Photos App - Images randomly change size when viewing

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Level 1

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Photos App - Images randomly change size when viewing

I have an album of photos, 40 images, all almost identical size 2048h x 1448w or within a few pixels. When I scroll though the images to view each one, the images do not all appear the same size. Some will appear to fill the window as normal, but some will appear about half size. I can then scroll backward through the same images and get a different result, where some that were appearing smaller now appear to fill the window, and vice versa. It seems to be random whether the image will be shown to fill the window or not. This also occurs when Photos is maximised.

Needless to say that this is very annoying when you are trying to do a presentation.

Has anyone seen this behaviour, and perhaps have a work around for it?

Note: I am running Monterey 12.3 running on 2019 27" iMac.

iMac 27″, macOS 12.3

Posted on May 24, 2022 9:18 PM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

197,751 points

May 24, 2022 9:58 PM in response to Brightfall

What kind of album is it, that you are viewing? A shared album? A standard album you created?

How are you browsing the album? Did you open the album and enlarged one Photo, then stepped to the next photo using the arrow keys? Or did you use one of the commands "View as Slideshow" or "View as Memory"?

When you view an album as a slideshow it will depend on the theme, that is selected, how large the photos will be displayed. You may want to try "View as slides" and select the Classic theme. Then Photos will download all photos from iCloud, before starting the slideshow and print them as large as possible.

Is your Photos Library syncing with iCloud Photos? If you simply step through an album without downloading all photos from iCloud before trying to view them, some photos may appear at a smaller size, when you first open them. When you come back later the image and it has been downloaded previously, it will be shown at the full size at once. It may depend on the amount of free storage, if all photos can be kept downloaded, ready for viewing or not. If your iMac does not have much free storage (more than 20GB of free storage) Photos may be fired to remove the downloads from iCloud for most of your photos and browsing an album may need a lot of downloading.

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Answer 2

Brightfall Author

Level 1

10 points

May 24, 2022 10:32 PM in response to léonie

Thanks for the reply léonie

Yes, it is a standard album that I created. To view, I opened the album, double clicked on a photo, and then used the left and right arrow keys to step through them. So no, I am not using a slideshow.

I am syncing with iCloud, but thats not causing the issue as I may see a photo full-size then small and then full-size again, or any combination of these) while I am stepping backward and forwards through the album. I have the original images stored on my Mac, and am not using the optimise Mac storage option as I have about 1TB of free disk space.

Note, that this is a new behaviour, it started after I upgraded to Monterey.

Update: I have just found a pattern of when it starts. If I double click any image in the album to view it, it will be shown full sized, if I then press the right or left arrow 6 times, the sixth image will be small. This is happening in all my albums. It is pretty weird, but it is consistent.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

197,751 points

May 25, 2022 2:46 AM in response to Brightfall

I cannot test on an iMac with a large display. My MacBook Pro has a 15” display, and there I cannot reproduce this problem. Only images with a very small pixel size will not be enlarged to fill the screen fully, to prevent it from becoming blurry.

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Photos App - Images randomly change size when viewing

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