Database Users

Today screen color depth?

Why is it that today screen images show up rather poor? They seem to be locked to 16-bit color instead of 32. The original image show up fine in the album but has visible shades when used as today. I read that the Theme Generator (from Microsoft) always locks em to 16-bit. Any ideas? Thanks.

sekinoss said:
Why is it that today screen images show up rather poor? They seem to be locked to 16-bit color instead of 32. The original image show up fine in the album but has visible shades when used as today. I read that the Theme Generator (from Microsoft) always locks em to 16-bit. Any ideas? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Magician can only show 16-bit colour i.e. 65536 colours. But I know what you mean about the today screen. I used theme generator and get the impression its using closer to 12 bits.

sekinoss said:
Why is it that today screen images show up rather poor? They seem to be locked to 16-bit color instead of 32. The original image show up fine in the album but has visible shades when used as today. I read that the Theme Generator (from Microsoft) always locks em to 16-bit. Any ideas? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try to save your wallpaper in .gif 256 clrs 294*320, rename it to Default_stwater.gif and replace the default in /windows dir. Then, reset your today and all be fine!!!

I see. Almost forgot that the screen's only 16-bit. The problem is, the image showed up great on the Album, but displayed poorly when used as today (thru theme generator, image as wallpaper, etc.). GKill, I don't understand what you're talking about, but I'll try it out anyway. Thanks!

sekinoss said:
GKill, I don't understand what you're talking about, but I'll try it out anyway. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am talking about replacing the standart windows wallpaper (blue with win. logo) that located in widows dir. This image you cant delete, but it is possible to replace it! TYou must search this .gif file (see above) and copy to your desktop, then open in photoshop. Make own wallpaper and save it with similar dimensions in .gif. Then replace, like I said and you will receive own designed wallpaper as windows default!!!
It is good because it suitable as for portrait, as for landscape modes!

Hey thanks! The pic looked better now but I just realized that today's are limited to 256 colors (GIFs)?? If so then is there any way to display 16-bit pics? Thanks!

sekinoss said:
Hey thanks! The pic looked better now but I just realized that today's are limited to 256 colors (GIFs)?? If so then is there any way to display 16-bit pics? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to hear this!!!!! :wink:
Do you really want 16 bit??? Heh, but try to notice any difference (withe bare eyes) between your 16 bit unconverted (jpg for examle) and converted 256 colors .gif!!! What do you see??? Yes, it is VERY hard to see ane difference! Man, dont f*ck your brain, girl is better :lol: :lol: :lol:

Could someone help me with this: the gifs have only 256 indexed colours, so if you have a nice picture, like a sunset, the smooth gradient turns into bands or ugly pixels (dithering?). So how cannot one make the difference between a jpg and this horrible gif ? The jpg files are displayed OK in the album view. If I try to set one of these jpgs as desktop image it gets whitish like through a fog. How can I set a sunset without pixels or bands as the "desktop image". It seems so complicated ...Could someone please help ?

Could someone help me with this: the gifs have only 256 indexed colours, so if you have a nice picture, like a sunset, the smooth gradient turns into bands or ugly pixels (dithering?). So how cannot one make the difference between a jpg and this horrible gif ? The jpg files are displayed OK in the album view. If I try to set one of these jpgs as desktop image it gets whitish like through a fog. How can I set a sunset without pixels or bands as the "desktop image". It seems so complicated ...Could someone please help ?

kelu said:
Could someone help me with this: the gifs have only 256 indexed colours, so if you have a nice picture, like a sunset, the smooth gradient turns into bands or ugly pixels (dithering?). So how cannot one make the difference between a jpg and this horrible gif ? The jpg files are displayed OK in the album view. If I try to set one of these jpgs as desktop image it gets whitish like through a fog. How can I set a sunset without pixels or bands as the "desktop image". It seems so complicated ...Could someone please help ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When converting in photoshop, set dithering options to "off" (no dither). remember that display in Magician is 65K. This means maximum colour depth is 16 bit. In any case, I'm using the 256 .gif pics with beautiful landscapes and it looks great! If you want, I can post here one...

People Tab Slow!!!

i have added 480X640 hires pictures in People Tab and now it works very slowly, is it possible to make it quicker, thakns in advance

Same thing happened to me, i solved it replacing the hi-res pictures with ones taken in "contact" mode (which just means they're much small but the perfect size for the contact thumbnails, so no visible loss)

use a program to crop the pictures..I use Photoshop and crop the images and save them with medium to low quality..The smaller the file size the faster scrolling through contacts in TF3D will be

Giannis86 said:
use a program to crop the pictures..I use Photoshop and crop the images and save them with medium to low quality..The smaller the file size the faster scrolling through contacts in TF3D will be
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
will try tommorow, i have croped allready to 480X640 and saved as jpg 8 quality in Photoshop, but i don't want to resise it to smaller resolution because S2U2 will show ****y images then.

does s2u2 display the image in full screen? :S

holydhaliwal said:
Same thing happened to me, i solved it replacing the hi-res pictures with ones taken in "contact" mode (which just means they're much small but the perfect size for the contact thumbnails, so no visible loss)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so thats what it wass!
i had it working all nice and fast and then all of a sudden it went super slow,
i will try tomorrow to edit them out with photoshop to make them smaller.
thanks

Giannis86 said:
does s2u2 display the image in full screen? :S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, it does full screen pictures, look awsome and you have Slide2Answer button. i have reduced favourites in People Tab to 6 persons and it is a bit faster. i dont think it is the file size making it slow, it is resolution, cause i have had 450x450 pictures before and it was super fast, now with 480x640 become slow and the file size is nearly the same.

done
me once again, i have it done, works fast and is in 480x640, i have converted all pictures with acd see to jpg 65% compresion and 480x640 res, works fast in tab and look great on s2u full screen, all my problems gone now.

Image does not look as sharp when used as wallpaper

I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but I set a picture to be my wallpaper and realised that at the home screen, it looks very blur. I checked the width and height of the picture and it is 480x800. Also when I view the picture in the photo gallery, it is much much sharper, like what it supposed to be.
Is there a way around this?
Thanks!

ave a look in the themes an apps section. 480 x 800 will show up unless you follows a guide on how to make it come up crystal.
Just do a search for Wallpaper Guide

c0nk3r said:
I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but I set a picture to be my wallpaper and realised that at the home screen, it looks very blur. I checked the width and height of the picture and it is 480x800. Also when I view the picture in the photo gallery, it is much much sharper, like what it supposed to be.
Is there a way around this?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tested my phone and no probs all wallpapers or pictures look great
Can I ask how you selected your wallpaper?
Was it through settings wallpaper?
or another method

I've also noticed this as some pics transfer fine and clear to the wallpaper and some look enlarged and blurry. I'm thinking it's the larger screen size vs. the pic resolution size. My pro at 2.8" was not an issue. It hasn't bothered me enough to seek a fix, I'm using mobile shell and selecting the change image option. Ureka!! thats it, the shell! Doh!!! just my $.02

ozmoran said:
I just tested my phone and no probs all wallpapers or pictures look great
Can I ask how you selected your wallpaper?
Was it through settings wallpaper?
or another method
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah i just used the simplest method.. just get to the settings tab in TF3D and choose from there.

cbreze said:
I've also noticed this as some pics transfer fine and clear to the wallpaper and some look enlarged and blurry. I'm thinking it's the larger screen size vs. the pic resolution size. My pro at 2.8" was not an issue. It hasn't bothered me enough to seek a fix, I'm using mobile shell and selecting the change image option. Ureka!! thats it, the shell! Doh!!! just my $.02
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah i had a diamond before this and the wallpapers looked great there.
but the funny part is that the pics look great and sharp when viewed in the photo gallery, but only becomes blur when used as wallpaper.
OH and they don't look enlarged lol. the wallpapaer keeps the size, but it's really blur.

Just use the search button and read the wiki, this is another one of those topics that have been done to death, there's heaps of information on it.

Different background quality in lockscreen and home screen

Could anyone pls try the following?
Set as background for both lockscreen and homescreen the same picture with a gradient: you can use the circular gradient that the phone has already stored.
in the lockscreen the gradient is very visible while in the homescreen it's very smooth.
weird...

Can you take any screenshots?

The background in the lock screen is actually of higher resolution than the sense one. This is because sense does something awkward to images. It crops a smaller part and then stretches it to fit the whole home screen.

The lockscreen seems to recompress the images indeed. A perfect image once set as lockscreen appears like an awfully blocky JPG. I guess it doesn't use the image as is but makes a badly compressed copy.
I use S2U2 now, that sort of solves the problem

kilrah said:
The lockscreen seems to recompress the images indeed. A perfect image once set as lockscreen appears like an awfully blocky JPG. I guess it doesn't use the image as is but makes a badly compressed copy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From my experience, it's the other way round.
The image you see on the lockscreen is the Windows Today background, and that's just a centered view of the image you select. It doesn't do any cropping or resizing whatsoever.
For the OP - try HDWall. It allows you to have high quality images for wallpaper, as well as having the wallpaper work on all tabs. It's in the themes and apps forum. If you do use it, you'll need to install the HQ patch in the first post the first time you use it, or the backgrounds don't look right. Using HDWall, I struggle to see the difference between the manila background and the start menu/lock screen.
Hope this helps

here are the screeshots

The images I tried were exactly 480x800 as I made them on purpose. When viewing them on the device (with HTC Album or Resco photo manager), they look perfectly good, but on the lockscreen they're awful.
Sense indeed applies some kind of "grainy" post-processing, but I don't mind it, in Sense the background is not very apparent, I actually just use a default WP.
But anyway, some screenshots:
Sense rendering:
Lockscreen:
S2U2:
See how the lockscreen one appears hugely blocky? OK the original pic I used wasn't perfect for a start, but you can clearly see the difference between S2U2 that just displays the image as is and the recompression the lockscreen does.

As far as I can see, the HDWall works only with wallpaperss in a cab file.
Is there an other way to have HQ Wallpapers in a "normal way"?
Im using the Theme Maker from Max as well but there seems no HQ option to be included.
tomylee

kilrah said:
The images I tried were exactly 480x800 as I made them on purpose. When viewing them on the device (with HTC Album or Resco photo manager), they look perfectly good, but on the lockscreen they're awful.
Sense indeed applies some kind of "grainy" post-processing, but I don't mind it, in Sense the background is not very apparent, I actually just use a default WP.
But anyway, some screenshots:
Sense rendering:
Lockscreen:
S2U2:
See how the lockscreen one appears hugely blocky? OK the original pic I used wasn't perfect for a start, but you can clearly see the difference between S2U2 that just displays the image as is and the recompression the lockscreen does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I c u'r using s2u2: is it working fine on the HD2? any issue?

Perfectly fine.

kilrah said:
Lockscreen:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any fix or workaround for this yet (other than using S2U2)?

SaintNULL said:
Any fix or workaround for this yet (other than using S2U2)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking for the exact same thing....
Any update??

Applied wallpaper is blurry... Why?

(First, I'm trying to avoid HDwalls)
It has always bugged me that when you apply a wallpaper under Settings, that the wallpaper isn't as clear as if you were to view them in the "Picture" tab. In fact, the applied wallpaper is some what blurred at a lower quality.
Has anyone noticed this? Or is it just me because I can point out something you were not able to see.
try it yourself with some sharp jagged text as wallpaper. Then apply it to the lock screen as well.
You'll notice that the wallpaper on home screen is not as crisp and clear as the one on the lock screen.
Anyone know why?

you are right, I did notice this.
has it got something to do with the phone trying to squish the image into the right ratio instead of just cropping the image too fit?
not sure maybe some other members can offer their help?

See, you didn't even notice youself. And i think most people dont realize this as well.
Anyone got a fix?

rebump. rebump

Sense resizes the image to something smaller than 480x800 and then stretches it again (for some silly reason). It's a long-known problem - since the phone was first released. It's also one of the reasons that HDWall came about. The only alternative to HDWall I know is to install Co0kie's Home Tab. You can set wallpaper with that and it retains the original quality (as well as having a LOT of extra wallpaper options).

Try resizing or cropping the image to 480x800 then setting it as a background, that way the phone won't need to resize it for you.....

conantroutman said:
Try resizing or cropping the image to 480x800 then setting it as a background, that way the phone won't need to resize it for you.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It still does it. The default way of setting wallpaper in Sense is just crap.

johncmolyneux said:
It still does it. The default way of setting wallpaper in Sense is just crap.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? That is truly retarted.... thanks for the heads up!

johncmolyneux said:
The only alternative to HDWall I know is to install Co0kie's Home Tab. You can set wallpaper with that and it retains the original quality (as well as having a LOT of extra wallpaper options).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cookies wall doesnt work. never did.
home tab>menu>home wallpaper> etc...
that path doesnt work.
unless there is some other way...
resizing images dont work either.

I just also want to mention that Cookies Home tab 1.8 does improve the quality of the wallpaper over normal Sense BUT they are still reduced in quality and resolution somewhat so are still not full quality.
So for me - HDwalls is what i use - though i sometimes have trouble getting it to work properly.

Use SPB Mobile Shell. You will get mega sharp wallpapers (custom of course) and far better functionality than standard sense.