GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 742236
High-DPI support is missing
Last modified: 2020-12-17 08:31:16 UTC
In one of the last couple of releases of Gnome, support for high-dpi displays was added. Unfortunately, shotwell does not support high-dpi displays yet. All photos, be it in thumbnail or full-frame mode, currently use low-res photos and scale them up, which make them look blurry and unsharp in comparison to photo viewers that display images at a higher resolution (utilizing the displays higher dpi). Since high-dpi displays are especially relevant for those interested in digital photo management, I think this is quite relevant. Other photo management / editing software has already implemented high-dpi support, such as Darktable. Experienced on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, with Shotwell 0.20.1, Gnome 3.14.2, Debian Jessie.
I can confirm the same, on Dell XPS 13 with QHD+ screen. Image quality is horrible, both in thumbnails and in fullscreen/slideshow. In Photos Gnome app images look super sharp.
is there a plan to fix this any time soon? or shall I start looking for an alternative photo organiser
Feel Free. I have no way to reproduce this or check this as I don't have any HiDPI capable device at hand.
As a temporary work-around, you can turn off scaling when working with shotwell. This means that the entire user interface will be very small (not just for shotwell, but all of gnome), but the images are sharp. Turn off scaling by typing in a command line: gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{ 'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor':<1>}" After you're done using shotwell, turn scaling back on with (You might have to substitute <2> by some other value.): gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{ 'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor':<2>}" Jens, if we can be of any assistance, let us know. I'm sure there are a number of high-dpi users out there who would be happy to help.
thanks that did the trick :) I can switch to non-scale for slideshow and back ... this could work ... but would be better to fix it I'm happy to assist/test anything if needed..
first idea: The scaling factor should not be applied to the GtkDrawingArea that is backing the image views.
As far as I know it is not necessary to have a HiDPI screen to reproduce this problem. The problem appears when GNOME interface scale is bigger than 100%. To reproduce this problem, go to GNOME Settings -> Devices -> Displays and set Scale to 200%. After that, all pictures (thumbnails and photos) will be blurry, which is definitely visible if you take a screenshot and try to view it in Shotwell. gThumb has this problem in thumbnails, but fullscreen photos are displayed correctly
*** Bug 774665 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
i can confirm this on my 4k screen: When scaling is anything higher than 100% in gnome settings, images are displayed are lower quality, the higher the scale, the worst is the quality. Gnome image viewer (3.28.1) does not have this issue. Image quality is same regardless of scale.
Tracked as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/shotwell/-/issues/162