dalgard

Q: Increase DPI on retina

I've recently switched from a 13" MBA to a 13" MBP with retina display and I'm sad to see that I now have much less screen real-estate - where I used to have 1440 physical and logical vertical pixels I now effectively have 1280. UI elements appear quite large, side panels take up a large part of the screen, and websites are shown much like they were in 1999...

 

It all comes from OSX scaling the UI at 2:1. I've heard talk about OSX becoming pixel-independent meaning it should be able to scale freely. What I'd like to do, then, is scale things at 1.7:1 or something in that neighborhood and get my space back.

I've tried using Quartz Debug but it no longer does anything in this regard. Any suggestions? Thanks!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Sep 25, 2013 5:14 AM

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Q: Increase DPI on retina

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  • by QuickTimeKirk,

    QuickTimeKirk QuickTimeKirk Sep 25, 2013 5:39 AM in response to dalgard
    Level 9 (53,075 points)
    Sep 25, 2013 5:39 AM in response to dalgard
  • by dalgard,

    dalgard dalgard Sep 25, 2013 6:27 AM in response to QuickTimeKirk
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    Sep 25, 2013 6:27 AM in response to QuickTimeKirk

    What you suggest is using a base resolution of 1440 and then scaling it up to the native resolution. Unfortunately, by doing that I lose all the benefits of a retina display.

     

    The beautiful thing about retina is that hi-res content like text, UI chrome and some images may be shown at the native resolution while low-res content is scaled. The thing that gripes me is Apple has descided to scale text and UI features to such a large size - double instead of 1.75:1, for instance.

     

    Any other suggestions? Some tool I don't know?

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro Sep 25, 2013 8:08 AM in response to dalgard
    Level 5 (4,805 points)
    Sep 25, 2013 8:08 AM in response to dalgard

    The ideal scaling rationale Apple uses is based on the number of physical pixels in the display. The 15" rMBP has more pixels than your 13" rMBP does so it could have gotten you closer to what you want.

     

    Look for Eye-Friendly in the App Store. It offers a variety of display resolutions for a Retina display beyond what Apple does.

  • by dalgard,

    dalgard dalgard Sep 25, 2013 8:20 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
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    Sep 25, 2013 8:20 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    I'm afraid the 15" rMBP would be even worse since the PPI is lower but they still use 2:1 scaling. We're talking an effective resolution of 1440x900 on a 15" screen where it used to be 1680x1050. Almost embarrassing.

     

    It's a matter of getting the same amount of screen space on my 13" display as I used to have with the 1440x900 MBA. It's about making text, toolbars, and so on a bit smaller in order to be able to fit more.

     

    The Eye-Friendly app looks interesting; I'm not sure I want to spend $5, though, before I know that it does things right: Can you tell me whether it actually scales the UI using the native resolution or whether it simply sets a lower resolution and upsamples it in raw form?

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro Sep 25, 2013 8:26 AM in response to dalgard
    Level 5 (4,805 points)
    Sep 25, 2013 8:26 AM in response to dalgard

    dalgard wrote:

     

    ...The Eye-Friendly app looks interesting; I'm not sure I want to spend $5, though, before I know that it does things right: Can you tell me whether it actually scales the UI using the native resolution or whether it simply sets a lower resolution and upsamples it in raw form?

    It makes use of "HiDPI modes" with the Retina. Just how that works I don't know, but here is its website. Its availability is why I got my rMBP to begin with and I've used it ever since.

  • by dalgard,

    dalgard dalgard Sep 25, 2013 10:10 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
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    Sep 25, 2013 10:10 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    The creator of Eye-Friendly was kind enough to give me a trial of his software to see if it helps. I'm sorry to say, though, that it simply does the same as changing the System Settings - if I choose 1440x900, it simply scales things without changing the fundamental DPI of the OS elements.

     

    The difference is this:

     

    My screen is 2560x1600 and when I open an image in Photoshop of exactly that size and set the zoom level to 100%, the image will show as *exactly* the width and height of the screen. It utilizes every single native pixel to display image data.

     

    In the meantime, if I choose the "HiDPI friendly" (whatever that means?) setting of 1440x900 in Eye-Friendly (or System Settings) and set zoom to 100% in Photoshop, then my image is shown smaller than the screen.

     

    This can only mean one ting: That the entire screen is being upsampled after Photoshop has done its retina thing.

     

    Unfortunately, this equals a loss in quality...... I guess resolution independence still has some way to go :|

  • by dalgard,

    dalgard dalgard Sep 25, 2013 10:14 AM in response to dalgard
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    Sep 25, 2013 10:14 AM in response to dalgard

    Just to elaborate, this is the function I would like to take advantage of:

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_independence#OS_X

  • by dalgard,

    dalgard dalgard Sep 26, 2013 1:57 AM in response to dalgard
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    Sep 26, 2013 1:57 AM in response to dalgard

    From Jörg, the creator of Eye-Friendly:

    Photoshop obviously refers to pixels instead of points to display images - which I think is appropriate. On a retina screen 4 pixels in square make up a point.

     

    Setting your RMBP 13" to 1440x900 points HiDPI means that it will use 2880x1800 pixels to display anything. Therefore, an image of pixel size 2560x1600 of course will appear smaller than the screen (Photoshop references pixels instead of points).

     

    Since 2880x1800 pixels is higher than your native resolution, OS X tries to match it best with your native 2560x1600 resolution.

     

    He captures the problem perfectly, I think.

     

    What disappoints me is the fact that "on a retina screen, 4 pixels make up a point" - meaning a completely static 200% scaling of the UI.

     

    The original plan for OS X was to make it resolution independent. That would make it possible to scale things fluidly - for instance at 175% - just like when you change the size of the dock, actually. But I believe it turned out to be too much work converting everything to vector, so sadly they took a shortcut and simply doubled everything...

     

    On Windows it is possible to change the DPI fluidly, but it only gives good results for some parts of the UI.

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro Sep 26, 2013 8:08 AM in response to dalgard
    Level 5 (4,805 points)
    Sep 26, 2013 8:08 AM in response to dalgard

    dalgard wrote:

     

    From Jörg, the creator of Eye-Friendly:

    ...Setting your RMBP 13" to 1440x900 points HiDPI means that it will use 2880x1800 pixels to display anything. Therefore, an image of pixel size 2560x1600 of course will appear smaller than the screen (Photoshop references pixels instead of points).

     

    Since 2880x1800 pixels is higher than your native resolution, OS X tries to match it best with your native 2560x1600 resolution...

    It sounds to me as if the real problem is with the 13" screen and how Apple handles sampling for it rather than the Retina display itself. But while fluidly adjusting resolution for resolution independence sure sounds nice, and I've made use of resolution adjustments in Windows myself, a pixel is still a pixel, and if four pixels rendering one pixel is too small and one pixel rendering one pixel is too large, anything in between is going to be a visual compromise no matter how good the mathematical representation of it is.

     

    In any case, when Photoshop 6 was updated to be Retina aware, an option was added to Open in Low Resolution and I believe that solved the issue of PS images appearing too small which was raised in other threads. If you haven't tried it already, the option appears in the Get Info window of PS 6.

  • by dalgard,

    dalgard dalgard Sep 26, 2013 8:18 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro
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    Sep 26, 2013 8:18 AM in response to FatMac>MacPro

    FatMac\>MacPro wrote:


    if four pixels rendering one pixel is too small and one pixel rendering one pixel is too large, anything in between is going to be a visual compromise

     

    Not true - look at how the dock is resized. It's just a matter of scaling the font and the vector graphics that make up the UI (except that apparently Apple hasn't been able to make all elements resolution independent yet).

     

    The problem is not a 13" screen, it's having an effective horizontal resolution of 1280px. This is quite low, even for cheap laptops. For me, 1440px gave me a good amount of space on my MBA.

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro Sep 26, 2013 8:37 AM in response to dalgard
    Level 5 (4,805 points)
    Sep 26, 2013 8:37 AM in response to dalgard

    dalgard wrote:

     

    Not true - look at how the dock is resized. It's just a matter of scaling the font and the vector graphics that make up the UI (except that apparently Apple hasn't been able to make all elements resolution independent yet).

     

    The problem is not a 13" screen, it's having an effective horizontal resolution of 1280px. This is quite low, even for cheap laptops. For me, 1440px gave me a good amount of space on my MBA.

    I agree that 1280 horizontal pixels is too low, which is why I went with the 15" rMBP and even then not until Eye-Friendly was available. But while it's too low even for cheap laptops, that's it for the cheap laptops while you have the option of using more of the available pixels with the Retina.

     

    Scaling with vector graphics is mathematical, but the rubber hits the road with pixels, and while the conversion from computing to rendering could have been done better, I don't think anything other than even multiples has a chance of looking like it was printed rather than rendered in pixels on a screen.

  • by ntsarb,

    ntsarb ntsarb Jan 13, 2014 11:57 AM in response to dalgard
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2014 11:57 AM in response to dalgard

    Dalgard, I agree with you. However, I think the graphics processing overhead and battery consumption required for generating a high quality image, with the appropriate scaling factor (rather than 2:1), is the limiting factor. Vector-based fonts and graphics scale efficiently, bitmaps don't.

     

    I don't think Apple would have missed implementing the feature, if it was efficient.