Collage Picture Quality

[chamberphotography]

Greetings

I've notice whenever a collage is created, the quality of the pictures I use gets downgraded or something. But, whenever I send just a single photo, the quality is fine. Is there a reason for this?

[tim]

Hi chamberphotography,
There are a bunch of reasons why this could be the case.
First: are you seeing the quality loss on prints, or, digital (ie. on the screen) ?
Are the photos in the collage being zoomed in?

[chamberphotography]

Im seeing the lost in quality on digital screens and the photos arent zoomed in. Here is an example https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9d0y6g3eb14h ... e.jpg?dl=0

[tim]

Thanks for the link. Nice lighting setup you've got there
That collage is indeed low quality: it is only 1200x960 pixels. The collage resolution is determined by a few factors, but mainly the "size" & "DPI" on the "Layout & Collages" setting page. Can you please tell me your values for these?
For example, if size is 4.0 x 6.0", and DPI is 300, then the resulting collage pixel size is (4 * 300) by (6 x 300), or 1200x1800 pixels. That's the default...

[chamberphotography]

Thanks! My size was at 4x6 and DPI is 300. Would increasing the size change anything?

[tim]

Hmm no, something else must be causing it to be small.
To check next: try turning off the logo (ie. don't add it to collage), make a collage, upload it to dropbox, and check its pixel dimensions. Did it suddenly get bigger (ie. 1200x1800) ? If so, then the pixel dimension of your logo are too small.

[tim]

... ah, a thought has occurred to me: are you using an older iPad's front camera to take the photos? those will be very low resolution, because the front cam of older iPads (like my iPad air) can only support 1280x960 at max...
If you can also send me a link to a single photo (one for which you meant the "the quality is fine"), that would help

[chamberphotography]

Im actually using a DSLR for the camera. Also, my logo size dimension on the collage is 4,000x4,000.

Here is a single photo https://www.dropbox.com/s/z3wfloheida4e ... 7.jpg?dl=0

[tim]

Hmm I spent some time (with 4.2.0) trying to reproduce this problem (making collages that come out at smaller than 1800x1200 pixels at default layout settings), and I could not get it to happen. This was with an external camera connected.
I tried with a logo in the collage & without, with dropbox uploads, email, existing/old event, new event with default settings.
Re the way I am making the collage: I tried manually making them, and taking the premade one. I didn't try autopilot.

Can you think of any settings you are using that aren't the default?
Does it reproduce if you make a new event without changing settings?
If you are shooting RAW+JPG on the camera can you try only shooting JPG (at a size bigger than 1800x1200 pixels) to see if that helps?
I'm really keen to figure out why this is happening to you.

[chamberphotography]

Sorry for the late reply. So I did some experimenting and uninstalled and reinstalled the app. I took off the border color on the collage for each picture. Change the picture size to 8x10 and it looks better in my opinion. Here is a link to a collage. Going to keep playing with it to see if i can recreate the problem https://www.dropbox.com/s/sixssckw4u4oh ... 8.jpg?dl=0

[tim]

That looks much better! It is considerably bigger than your last collage - bigger than 1800x1200 pixels even (because you upsized your paper size ). Liking your updated logo too...
If you have find out what setting it was that makes your collage really small please let me know and i'll fix it if it is a bug.

[chamberphotography]

Ok cool! And thanks for creating an awesome app!

[tim]

You're very welcome, hope to make it even better yet...

[chamberphotography]

Ok so after some further test, I think i pin pointed the problem. The back ground for the layout dimensions weren't high enough. I discovered this while using a plain color..then switching to a background i recently download

[tim]

Ah ok. Were you using a photo for the background?