Images fine when viewed in Lightroom and on laptop, but pixellated when viewed on mobile phone.

[Devoted Lens]

I'm sure this must be a simple enough error I am making - I shoot on a Nikon D750, using a Sigma 35mm and a Sigma 70-200, both of which are perfectly capable lenses and have captured loads of crystal clear images for me. However, I recently sent some images from my laptop (having edited them in LR) to my wife and she pointed out that when she zoomed in (which she does, to self-critique everything that has her in haha) they look pixelated. I have checked the phone version and the laptop version and the laptop version only gets a bit pixelated when zoomed seriously far in, whereas the phone version is blurry with just a little zooming.

Any ideas why this may be happening? The quality marker was set to 90 in LR on exporting, so I know they are large files and capable of being blown up considerably. I want to get this rectified as I don't want clients zooming in on mobile phones and viewing blurry images.

 

[Box Brownie]

As I read it, you are saying you sent the exact same file that you are viewing on the laptop to your wife's phone?

Have confirmed by checking the file size that she has indeed got the same file in both file size in MB and the same size in pixel dimensions?

Have you tried sending the same file to your own phone to see if it is "phone make/model" specific problem? NB what is her phones screen size/resolution compared to yours and what app is being used to display the images?

Or a more wider issue to do with something about the file you are creating?

 

[ancient_mariner]

What resolution are you exporting, how much is she zooming in, will the image viewing software on the phone zoom to greater than 1:1? Any image will fall apart if zoomed too far.

 

[paulcamcas]

How are you sending the images to your wife? Email?

 

[Tdes]

I had something similar last week, turns out I was sending via mac mail and it was making the pics smaller (which I selected for an earlier email). The phone was displaying it at full screen size, but quality was very bad!!

It seems mail remembers your attachment settings, and can resize jpegs if that was on a previous setting.

Hope it is something as simple as this!!! Good luck!

 

[Devoted Lens]

As I read it, you are saying you sent the exact same file that you are viewing on the laptop to your wife's phone?

Have confirmed by checking the file size that she has indeed got the same file in both file size in MB and the same size in pixel dimensions?

Have you tried sending the same file to your own phone to see if it is "phone make/model" specific problem? NB what is her phones screen size/resolution compared to yours and what app is being used to display the images?

Or a more wider issue to do with something about the file you are creating?

I must admit I'm not sure how to check the size of the file on the phone itself, will have to have a play around. It's displaying as slightly pixelated on both our phones, which are both Google pixels but different versions. Even our lovely wedding photos are a little pixelated when zoomed in on, so guessing it must be the phone that's the problem as she's saying her old iPhone wasn't displaying the same photos poorly .

What resolution are you exporting, how much is she zooming in, will the image viewing software on the phone zoom to greater than 1:1? Any image will fall apart if zoomed too far.

Resolution is 240 pixels per inch - grateful for correction if needed? Granted she is zooming in as far as she can which is likely more than 1:1 .at 1:1 it's still relatively clear. I'm currently wondering if it's shooting on the 70-200 at its widest aperture that is somehow causing the issue, though I have my ISO set to auto and it has optical stabilisation turned on.

How are you sending the images to your wife? Email?

Both email with the original file and the photo from Facebook (uploaded to Facebook, then saves to phone, then sent to her via WhatsApp). I originally thought it may be a compression issue caused by Facebook or WhatsApp and so emailed the original file.

 

[Devoted Lens]

This is the offending image.

 

[paulcamcas]

We are seeing that at 1024 x 669 so naturally it looks a bit grim when you zoom in. Try sharing the file with her via dropbox or other cloud service so she gets the full-size image.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Resolution is 240 pixels per inch - grateful for correction if needed? Granted she is zooming in as far as she can which is likely more than 1:1 .at 1:1 it's still relatively clear.

If you look at a .jpg file at more than 1:1 then it will be full of artifacts and pixelation.

1:1


2:1


You can't overcome the lack of data when zooming too much, because at the moment, software doesn't interpolate and upscale for you on an image *viewer*.

 

[Retune]

I would use a cloud file storage service as Paul suggests. You can then load it into (e.g.) the Google Photos app, which has an information button (i) that will give you pixel dimensions.