Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows

MNMXML wrote:
Sigh... it's too bad that people are so ready to criticize others and their attempts to helpfully contribute (with splitting hairs, hypocritical sidetracking, subjective semantics arguments, etc.) when they don't even know who they're speaking to... or the fact that they may have significantly more applicable knowledge. 😉

That's correct. Nobody here knows who they are speaking to or how much knowledge they have on the subject. But that does not mean that mis-information and mis-interpretation of people's posts needs to remain unchecked either. I have extensive experience in troubleshooting, have helped Beta test many applications, and have even worked alongside Apple representatives at the last two Olympic Games ( Torino and Beijing ) in the Kodak Imaging Center and as such do know a little about the process of problem solving. That, added to the fact that, like I have stated before, I have had several discussions with Applecare reps about this matter, I think gives me pretty good insight if not actual technical knowledge of the issue at hand. Perhaps others should reveal their qualifications before insinuating that others may not know what they are talking about. We are all trying to nail down the causes and/or solutions of this issue, but as with any investigation, bad ideas or erred conclusions need to be pointed out to narrow down the actual solution. Likewise, if someone tries to dispute or rebuff someone else's ideas, the person who originally posted those ideas should stick up for them if he/she still thinks they are valid.

This is not splitting hairs, hypocritical sidetracking, or making subjective semantics arguments ... it is part of the investigative process. If erroneous statements ( or even perceived erroneous statements ) are left unchallenged they could hinder or even harm people's efforts to solve this or any issue. And sometimes the challenging of such things, even if they are correct, leads to the discovery of the true solution.

Case in point, Macnoel's and my recent back and forth. Macnoel has some very good points IMHO, but seemed to mis-interpret my posts. If we had not posted back and forth we would not have realized we are mostly on the same page and some of Macnoel's ideas may have been left unposted.

Another "me-too" post.

Regarding possible root causes, based on what I've read in the thread...
1) This definitely started with Snow Leopard, and has not been fixed by any updates.
2) This afflicts the Dock and the Finder, which points to a lower-level system service providing bad data.
3) The blurry icons have nothing to do with screen resolution, TV output settings, monitors, etc - this affecting specific icons at a given time, not all icons.
4) Different accounts on the same computer have different blurry icons, which points to this being a user-level issue. Note that /private/tmp has sections separated by user, so files in there can be in play despite it being a "shared" folder.

The following is my opinion (and it's just that, but I do have a Mac programming and CS background - take it for what it's worth).

It's very unlikely that any third-party application caused this. The vast majority of applications have nothing to do with system services and don't modify them in any fashion. GraphicConverter, for instance, isn't mucking around with the OS. CandyBar does, but I've never used it yet see the problem constantly. It is possible that some combination of API calls mucks something up in the OS, but that still leaves it an OS issue, not an application one.

It's also very unlikely to be a graphics driver issue. What we're seeing are lower-resolution versions of the icons being used rather than the higher resolution versions, which points to an API bug, and then an unfortunate caching of bad data. Most icons on Mac OS X have multiple sizes within a single icns file - 512px, 128px, 32px, 16px being the most common. This looks distinctly like the OS is asking for a higher-resolution version, but is only retrieving a low-res version. On my system, my Dock currently has two "bad" icons on the Dock, and they appear to be 32x32 scaled up.

As quitting and relaunching the Dock or Finder does not always clear up the issue, it seems that either a low-level system service remains borked (technical term), or there is an on-disk cache somewhere that is holding the bad data. I'd concentrate on user-level caches.

Excellent post Joshua. Thanks for your insight.

First just let me add that still, as yet, the issue has not resurfaced on my machines since the 10.6.2 update was installed ... could just be a weird coincidence but I would think there had to be something in that update that "helped" my system.

Second, I posted this way earlier, but one of the things I use a lot on my iMac is that I have lots of CBR and CBZ files. These are comic book archives ( basically just rar or zip files with a different extension ) that contain jpg images. I have an app called ComicBookLover that sets the first image in the archive as the icon image and I had noticed that when I had the issue these icons were affected also. Would this be the same scaling issue you mentioned ? Could using icons of this nature possibly be the thing that corrupted some sort of cache ? I have not set any icons of this nature since the 10.6.2 update .... so could it be that these icons are/were triggering the effect ( at least on my system ) ?

Another thing I thought was that possibly the use of the "icon slider" in finder triggered the effect. It seemed to me that whenever I used the slider to adjust the icon size, the effect occurred shortly after. Could the slider be somehow corrupting a cache somewhere ?

Also, since this issue does not seem to be affecting all users ( many claim they have never seen this issue at all ) I have been looking for some reason why some machines would be affected and not others. To my thinking there would have to be some common thread between the affected systems ( hence my theory about it being an issue with the way Snow Leopard reacts with some graphics/hardware combinations. If not some sort of hardware interaction, can you think of why some systems would be affected and not others?

Please respond with your thoughts. I think your insight might just be the thing that helps us nail this down.

Sadly, it was happening to me on 10.6.2 as I posted last night, so it's definitely not fixed.

I'm starting to think that there is a cache getting too large and overflowing somewhere, as I notice it happens after I've run through a large number of folders with icon previews (likewise, when viewing manga via Quicklook). Given that I otherwise never reboot, cruft could easily be building up in some data structure somewhere. Perhaps the slider exacerbates it if it's caching all of the intermediate sizes while you slide? Just a guess (although one would hope it would be smarter!). As I see a LOT of icon previews going through manga folders, I'm guessing it makes me a prime candidate for this odd bug.

As for hardware, I don't know that we necessarily have a pattern. We've certainly seen a lot of MacBook Pro's (including mine), but didn't folks mention it happening on Minis and such as well? I still think it's more to do with how folks use their computers. I'm tempted to go into an Apple Store and start abusing the Finder and Quicklook like mad to see if it will happen on other systems. If I knew a way to make it happen faster than over a few days to weeks, I'd do so.

For me, a reboot always fixes it, so I retract my suspicion that it's a disk-based cache. Probably a memory buffer somewhere.

Message was edited by: JoshuaOchs

pure speculation on my part warning first ....

joshua, when you mention a cache getting too large I agree with you wholeheartedly except for the fact that there doesnt appear to be an "icon cache" per se (as someone stated in here earlier) ... but yes, I agree that the way these icons are becoming corrupt appear to be in the same fashion as when a cache file becomes corrupt (just delete it and it fixed for the most part)

anyhow, there doesnt seem to be any pattern what-so-ever here ... thats whats SO frustrating about this ... we all have the EXACT same problem but were not replicating it in the same way

For myself, if I start creating custom icons and pasting them to folders via GraphicConverter I can reliably replicate the issue ... yet theres others that havent used GC and some that flat out never even heard of it ... so this isnt an application specific issue ... the ONE reliable issue is that none of us had this issue PRIOR to Snow Leopard ... I'm still sticking to my guns that its a finder issue ... but I'm probably wrong ... I don't know enough to give a thorough argument supporting it. Only to say that if a do a basic finder reboot I can temporary quick fix it.

I'm grateful for your post. It's not all correct, but you have shifted the spotlight back to one of the directions that was unfortunately side-tracked from with misinformation in the end of September. (Long before you or I joined the discussion). 😉

And that is that installing Leopard does not replace all icons with 512x512 versions, and that the lower resolution icon resources within icon files actually play a key role and have been a focus of my evaluation—which as I posted above, has so far cleared the problem.

I'll come back to touch on it as soon as I can.

Edit, this is actually in response to Eric's post

Awesome... a great instance to help point out a few things...

The reason Pacifist never has an icon is because it doesn't have the icon resource that your system is asking for.

Which I believe is a (if not "the") key trigger of the problem... and an accepted understanding that led me to my fix. Any icon that doesn't have the lower resolution resources (as all professionally created icons should) throw the system off, and mucks things up (intentional simplification), corrupting cache preferences, and/or similar.

Most non-tech-savvy people understand the idea of cache, so I'm not going to dig into discussion of memory buffers, etc., and simplify it to say: remember that cache is not always written to disk, and cache isn't necessarily stored versions of "image data" but rather stored versions of "instructions of where to find" data, including image data, preferences, etc.

I'll be back to explain more asap.

Message was edited by: MNMXML

MNMXML,

" I'm grateful for your post. It's not all correct ... "

Please be more specific. What parts of Joshua's post do you believe were not correct, and what qualifications do you have that makes your opinion hold more weight than Joshua's ( who has stated that he has a Mac Programming and CS background ). You sound like you know what you are talking about ( and your points make sense to me ) but it would help to know what your facts and/or opinions are based upon. If your expertise is greater, let us know so that we can all channel our efforts in the same direction.

MNMXML wrote:
Any icon that doesn't have the lower resolution resources (as all professionally created icons should) throw the system off, and mucks things up (intentional simplification), corrupting cache preferences, and/or similar.

So, let me see if I understand this correctly. You are saying that if Snow Leopard replaced system icons with 512 x 512 versions, it could cause an issue where the system looks for the lower resolution resources, this "mucks things up" and causes the system to have an issue displaying even icons that do have the proper resources ? If so, how does that relate to icons generated for CBR and cbz files like I described earlier ? When an icon is generated for a data file, like a document. which is a "view" of that document, how is that affected in the same way as an icon with different resolution resources and why is it that thumbnails generated for jpg files and videos don't seem to be affected? I don't doubt your theory, just trying to understand it.

DolphBucs, thank you for reminding me that I shouldn't comment when I don't have the time proof-read.

I should have thrown in a "necessarily" before "correct"...and can see my subsequent sentence structure was confusing. To clarify:

Leopard DOES NOT convert all icons to 512x512px.

JoshuaOchs retracted the primary point that made me think "not correct". I also touched on it in a subsequent post.

I have very little free time and I'm trying to spend what I have commenting on things that have most bang for the buck rather than dwelling on correcting/specifying things that I don't feel are as relevant. I'm not always the best judge of it, but do what I can.

I'm not here to prove myself and wouldn't want anyone to inhibit their involvement because of another's perceived expertise...or because it counters their analysis. It can be someone with no experience that shines the light in the right spot leading to working solutions, so channelling efforts based on one's perceived expertise isn't wise.

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I'll have to come back to respond to your post and try to explain my thinking in more meaningful detail...

MNMXML wrote:

Leopard DOES NOT convert all icons to 512x512px.

Just to avoid confusion, I believe he means "Snow Leopard"

Joshua,
Thank you for your good work and analysis, I think you are on the right track when you mention the different size icons which exist for the System to use in various circumstances ( suggesting that Systems is calling on the lower rez icons when the larger size are needed).

_Joshua and Everyone_, this thread has been reported on MacFixit and Topher Kessler has presented his analysis which confirms Joshua's suspicion about display of low rez icons when hi rez icons are called for.

He offers several suggested fixes, having to do with Finder, with DS Store files and with cache cleaning. *I urge everyone to take a look at his suggestions:*
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10402811-263.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Ma cFixIt