Photos appearing pixelated

Thanks again for your help, I'm willing to try anything 🙂

I created a new photo library per your step nr. 1 and imported some of the photos from my SLR that I already have in the System Photo Library. Sadly, I see the exact same issue there: slightly blurry preview => zoom in, zoom out => sharp preview. Sigh. But I've noticed something weird in the test library - I zoomed in on one of the photos and when I was at the maximum size all of a sudden a strange artifact appeared within the picture:

I've never ever seen that in the System Photo Library, this is the first time anything like that happened. Hmmmmm.

Regarding your step number 3, I have tried a few things during the last couple of days: exporting an image gives me the original, perfectly sharp version.

And if I navigate into the Masters folder, I also can see that all the images are in perfect condition in there - completely sharp. And I guess they have to be, because the preview does look perfectly fine after the whole zoom-in-zoom-out process - Photos.app is able to show me the "correct" preview after all, it just refuses to do so without me zooming around first...

Regarding your step 2, I don't have a guest account but I will create one first thing tomorrow morning (it's way past midnight here in Austria and I've been fighting with this enough for today ;D). I'll report back here with the results! Thanks again 🙂

You don't have the iCloud Photo Library enabled so you don't have the optimization issue to contend with.

Try repairing the library according to this Apple document: Repair Your Library. Then check the images again.

Check the pixel dimensions of one of the photos via it's Info pane. Then export the original version to the desktop, File ➙ Export ➙ Export Unmodified Original menu option, and check the pixel dimensions of that file with Preview. Are they what you expect for photos from your camera?

In photos preferences you see an option to optimise the library. Optimised photos need to download before they show properly and can look pixelated or blurry whilst downloading. Alternatively, this can also happen with very large photos that aren't optimised. Although in both cases, it's usually resolved with time alone, it shouldn't require you to zoom in and out.

That tells us it's essentially system wide. The next step would be to reinstall Photos which would require a reinstallation of the system. Since 10.10.5 was officially released yesterday I suggest you install 10.10.5 followed by a repair of disk permissions. Then try again.

You could go back to using iPhoto if you were using any version of iPhoto 9 before converting to Photos. iPhoto was not deleted from your hard drive, only removed from the Dock. If you have iPhoto 9.6.1 you can still use your iPhoto library. If you don't have that version but some earlier version of 9.x try following Terence Devlin's instructions in this post to obtain iPhoto 9.6.1 from the App Store:

Terence Devlin

Apr 14, 2015 11:21 AM

Re: Is Iphoto gone ? i want it back!

in response to Johannes666

Recommended

Go to the App Store and check out the Purchases List. If iPhoto is there then it will be v9.6.1

If it is there, then drag your existing iPhoto app (not the library, just the app) to the trash.

Install the App from the App Store.

Sometimes iPhoto is not visible on the Purchases List. it may be hidden. See this article for details on how to unhide it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4928

One question often asked: Will I lose my Photos if I reinstall?

iPhoto the application and the iPhoto Library are two different parts of the iPhoto programme. So, reinstalling the app should not affect the Library. BUT you should always have a back up before doing this kind of work. Always.

If after you reinstall El Capitan the blurriness remains run some tests to see if the blurriness remains if you use the image elsewhere, like printing, in a slideshow, in another document, etc. It might be just a rendering issue in Photos and really doesn't affect the image when it's used elsewhere.

Be sure to tell Apple about the issue via https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html.

If you don't want to run a repair as a test launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it? This will tell us if it's a general problems or one isolated to your particular library.

@michm82, I hope you get notified about my reply here because I'm literally dying to know if you ever managed to solve this issue... I am fighting with the exact same situation you described in your first post.

I have been using Photos.app since shortly after it was released and I've never had a single issue with it. I have about 16.000 photos stored in the app, as well as in the cloud - 99% of them photos I shot with my iPhone(s) during the last couple of years, and the whole system works flawlessly for me.

About a week ago I bought my first SLR camera and started to notice the blurry-preview-issue - the photos are just not as sharp as they should be when I view them within Photos.app. When I zoom in on the photo, I can see how the preview is "correcting itself", like michm82 said, and when I zoom back out the photo is perfectly sharp. But as soon as I go do something else and then come back to the photo later, I have to do the whole zoom-in-zoom-out routine all over again... it's sooooo frustrating! I finally have a great camera and now I can't view my photos in the app where I store them, I have to view them in Finder with Quicklook :-(

To be clear though, the previews are not like totally blurry, it's more subtle - someone with bad eye sight might not even notice the difference, but I saw it immediately. I played around with making screenshots of the preview before zooming in and afterwards and the difference is quite obvious when comparing the two. The initial preview looks like a heavily scaled down version.

I just wanted to add that my photos are 100% sharp - I trash all the slightly blurry ones immediately after copying them from the SD card. I don't use the "optimize" setting, so the pictures stored in Photos.app's Masters folder are the full size (completely sharp) original versions.

Also, I am pretty sure that nothing "broke" in Photos.app since I got my SLR, nothing changed on my system at all - it's just that I never had a "real" camera and only ever stored iPhone-photos in Photos.app, that's probably why I never noticed the issue before. But now that I have these super-sharp SLR photos, the problem is extremely frustrating.

@michm82, I would really appreciate any advice you can give me...

Cheers,

Anna

Thanks for the suggestion, Old Toad! Actually I did try that, but sadly it does not work. Only a zoom to the max size (200%) and back manages to correct the display issue.

I also should say that I did check some of my recent iPhone photos and the issue is (very slightly) noticeable there too if I make screenshots and compare the preview before and after zooming in. I can see a difference in sharpness if I look really, really closely, but iPhone photos are not as sharp to begin with, so it's negligible.

Here are a couple of tests you can run to try to narrow down the problem:

1 - launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it? If it does continue with #2.

2 - log into another user account on your Mac and repeat the test library of #1. Report the results.

3 - export the original version of one of the images to the Desktop, open with Preview and see if the image is rendered correctly there. Is it? Try different zoom sizes.

Don't use the Guest account but create a second, non administrative account. It's great troubleshooting tool. Do not install any 3rd party extensions or system modifications in that account. That way it a pristine system to test with.

You can use fast user switching (enabled in the System/Users & Groups preference pane to quickly switch accounts.

Good morning Old Toad, I've just finished testing with the new ("Standard") user account and sure enough, the issue is present in the new account with a new library as well :-/ I did not install anything on the new account as you said, I immediately launched Photos.app and imported ~70 pictures from the SD card. Just like before, the previews were all slightly blurred until I zoomed in on them. Huh.

I guess there's not much for me to do now, short of re-installing the OS? But since I have tons of apps, custom settings, keyboard shortcuts, etc. it would be a **** of a job to do a clean install. I will start fresh once I get a new Mac, probably later this year, but until then I guess I'll have to live with the blurry previews. It's not a complete deal breaker, it's just frustrating in regard to the learning process of using an SLR camera - it's very helpful for me to see how certain settings on the camera impact the resulting photos and the blurry previews hinder the evaluation of the pictures.

One thing I didn't mention: I'm still on Yosemite, I haven't gotten around to installing El Capitan yet - but I'll definitely do that as soon as possible. I see lots and lots of messages regarding sandbox and mdworker in Console.app and there are some other weird little occurrences on my system... let's see how it goes with El Capitan 🙂

Thanks again for your help, Old Toad, I will update this thread with any new developments!