Poor Image Rendering Quality in Author Mode

[dreifsnider]

Hi,

Is there a way to increase the quality of image rendering in Author mode?

We're experiencing pixelated and generally poor image quality when viewing many of our images in Author mode. The majority of the images that are poorly rendered are large images that are downscaled; however, we would expect this to improve the image quality when viewing them in Author mode.

For example, here's an image that I quickly created and then inserted into a topic in Author mode. Notice how the image in the topic displays very pixelated and fuzzy.

2023-11-08_18-22-54.png (266.74 KiB) Viewed 596 times

We are also experiencing the same issue on Web Author and are wondering if there's a way to improve the image quality in both.

Thank you!

Daniel

[Radu]

Hi Daniel,
We have an internal issue for this, pasting the issue ID below:
EXM-53535 Scaled images appear less crisp
I added your contact details to the opened issue.
In the Oxygen Preferences->"Editor / Edit Modes / Author" page there is an "Auto scale images wider than..." setting which causes this downscale made by Oxygen when showing the images.
Do you usually set a scale attribute on large images? So is your use case closer to an use case where you set on each image a scale attribute or width/height attributes but they are shown as blurry?
Regards,
Radu

[Radu]

One more thing, usually with what image formats do you work? PNGs? SVGs? Something else?

[dreifsnider]

Hi Radu,

Apologies for my delay in responding.

Do you usually set a scale attribute on large images? So is your use case closer to an use case where you set on each image a scale attribute or width/height attributes but they are shown as blurry?

We typically do not set scale/width/height attributes on images. We have an additional post DITA-OT processing step which does automatically add a width attribute to images when transforming to HTML, but this is not dependent on the attributes set in the DITA source. In fact, these image attributes in the DITA source are stripped when transforming to HTML. So therefore, we are adding images directly to DITA topics as-is.

Our use case is that most, if not all, of the images that we add to DITA topics, regardless of whether or not they are auto-scaled down by the "Auto scale images wider than..." setting, display as blurry/pixelated when viewing the image in Author mode. Even images that have a width exacty at the default auto-scale value of 1024px or lower display as blurry/pixelated. When viewing these images using the native OS image viewer, the images display much crisper.

This is an issue for us because we have a large number of users who are not technical writers using Oxygen Author desktop and Web Author to add images to DITA topics. These users are very concerned about the quality of the images and are wanting Oxygen to show the actual fidelity of the image within Author mode, instead of having to use a different application, like the native OS image viewer to confirm the image displays as expected.

One more thing, usually with what image formats do you work? PNGs? SVGs? Something else?

For the most part, we are using PNGs; however, we are starting to use more SVGs, especially for images that contain a lot of text.

I hope this helps, and thank you for having an internal issue for this!

Daniel

[Radu]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the clarifications, I added your feedback on the opened issue.
Would you be willing to send us via email (support@oxygenxml.com) such a large scale PNG image actually used in your docs (maybe an image which is already shown on a public web site)? So that we can test with something as similar as possible to your case.
Are you working on Windows on Mac OS? If you are working on Windows do you use a high dpi monitor?

Regards,
Radu

[dreifsnider]

Hi Radu,

I have emailed Oxygen support with an example of a large image we're currently using in our documentation.

Additionally, to answer your other questions:

• The majority of Oxygen users are using Windows; however, we do have a few who are using MacOS.

• All Oxygen users are working from home and their monitor situation depends on what they have available at home; there’s no set consistency. For example, I am personally using a 4K Dell monitor (U3219Q); however, most of my colleagues are using smaller 1080p monitors at home.

This image rendering issue has been reported by a variety of users who I am assuming are using different monitors.

I hope this helps and please let me know if there's any other information I can provide to help.

Thank you!

Daniel

[Radu]

Thanks Daniel,
We now have the sample image and your extra details, if we manage to improve on the downscaling behavior in a future version we will let you know.
Regards,
Radu