Old-system Jpegs not as clear in Windows 7

[Peter Jason]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?
Peter

 

[Nil]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored
on my old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed
out". Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images
degraded over time? What is the best way to store these images?

jpegs are jpegs. They are now as they ever were. They don't degrade
over time. If they look bad now, they were bad then. You can
manipulate/"enhance" them with image editing software, but the process
of uncompressing them and then recompressing them back to jpg format
will likely make them look worse then before. jpg is a lossy format,
similar in that regard to mp3. The files are made small by permanently
throwing out information. That information cannot be regained.

Store them like any other data file. They don't need any special
treatment.

 

[richard]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?
Peter

It may not be windows, but your software.

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

I had been using irfanview as my main graphics program. But Irfanview
always produced some rather shoddy images.
Comparing the same screen capture side by side, paintnet winds hands down
over irfanview.
Paintnet brings out finer details.

Electronically stored images don't degrade over time.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?
Peter

After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.

1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.

2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
on.

These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.

OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
contrasting rectangles within them.

 

[richard]

After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.

1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.

2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
on.

These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.

OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
contrasting rectangles within them.

Want to have some real fun?
Use a hex editor to see the raw code.
Randomly select a bit and change it.
Let's say the bit shows AA. Change to AB.
I did that a few times and got all kinds of different results.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Want to have some real fun?
Use a hex editor to see the raw code.
Randomly select a bit and change it.
Let's say the bit shows AA. Change to AB.
I did that a few times and got all kinds of different results.

How do you think I did what I describe above?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

It may not be windows, but your software.

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

I had been using irfanview as my main graphics program. But Irfanview
always produced some rather shoddy images.
Comparing the same screen capture side by side, paintnet winds hands down
over irfanview.
Paintnet brings out finer details.

Electronically stored images don't degrade over time.

Well, I just looked at a few pictures in IrfanView and in Paint.net, and
the differences were *very* small - in fact, the word "zero" comes to
mind...

Is it possible that you had zoomed in or out in one viewer? That can
affect rendering quite heavily.

 

[WaIIy]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?
Peter

I keep jpegs in the refrigerator and that seems to work.

If you put them in a Ziplok bag, it's even better.

If they are Gifs, just store them out of the sun.

I don't know about bmp, I don't have any.

 

[Nil]

If they are Gifs, just store them out of the sun.

Even better, put them through a fruit dehydrator. They'll last just
about forever!

 

[Peter Jason]

After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.

1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.

2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
on.

These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.

OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
contrasting rectangles within them.

Perhaps I have become used to the modern better-quality images, but
some old stored ones looked decidedly blotchy - especially the old
colour negatives I scanned years ago with a Minolta 35mm scanner. I
thought that Windows reconstructed all the jpeg images from some sort
of compressed format every time they are displayed, and there is some
loss every time. Originally I wanted to scan them all in the tiff
format but these files are too large. I have about 4000 images
laboriously scanned from old negatives and photos most of which I
can't get back anymore because I gave them back to the numerous
relatives. Now I'm worried.

 

[Peter Jason]

It may not be windows, but your software.

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

I had been using irfanview as my main graphics program. But Irfanview
always produced some rather shoddy images.
Comparing the same screen capture side by side, paintnet winds hands down
over irfanview.
Paintnet brings out finer details.

Electronically stored images don't degrade over time.

I scanned all the old slides and negatives on a Minolta scanner built
for this purpose. The photos laboriously collected from disparate
relatives, subsequently returned, were done on a Canon 9900F flatbet
scanner and processed with Photoshop. It all took a long time. I
started with Windows ME and finished with WindowsXP.

 

[Peter Jason]

jpegs are jpegs. They are now as they ever were. They don't degrade
over time. If they look bad now, they were bad then. You can
manipulate/"enhance" them with image editing software, but the process
of uncompressing them and then recompressing them back to jpg format
will likely make them look worse then before. jpg is a lossy format,
similar in that regard to mp3. The files are made small by permanently
throwing out information. That information cannot be regained.

Store them like any other data file. They don't need any special
treatment.

All the original scans are on DVDs.

 

[Paul]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?
Peter

This can have to do with color calibration from end to end in your system.

I don't know enough about the subject, to write a good answer.

Some image formats, allow carrying some kind of color profile information
along with the image. And this is supposed to help when viewing the image
later. Other image formats, don't have such a feature. Then, it's up to the
video card driver gamma adjustment, brightness, contrast, the monitor settings
(as some monitors have dynamic contrast, or have their own profile choices
like a "movie" mode). There are many many adjustments to go wrong. Even
the image editor or viewer, can have its own internal profile for playback.

To give you an example, I've tried to adjust my laptop for a pleasing color
range, and have not been successful. (And I'm not even looking at JPEGs, I'm
just trying to get the desktop background picture to render properly.)
When I plug in an external monitor, it looks great, while the laptop LCD panel
looks horrid. I can't get a good black level on the laptop screen, no matter
how I adjust things. The external monitor, on the other hand, is perfectly
normal looking.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Perhaps I have become used to the modern better-quality images, but
some old stored ones looked decidedly blotchy - especially the old
colour negatives I scanned years ago with a Minolta 35mm scanner. I
thought that Windows reconstructed all the jpeg images from some sort
of compressed format every time they are displayed, and there is some
loss every time. Originally I wanted to scan them all in the tiff
format but these files are too large. I have about 4000 images
laboriously scanned from old negatives and photos most of which I
can't get back anymore because I gave them back to the numerous
relatives. Now I'm worried.

If the monitor has a 6 bit LCD panel, there could be blotchy or banding
due to the color rendering process at the monitor. They take the 8 bit
value passed along the monitor cable, and then take two 6 bit values and
alternate values as frames are displayed on the screen. The human eye
interpolates the colors, to make something closer to an 8 bit color
rendering.

Other monitors with have a proper 8 bit LCD panel (8 bits per pixel, on
each of the three primary colors R, G, B). And those monitors don't need
to dither.

Naturally, your video card mode setting in the Display control panel, has
to be set to 24 or 32 bit color, so you're not limited at the graphics
card. If you were in 16 bit mode, you might see more banding, because
the video card cannot then represent all the colors properly.

LCD panels can also have problems delivering a good black level. Or alternately,
if the monitor is in "movie" mode, the monitor can dim the backlight when it
wants to make darker colors (for a mostly dark scene). Such dynamic contrast
usually annoys Photoshop users, who rely on the colors to remain consistent
for the entire session. Changing the monitor settings, via the monitor OSD,
is one way to attempt a correction (turn off movie mode).

Some monitors are carefully calibrated at the factory, while other brands
of LCD monitors are left with default settings that don't take the performance
of the panel into account. If you read reviews of some LCDs, the LCD only
gives a good result when they do the lab tests, after a manual calibration
procedure is followed.

*******

The files themselves haven't changed, it's just the display path from the
file to your screen, where something is amiss.

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Perhaps I have become used to the modern better-quality images, but
some old stored ones looked decidedly blotchy - especially the old
colour negatives I scanned years ago with a Minolta 35mm scanner. I
thought that Windows reconstructed all the jpeg images from some sort
of compressed format every time they are displayed, and there is some
loss every time. Originally I wanted to scan them all in the tiff
format but these files are too large. I have about 4000 images
laboriously scanned from old negatives and photos most of which I
can't get back anymore because I gave them back to the numerous
relatives. Now I'm worried.

Yes, the viewers reconstruct the images from the compressed
representation. But it's the same calculation every time and gives the
same results every time. After all, it starts from the same original jpg
file every time and uses the same method every time.

It sounds to me like your memory is the real problem - you just forgot
how bad the scans looked back in the day.

It is foolish to worry. These are digital files.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

To give you an example, I've tried to adjust my laptop for a pleasing color
range, and have not been successful. (And I'm not even looking at JPEGs, I'm
just trying to get the desktop background picture to render properly.)

My default Windows library of desktop pictures seems to consist of jpg
files

 

[Joe Morris]

I have been checking some very old (10 years) jpegs I had shored on my
old HDD on the XP system.

Many of the images are fainter and the color seems a bit "washed out".
Is there some setting to fix this, or have the images degraded over
time? What is the best way to store these images?

Have you installed all of the software tools that are provided by *both* the
video card *and* the monitor? Are the answers the same with respect to your
XP system?

I'm asking because modern video cards have the ability to tune their color
output to provide a reliable and repeatable color on a monitor, cancelling
out variations in both the electronics and the color emitting elements. The
monitor vendor may have provided one or more color correction files and the
video card software may have loaded them - and a video card driver might be
loading one that skews the color balance the wrong way for your particular
files and viewing environment. Or maybe your old system was badly out of
color balance so you adjusted the image files to look good - but now on a
"correctly balanced" system they look odd.

FWIW I run XP and Windows 7, host and virtual, LCD (desktop and laptop) and
CRT monitors, and **for my hardware** I've seen no problem with color
balance.

Joe

 

[RnR]

After I stopped laughing, I came up with two serious ideas.

1. You are trusting your memory of what the pictures looked like.

2. Your current monitor is not the same monitor you used to view them
on.

These are not Kodachrome slides or Kodacolor prints. Each picture is a
series of bits telling the computer what to display. If some bits in a
picture had changed - and they could only go from 0 to 1 or vice versa,
not somewhere in between - the software would be unable to read the
picture, since the structure of the compressed data would be ruined.

OK, I'm not quite right. I just changed *one bit* (necessarily
arbitrarily, since I had no idea where I was in the picture) in a jpeg
file from a 1 to a 0. In fact, I could still display it, but there were
large and obvious artifacts in the result, namely, in this instance,
wide and visible borders around parts of the picture, with a couple of
contrasting rectangles within them.

Gene, you beat me to the punch. I am betting it's the monitor now vs.
then. To a much lesser degree, I wonder if his mind is playing
tricks on him.

 

[Nil]

I thought that Windows reconstructed all the jpeg
images from some sort of compressed format every time they are
displayed, and there is some loss every time.

No, it doesn't work that way. There is only quality loss when you
repeately decompress and save the file to disk. Merely displaying the
image does nothing to the file.

 

[Andy Burns]

Perhaps I have become used to the modern better-quality images, but
some old stored ones looked decidedly blotchy - especially the old
colour negatives I scanned years ago with a Minolta 35mm scanner. I
thought that Windows reconstructed all the jpeg images from some sort
of compressed format every time they are displayed, and there is some
loss every time.

They were compressed when you saved them, there is no cumulative loss
each time you display them, however if you edit and re-save them
(sometimes just to rotate them) that will add further losses.