# JPG image quality on Plasma TV



## Trigger (Mar 2, 2013)

I just processed over 700 images (taken Raw with my Panny G3), using Photoshop CS6 and NIK.  Camera is set to sRGB.

The images look great on my calibrated Dell U2410 monitor, but most all of them look like crap on my 42" Panasonic Plasma TV. (The TV takes an SD card in the side).  They don't look smooth; rather, grainy, and much darker than on the monitor.  B&W images look quite poor (I used NIK for all of those).  If I applied a vignette to an image, it looks way too dark and obvious on the TV, but nice & subtle on the monitor.  I cropped each image to the 1920x1080 resolution of the TV.

The only _possible_ correlation I can think of is that the images which didn't receive any "treatment" with NIK, look good, but not sure of this.

Any ideas?


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## Josh66 (Mar 2, 2013)

Your TV and your monitor probably have roughly the same number of pixels.  The TV is a hell of a lot bigger than the monitor (probably)...

edit
It would be the same as if you took a 1000x1500 pixel file and made two prints of it - one 4x6 and the other 16x24.  Which one would you expect to look better?


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## Trigger (Mar 3, 2013)

But the thing is, I _have_ had some images look absolutely perfect on the TV, but many do not, so I'm suspecting that there's something in my processing that I'm unaware of.


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## Josh66 (Mar 3, 2013)

Hard to say...

I don't view pictures on the TV very often, but when I do they generally don't look 'horrible' - I mean, they don't look as good as they do on my monitor, but they don't look 'bad' either.
In my case, my TV and my monitor have exactly the same number of pixels, but there is obviously a size difference.

Are you sure the ones that look bad are full size?

edit
If you did a lot of cropping, I can see that having a noticeable impact on a larger screen...


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## Kolia (Mar 3, 2013)

Assuming your monitor is 1080p, any picture not of the same format will have to be scaled by the tv back its native resolution. 

The artifacts of that is probably what you see.  Basically, the "video card" of any tv is what makes the biggest difference in picture quality between various price range. The screen itself is often similar. 

I would try to resize the pictures to the tv's native resolution in PS and try again to view them on the tv.


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## Mully (Mar 3, 2013)

Think of it this way...you shot them on a postage stamp size sensor and want to blow them up to a 42" TV monitor....they will be soft


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## Kolia (Mar 3, 2013)

Mully said:


> Think of it this way...you shot them on a postage stamp size sensor and want to blow them up to a 42" TV monitor....they will be soft



The postage stamp sensor has many many time more resolution that the TV.

Full HD tv is 2MP....


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## Trigger (Mar 3, 2013)

To be clear, the images started out as 4592 x 3448 pixels, so cropping them to the TVs native resolution of 1920 x 1080 as I did is not going to reduce image quality.  Like I said, I _have_ had some images that look fantastic, but most do not.

This is a problem I've experienced for a long time, not just with this batch.


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## Kolia (Mar 3, 2013)

Put an example. 

I've played with that with some of my pictures. Different tv we're scaling with different quality and only when I resized the original to the tv's native resolution did I get consistent results. 

You are using jpeg yes ?  Not a RAW file that ends up as the low res jpeg preview being displayed ?  The preview imbedded in my raw files weight about 1,6mb on average for my 24MP images. In contrast, à 80% quality jpeg is in the 6-9mb range for the same image.


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## Sw1tchFX (Mar 3, 2013)

I think everyone is missing the point here, the OP isn't talking about resolution, they're talking about tonality and color. 

You're seeing the difference between a calibrated monitor (assumption), and uncalibrated TV. Calibrate the TV and they should be in the same ballpark.


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## Trigger (Mar 3, 2013)

My workflow was:

- Open Raw file in CS6 (Adobe Camera Raw).

- "Save As" Photoshop file (PSD)

- Edit as required with PS and/or NIK.  Under "Filter" menu, "Convert for Smart Filters" often used.

- PSD file saved.

- PSD files batch saved as full size, high quality (12) JPGs using:  Bridge  >  Select All images  >  Tools  >  Photoshop  >  Image Processor

- Copy all into a separate folder for TV.

- Crop at 1920x1080


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## Trigger (Mar 3, 2013)

Sw1tchFX said:


> I think everyone is missing the point here, the OP isn't talking about resolution, they're talking about tonality and color.



Thank you! 




> You're seeing the difference between a calibrated monitor (assumption), and uncalibrated TV. Calibrate the TV and they should be in the same ballpark.



How do I do that?


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