(SOLVED) Loss of contrast, saturation, and detail in final show?

[aaroncgi]

Hi all,

I have been searching for a better slideshow program and have downloaded and used several of them, including PicturesToEexe, ProShow Gold, SmartShow, NCH PhotoStage, probably more I am not recalling. I really am liking the interface and features available on PicturesToExe, and it seems very highly rated for image quality.

The problem I am having with ALL of them, including PicturesToExe, is that I can't get the output quality to match the input quality, regardless of what type of output or resolution I use, be it AVI, MP4, 480P, 1080P, etc. My input files are JPGs with no compression, and they look excellent. They are 4:3 rather than widescreen, but the vertical resolution is either 1080 or 480 - so 1440x1080 or 640x480. When I use the preview function in PicturesToExe or ProShow Gold, the show looks the same quality as the input images, which is to say great. However, once I create the actual file, there's a tremendous loss of contrast and color saturation, as well as a loss of detail. The detail loss is to be expected if I'm creating a DVD resolution show and then stretching it to fit on a 1080P set - but I don't know why I should lose detail if I'm making a 1920x1080 slideshow. And in either case, there's no reason I should be losing contrast and saturation. The show should just need to add black bars on the sides if I'm using a 16:9 output resolution - not perform any image resizing or resampling, correct? Some of the programs let me bump up the contrast and saturation for each slide, and doing that does seem to fix the issue (other than detail loss). But that seems like an unnecessary step, especially when I thought the preview feature of P2E was supposed to give you exactly the same quality as the final result.

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit. Is there some setting in Windows 7 that could be affecting all these programs in the same way? I previously used NCH PhotoStage for several years on Windows XP and did not have this issue at all.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Aaron

[davegee]

What colour space are you using for your outputted JPEGs?

DG

[aaroncgi]

What colour space are you using for your outputted JPEGs?

DG

Where do I find that information? I'm using IrfanView v3.7 to resize the original 10 megapixel images (roughly 3600 x 2700 pixels) down to a height of either 1080 or 480 pixels depending on what I need. I'm using the default JPG settings other than any options related to quality, which I put at the highest setting. I'm not making any alterations to the images other than size, that I know of. I don't see anything in the vast array of options called colour space. There are options to change the color depth, color balances, saturation, gamma, contrast, etc, but all of these are unchecked. For all intents and purposes, the resized images look identical to the original images, when both are fit to the same screen.

Just really puzzled at this, as I had no such problems last year on Windows XP. If I take any of these resized images and use the Windows7 built-in slideshow, or a slideshow built into any image software such as IrfanView, ACDsee, etc, there's no loss in quality - and the same is true for the preview within PicturesToExe - it looks the same as the input images. It's just in the creation of a movie file that seems to bugger things up.

Now that I think of it, I have neglected a really basic troubleshooting step - playing the movies on multiple programs, my apologies. I believe so far I may have only been using my default player, GOM Player, which has always been a good one for me, and it's the latest version. But maybe it's screwed up somehow. Will need to try Windows Media Player or other video players and see what happens.....

[davegee]

PTE recommends Media Player Classic - Home Cinema.

If that doesn't do it, post one of your JPEGs?

DG

[cjdnzl]

It's known that PTE is best used with sRGB color-spaced images. Adobe RGB and other color spaces can give flat poor color results with PTE, which sounds like your problem.

Check that your camera is definitely set to sRGB and not aRGB (Adobe) color space. Viewing the exif data of your images will reveal what color space the image is in.

You can convert the color space to sRGB in most image editor programs if you find the images are not sRGB.

[Bert]

Aaron,

You write that you make a 1920x1080 slide show. You also write also that the resolution of your images is 1400x1080 max. If you make a slide show of 1920x1080, your resolution should be minimal 1920x1080 otherwise you see your images at more than 100% and they will loss a lot of detail.

I am not sure, but maybe that is the problem.

Bert

[aaroncgi]

Thanks for all the suggestions everone, nice to see such a warm welcome for a newbie! Turns out it actually WAS my media player, GOM Player, which I guess isn't too surprising since it was affecting all slideshow programs. The slideshows all looked fine when played through Windows Media Player. So GOM Player I'll be kicking to the curb and I'll try out the Media Player Classic.

I tried to find out what color space my images are using and man that took some digging! All three of my cameras are using sRGB, and that remains after resizing by Irfan view, so I think we're good. Only my new DSLR gives me an option to change that, and default is sRGB.

Regarding the slideshow size, maybe I wasn't clear enough. For the images I'm putting into a 1920x1080 slideshow, all the images have a height of 1080 pixels. Width varies, but generally in the 1440 range. My assumption, perhaps incorrect, was that P2E would just add black bars to the sides and not stretch or otherwise alter the portion of the actual image. That does seem to be what's happening. I suppose there's probably a way for me to make the images exactly 1920x1080 myself in a different program, ie add the black bars before importing into P2E, but not sure if that's strictly necessary?

In any case, everything seems to be working now! This little fubar actually has been very educational, as it gave me a lot more playing time with several different programs, which has made me appreciate the value of P2E more and ascertain more clearly what I really need and want.

Cheers all!

Aaron