Why the emby photo album Resolution very low?

[sa2000 410]

15 hours ago, woofstream said:

Alright, for some reason I did not have luck finding the cached photo in the log file but here's what I have instead. Please let me know if it's sufficient.

Thanks for the detail. So in your test a 7008 (W) x 4672 (H) pixel photo was displayed as 2561 (W) x 1707 (H) . I would not call this very low resolution - which is what the subject of this forum topic is. In my test, the output was similar to yours - displayed as 2673 (W) x 3564 (H). 

The issue you are reporting is that for very high resolution photos, emby clients are not displaying the photos at the original quality or close to it - in my case it was about 88% - in your case with the original being 7008 x 4672 it was only 36%

Would like @Luketo give his input on this and what determines what the maxWidth value should be in this request 

"GET /emby/Items/xxxxxx/Images/Primary?maxWidth=xxxx"

With regards to the log and the extract you picked, is there a cache folder under "W:\EMBY\Emby-Server\programdata". There would be the following subfolder path under cache - 

"images\resized-images" - Are there any log lines referencing "images\resized-images" ? Debug logging would need to be enabled beforehand.

Edited August 1, 2024 by sa2000

[woofstream 4]

Firstly, thank you for your patience in discussing this. I really appreciate it.

5 hours ago, sa2000 said:

Thanks for the detail. So in your test a 7008 (W) x 4672 (H) pixel photo was displayed as 2561 (W) x 1707 (H) . I would not call this very low resolution - which is what the subject of this forum topic is. In my test, the output was similar to yours - displayed as 2673 (W) x 3564 (H).

I suppose, yeah.

Technically it's not very low resolution, but relative to the original file it would seem to be. A lot of the finer details are lost and the photos honestly become unpleasant to look at. Besides the satisfaction of just viewing photos I took, I was hoping to download from emby onto my phone or tablet while I'm out of the house so I could do things like editing or sending to friends/family easily, without having to burn a large hole in the storage of my devices.

6 hours ago, sa2000 said:

The issue you are reporting is that for very high resolution photos, emby clients are not displaying the photos at the original quality or close to it - in my case it was about 88% - in your case with the original being 7008 x 4672 it was only 36%

Would like @Luketo give his input on this and what determines what the maxWidth value should be in this request 

"GET /emby/Items/xxxxxx/Images/Primary?maxWidth=xxxx"

As long as the server and client are powerful enough to display such a large photo without fuss, it would be nice to have a button that puts it at 100% quality. Or maybe even an option in the server settings to disable any quality reduction at all, which is good for people in my situation where they are the only ones that have access to the photo library and their client machines are more than capable.

6 hours ago, sa2000 said:

With regards to the log and the extract you picked, is there a cache folder under "W:\EMBY\Emby-Server\programdata". There would be the following subfolder path under cache - 

"images\resized-images" - Are there any log lines referencing "images\resized-images" ? Debug logging would need to be enabled beforehand.

Yes, I have the folders. Here's the log line for the example image:

2024-08-01 07:28:39.784 Debug ImageProcessor: Image encoding using Skia to W:\EMBY\Emby-Server\programdata\cache\temp\4631ccb37b904300bc8b1740e75bdecf.jpg took 233ms for W:\EMBY\Emby-Server\programdata\metadata\library\ca\caef185f84e6af387d60ad1cef7ab351\imagecache\DSC01040.JPG. Now moving to W:\EMBY\Emby-Server\programdata\cache\images\resized-images\e\e53ff5f3-c1fb-fdfb-2efd-1e469413f147.jpg

 

[Neminem 887]

I guess, as long you are self-hosting try this instead.

Quick Start | Immich

But that will not solve you Emby issues.

Edited August 1, 2024 by jaycedk
adding

[woofstream 4]

That's a solid suggestion, I got it setup yesterday but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to mount my network storage to the docker container.

I keep my media on a QNAP NAS and use an Intel NUC with Windows as a server, and apparently that's a bit of a painful combination for this. I should probably just keep trying though, what with it being a tailored experience for photos and all. Or perhaps just host it directly on the NAS whenever I manage to upgrade its RAM.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Edited August 1, 2024 by woofstream
forgot to say thanks

[ruedi 5]

Hi - Emby is using SKIA to resize all your photos to the reported resolution of your end device.

This can make sense if the transmission speed is restricted, but not when you are in you local LAN.

I try since many years to convince them to change this behaviour but nothing happens.

Photos are displayed in a poor quality.

The nice Emby is for video (here you can switch transcoding off) the bad it is for viewing photos.

Wondering if Jellyfin is doing that better ...

best regards

Rüdiger

[Luke 40079]

There's two reasons for the resizing. One being network performance. The other being that many devices like Roku and Smart TVs just can't render massive images.

[ruedi 5]

Hi Luke - yes, I understand very well!

But the resulting quality is worse. The compression way too high. Resizing operate very well, but the number of used colors decreases extremely.

Foe the user all the colors appear in a wrong way. I told you multiple.

Thats why I requested the option to switch this feature off. For video there is the feature to simply stream and it should possible to configure this for pictures, too.

Is there a configuration option, even when it must set manually in a config file whichballows to switch SKIA conversion off, or to allow 100% quality.

Thanks again

Rüdiger

[Luke 40079]

47 minutes ago, ruedi said:

Hi Luke - yes, I understand very well!

But the resulting quality is worse. The compression way too high. Resizing operate very well, but the number of used colors decreases extremely.

Foe the user all the colors appear in a wrong way. I told you multiple.

Thats why I requested the option to switch this feature off. For video there is the feature to simply stream and it should possible to configure this for pictures, too.

Is there a configuration option, even when it must set manually in a config file whichballows to switch SKIA conversion off, or to allow 100% quality.

Thanks again

Rüdiger

Hi, can you please show an example of what you mean? Thanks !

[ruedi 5]

Easy ....

left is the output of EMBY Theater, right Lightroom (6099x4066 Pixels@240 dpi, Adobe RGB).

best regards

Rüdiger

[Luke 40079]

On 11/1/2024 at 8:16 AM, ruedi said:

Easy ....

left is the output of EMBY Theater, right Lightroom (6099x4066 Pixels@240 dpi, Adobe RGB).

best regards

Rüdiger

Hi yes that is a big difference. We have a new Windows app set to launch very soon, so stay tuned for that and let us know how this example compares with it. Thanks !

[ruedi 5]

Hi Luke - just saw you spread out a new Windows App for Theatre.

Thanks for sharing this - but the photo quality does not improve so far.

I am really sure it is a side-effect of the picture resizing - seems the quality level of the compression is to low.

Is there an option where I could do some testing here - any config file to deal with?

 

But by the way the new app looks nice - will move on testing it for family compatibility

One question: the native theater app is still 3.0.20 - what would you advice using the one from the MS store or the native one?

Is the native one still under development or is it closed (I believe electron was still a problem).

 

Thanks for your support!

 

Ruediger

[Luke 40079]

On 12/29/2024 at 1:54 AM, ruedi said:

Hi Luke - just saw you spread out a new Windows App for Theatre.

Thanks for sharing this - but the photo quality does not improve so far.

I am really sure it is a side-effect of the picture resizing - seems the quality level of the compression is to low.

Is there an option where I could do some testing here - any config file to deal with?

 

But by the way the new app looks nice - will move on testing it for family compatibility

One question: the native theater app is still 3.0.20 - what would you advice using the one from the MS store or the native one?

Is the native one still under development or is it closed (I believe electron was still a problem).

 

Thanks for your support!

 

Ruediger

HI, the store build is the native app and is the way forward now.

[ruedi 5]

Hi Luke,

App seema fine but two remarks:

- when selecting within collectuon (series) via remote control, no progress bar can be seen. It is unclear which line is currently selected. Should be colored in a different flavor

- Picture quality us still not good. Tried to export from Adobe as png, but rendered to 1920x1080 wirh 60%. Look and feel seems really good so the problem is coming from scaler

Can you please share when and with which parameter it is configured to be active. One I assume is resolution .. but quality level?

 

Regards

 

Rue

[Luke 40079]

On 1/1/2025 at 5:03 AM, ruedi said:

Hi Luke,

App seema fine but two remarks:

- when selecting within collectuon (series) via remote control, no progress bar can be seen. It is unclear which line is currently selected. Should be colored in a different flavor

- Picture quality us still not good. Tried to export from Adobe as png, but rendered to 1920x1080 wirh 60%. Look and feel seems really good so the problem is coming from scaler

Can you please share when and with which parameter it is configured to be active. One I assume is resolution .. but quality level?

 

Regards

 

Rue

HI, can you please show a new screenshot example? Thanks !

[ruedi 5]

High again - sorry for the delay.

It seems the resizer is better when used together with png - but this is just a subjective impression.

Low-Res means I resized the picture within Photoshop to 1920x1080 for full-screen.

High-res is original with 6000x4000 pixels.

The "grabbed" picture appears when both pictures are opened with Windows Photo-App.

Hope this helps.

 

regards

Ruediger

 

[Luke 40079]

Can you please zip up the original image and attach it here? Thanks.

[ruedi 5]

Hi Luke!

Here is it ... both files in the zip, the pre-rezised one and the original png.

In the meantime I have a new issue with DLNA rev. 1.4.7 plugin.

I don't see the contents of the server and it is not clear why.

On no device (Windows 11, Panasonic Smart TV, IMPERIAL DABMAN i460 radio) the server appears as expected.

Sometimes the server can be seen but is not selctable / useable.

It the past I had no issue here but this has been changed.

Currently I have installed minidlna server on my Debian system - and the issue disappears.

What could be the reason - any password or authentication necessary?

Shall I open a second error report?

Best regards

 

Rüdiger

 

_58A3143 - big.zip

[Luke 40079]

On 1/21/2025 at 2:37 PM, ruedi said:

Hi Luke!

Here is it ... both files in the zip, the pre-rezised one and the original png.

In the meantime I have a new issue with DLNA rev. 1.4.7 plugin.

I don't see the contents of the server and it is not clear why.

On no device (Windows 11, Panasonic Smart TV, IMPERIAL DABMAN i460 radio) the server appears as expected.

Sometimes the server can be seen but is not selctable / useable.

It the past I had no issue here but this has been changed.

Currently I have installed minidlna server on my Debian system - and the issue disappears.

What could be the reason - any password or authentication necessary?

Shall I open a second error report?

Best regards

 

Rüdiger

 

_58A3143 - big.zip 113.63 MB · 0 downloads

Testing your low res version, every major photo app built into windows is displaying it in a darkened manner. For example, if I open in the windows photos app, or paint, paint.net, they all look identical to the darkened image that the Emby app also renders.

the only times I see the original vibrant blue is:

• windows explorer thumbnails
• dragging the original image file into a chrome browser tab

So Emby is not the only piece of software affected by this, right? It seems like any app that scales the image in order to produce a smaller thumbnail is also ending up with something much lighter in color.

[ruedi 5]

Hi this is strange!

Displaying it in kust black means there is no codec installed for png??

On my PCs this is not a problem (Win 10 Pro and Win 11 Pro). It is still no problem on my androids.

Attached pictures are :

- what I see in Emby with my S22 

- and what I see as file in CX File Explorer of my S22.

- what I see in my Photo App on my Asus Notebook with Win11 Pro

So I am wondering a bit what happens here ...

Let me check teh archive ..

Best regards

 

Rüdiger

[ruedi 5]

Nope archive is ok ... Try to upload without zip influence.

Best regard

Rüdiger

[Luke 40079]

Those apps are probably all displaying the original image. Emby is scaling based on the display and that’s when the color gets darkened.

[ruedi 5]

Hi Luke,

this is still different to what I see.

The last picture is a photo done wirh my S22 mobile. It shows the Win 11 Photo App displaying the high res picture. To make clear even the smaller one is displayed fine, please have a look on the attached photo. This is what happens when just open the small one in the ohoto app.

And that's what I am trying to say: the resizing parameters of Embys compression process should be reviced. possibly they can be improved (one option) or we should have a (possibly user based) switch option to jump over Embys resizing process.

I am not sure about the fact that your PC is doing something different to mine, this is strange. But as the color table compression is the same on my mobile and on the PCs it is not a general issue which is OS based

Thanks in advance

Rüdiger

[Luke 40079]

For reference this is what I see in windows 11 photos app:

 

[ruedi 5]

Hi Luke - don't open it in edit mode!

Not sure what Microsoft is doing here but "edit" mode is different to simple displaying.

When I open the picture to display -> colors are right

When I open the picture in edit mode -> colors are wrong

 

This is a MS feature: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/photos-changing-colour-after-editing-in-microsofts/96de6304-fc8c-4aa8-9a71-a04ce4d82a65

 

regards

Rüdiger

[thelittleblackb 4]

hi all,

I dont want to introduce more noise to this discussion but i also observe this behaviour when displaying the music album cover (see  file), I hope it helps