Making my own wallpaper (Problems)

Hi

So I have been trying to make my own wallpaper in photoshop. These are the settings I start with and save as.

The file turns out as 5.9MB but around any sort of text you can see clear pixel "problems" so to speak. Like this;

Anyone know why this happens?

So does the image on your computer have that or do the artifacts appear after you upload to imgur? I kinda tried to replicate that image but i'm not getting any artifacts.

Not entirely sure what you mean. The imgur shows exactly what I see on my computer not only on Imgur.

Here you can clearly see the artifacts that appear both on imgur and my computer.

Is that "DONT" something you typed into Photosop as text or is that an image you inserted from somewhere else?

What you're seeing are compression artefacts that come from JPEG compression (saving as .jpg with high compression). Saving as png does not cause these artefacts so I assume you inserted that text from somewhere else where it already had those artefacts.

Gandalf said:

Is that "DONT" something you typed into Photosop as text or is that an image you inserted from somewhere else? What you're seeing are compression artefacts that come from JPEG compression (saving as .jpg with high compression). Saving as png does not cause these artefacts so I assume you inserted that text from somewhere else where it already had those artefacts.

This is infact from a "non compressed" PNG, and yes it is a text I wrote in photoshop myself.

Added 2016-10-08 14:59:33

https://youtu.be/qidFguJiyrM

Recorded this so you can see exactly what I'm doing and how bad the results are.

Does it happen with other fonts? Can you upload the saved PNG(not a screenshot of it) to imgur or something and post it here. Im not getting artefacts after reproducing your steps neither. I don't have the font you used, though.

defurious said:

Does it happen with other fonts? Can you upload the saved PNG(not a screenshot of it) to imgur or something and post it here. Im not getting artefacts after reproducing your steps neither. I don't have the font you used, though.

Sure here you go. Uploaded the file directly to Imgur;

Here is a screen capture of desktop;

the first file you upload is a JPEG....

and these are clearly JPEG artifacts, it can't be a PNG

Photoshop must be broken. I save as PNG only.

Added 2016-10-08 23:16:20

shadomare said:

the first file you upload is a JPEG.... and these are clearly JPEG artifacts, it can't be a PNG

This is the latest wallpaper I am using. So you can see PNG image but with JPEG artifacts?..

Imgur is screwing with us. Here is my png turned jpg after uploading to them:

I found this on google, it's 5 years old though. Then again, there is this. So I remade the image to be under 1mb in size as a PNG and uploaded it. The first one was about 6mb.

No artifacts. Of course at 640x480, that's hardly wallpaper material.

However, this has nothing to do with the fact that you're already seeing the artifacts on your computer before you even upload it to Imgur. GPU driver problems, maybe?

Added 2016-10-09 04:23:15

Here we go. PNG files over 5MB will be converted to JPEGs.

Added 2016-10-09 04:30:39

By the way, here is what the first one looks like with Smallest / Slow compression turned on:

That's a 158kb PNG.

defurious said:

Imgur is screwing with us. Here is my png turned jpg after uploading to them: I found this on google, it's 5 years old though. Then again, there is this. So I remade the image to be under 1mb in size as a PNG and uploaded it. The first one was about 6mb. No artifacts. Of course at 640x480, that's hardly wallpaper material. However, this has nothing to do with the fact that you're already seeing the artifacts on your computer before you even upload it to Imgur. GPU driver problems, maybe? Added 2016-10-09 04:23:15 Here we go. PNG files over 5MB will be converted to JPEGs. Added 2016-10-09 04:30:39 By the way, here is what the first one looks like with Smallest / Slow compression turned on: That's a 158kb PNG.

Yeah this is very weird. How a 5.9MB PNG file gives me artifacts on my computer not only after uploading to imgur..

OK so I downloaded the 158kb PNG wallpaper and this actually gives me artifacts as well after I use it as a wallpaper. If I look at the file in preview, no artifacts.

Espenbv said:

OK so I downloaded the 158kb PNG wallpaper and this actually gives me artifacts as well after I use it as a wallpaper. If I look at the file in preview, no artifacts.

Sounds like your system turns the wallpaper into JPG before it actually uses it. I assume you're on Windows?

defurious said:

By the way, here is what the first one looks like with Smallest / Slow compression turned on: That's a 158kb PNG.

Just want to mention PNG always uses lossless compression. Even the strongest compression on PNG does not cause any kind of artefacts.

Gandalf said:

Espenbv said: Sounds like your system turns the wallpaper into JPG before it actually uses it. I assume you're on Windows? defurious said: Just want to mention PNG always uses lossless compression. Even the strongest compression on PNG does not cause any kind of artefacts.

Correct I am on windows. Windows 7 ultimate.

[url]http://aaron-kelley.net/blog/2011/01/crappy-desktop-wallpaper-compression-in-windows-7/[/url] I did a couple of tests and I cannot reproduce this behaviour (Windows 7 Pro totally up-to-date)

If you still experience the issue you can give a try to my wallpaper software [url]https://www.strangeplanet.fr/work/umwp-autochanger/[/url] (yeah it does work with only one monitor) Beside all it's cool features (!!!) it generates uncompressed BMP files and directly update the registry, bypassing the standard compressor.

I did some quick googling and I found a few links that you should check out Espenbv. Apparently this is an old issue with Windows and HQ wallpapers. I can't help you much more than this at the moment, as I'm dealing with computer issues myself.

[url]http://www.ghacks.net/2013/07/07/windows-compressing-your-high-quality-desktop-backgrounds-try-these-fixes/[/url] [url]https://superuser.com/questions/507097/stop-windows-8-from-converting-wallpapers-to-low-quality-jpgs[/url] <- this one looks promising [url]https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/0c02f2cb-39cd-4f2d-bd4e-154fd2165b69/my-wallpaper-gets-badly-compressed?forum=w7itproui[/url] [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3ffp1v/why_is_windows_10_compressing_wallpapers_so_hard/[/url] [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4azlwr/tired_of_windows_compressing_your_wallpapers_in/[/url]

Originally, I thought that you were also seeing the artifacts in PS before you saved it which was what made me question your GPU drivers. I guess that's not really the case and it only happens when applied as wallpaper.

Man its just your initial resolution..... put the resolution in "72" when you start and write normally, the problem here is the resolution between the text and your "worspace"... ok, tell me if that works

SnaKePhant0m said:

Man its just your initial resolution..... put the resolution in "72" when you start and write normally, the problem here is the resolution between the text and your "worspace"... ok, tell me if that works

Setting the wallpaper that I made following his steps at 300ppi produces no artifacts on my screen. I checked and my JPEGImportQuality REG key is already at 100. I remember setting this a long time ago back when I too was on Windows 7. But yeah, he doesn't need to set his PPI to 300 if hes only making images to be viewed on a monitor. Anything above 100 only affects print quality on physical mediums.

Rule of thumb, I save all my images JPEG (12 Maximum) Baseline Optimized.

Setting up the file, the resolution is always 72dpi. Are you printing? If so, then you set that to 300dpi. If you're only displaying on the web 72dpi is base line standard.

This has nothing to do with resolution. As long as you don't print it the dpi are completely irrelevant. The size of the image will be determined only in pixels as long as it's on a screen.

Plus the problem at hand is only about lossy compression causing artefacts, which only happens for certain file formats, typically JPG. So if you're seeing these artefacts even though you're saving as PNG you have to figure out where along the line it's getting converted.

No idea what the problem was other than that I am now using Windows 10 PRO and the problem went away by itself! So thanks for the suggestions etc but seems there might have been a registry failure in my Windows 7.