pixel with the preview at x2 but I think if your pixel art looks BETTER at x2 you're probably doing something wrong.

[Mush]

I made http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/79725.htm using 2x preview, and always thought it looked better 2x. But that just might be the fact that I was working at 2x the entire process. It might be a phenomenon related to what happens when you mirror a sprite you've been working on for a while. You just kind of get used to how it looks.

[Anarkhya]

I can't quite judge what's happening to the pixel cohesion and neighboring.

I totally concur on your issue with 1x. As far as I trust what my eyes are actually seeing, 1x usually not do justice to what I'm trying to pixel. But obviously, putting aside "matters of taste" (if possible), as Helm and Ptoing already highlighted, something may be wrong. Personally, I begin to understand that an awful CRT bias might goes on as I'm probably placed in minority by non-CRT viewers, but given your screen specs I doubt you're viewing pixels with cathodic tubes.

I made http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/79725.htm using 2x preview, and always thought it looked better 2x.

Well I do prefer your piece at 1x, actually, at 2x I think some places are a bit crude, lacks AA like clouds, color gradient illusion not working in mountains, ordered dithering in rocks, jaggies on pine trees. Whereas at 1x, none of these small "flaws" apply in my opinion.
At 1x the illusions works perfectly to me.

[Arne]

We might be talking about different things, Helm. I'm just saying I can better appreciate pixel art at 2x. I might be able to appreciate it at 1x too, but then I'd have to put my nose to the monitor unless it's a HD fighter game or a smiley. I can't appreciate pixel art at all from 1km away, to use an extreme.

You're probably talking about the difficulty of ... taking a nicely pixeled 64*32 character and making it 32*16 and having it look better. I'd agree that it's difficult but your definition of "better" is probably narrow as it appears to be suggesting that more definition on character = better, which is not always the case, and it also ignores the appeal which comes with knowing that a piece was done by beautifully utilizing limited resources.

And making highrez pixel art is also a lot more difficult and time consuming, so that 2x lowrez piece might actually end up looking better anyways due to limited time and available talent.

[Ryumaru]

I think pixel art should always be created with the intention of being solid and functional at 1x, but "appreciation" as Arne put it seems much easier for me at 2x or higher zooms. That said I don't think I can recall having seen a piece of pixel art I liked better at 1x than I do at 2x- I just like seeing the pixels ( perhaps there are some exceptions with WIP work where the nicely placed values fall apart cluster wise and such).

Full disclaimer, I always stick my nose up close to a painting as soon as I get the chance.

[Carnivac]

I also often pixel with the preview at x2 but I think if your pixel art looks BETTER at x2 you're probably doing something wrong.

Eh, I dunno.  I personally feel all pixel art looks better in a 320x240 res sort of size cos the low resolution and relatively 'chunky' pixels are a crucial feature of what I actually love about pixel art.  I can't stand high resolutions for this sort of thing so yes, 'scaled up' or 'zoomed in' or whatever is certainly more aesthetically pleasing as far as I'm concerned.  Me wonders how much time I waste having to click or scroll the mouse wheel to constantly zoom into almost every single bit of pixel art on the internet all these years...