Blurred pictures

[Vladimir Horsky]

Hi
I noticed that SnipSVG inserts images a bit blurry e.g. compared to Paint. It makes the images look a bit out of focus.

Blurred images.png

And it doesn't matter if I insert the images into SnipSVG from the clipboard or if I take them using the integrated New Screen Capture.
But if I save a screenshot using Paint (in PNG format), and open that in SnipSVG (and here it is already displayed blurry), then when I save the image in PNG format, the image is saved sharp (which I don't see in SnipSVG, which displays it blurry, but you can see it when you open it in Paint, for example).

Is this by design or is it related to some setting? Or is it a bug?

With regards
Vladimir

[Tim Green]

Hi Vladimir,

Thank you for the example. This minor issue is known but it will be a while before it can be corrected. The graphics rendering component renders the entire program window including the UI as a drawing. This means that the entire window is positioned using full integer pixels. However, images inside the editing window in the application also have sub-pixels for antialiasing. Images in the viewport are thus often positioned on uneven pixels in the main drawing and must thus be drawn with anti-aliasing using sub-pixels. In addition to this the canvas inside the window is also positioned with the same integer pixel / sub pixel constructions.

The result of this is that there is almost always a slight anti-aliasing effect on the display within SnipSVG and HelpXplain (which uses the same technology). The effect is more visible on old legacy monitors like yours rather than on modern high-resolution monitors, where the anti-aliasing can be much more effective because it has many more sub-pixels.

If you use relatively high-resolution images and don't zoom them disproportionately the effect will not be visible in your output. If you want to do pixel-level editing of bitmap images then SnipSVG is not the right tool for the job, however.