Image blurring in Firefox 3

[Blursula]

Hi,
Is there a way to make Firefox stop blurring GIF and PNG images? In Firefox 2 the image stayed perfectly sharp even when zoomed in, in Firefox 3 the image appears blurry (adding some kind of filter like Windows Picture and Fax viewer).

The following is an image comparing exactly how images used to look in Firefox 2 and how they appear in the new version:
http://www.newmedia.lincoln.ac.uk/bjtilbrook/firefoximages.png

I want to carry on using Firefox 3 but I want to know how to disable this annoying filter (something that is possible via a tickbox in the otherwise useless Internet Explorer).

[I didn't put this topic in technical support as I thought I should leave that for serious problems.]

Thank you.

[sysKin]

Technically this is called anti-aliasing, not blurring.

No, there's no option to turn it off. Just one resizer was replaced with another.

[Blursula]

Technically this is called anti-aliasing, not blurring.

No, there's no option to turn it off. Just one resizer was replaced with another.

That stinks! Anti-aliasing distorts the image and doesn't show the image as it is meant to look.

[sysKin]

Well, a signal processing theorist would very much disagree: aliases are an artefact of working with discrete (sampled) data sets, and there's a whole lot of anti-aliasing filters anywhere around you, in pretty much every digital device.

Your "sharp" image has aliases - in frequency domain, it has some base low-frequency content (which is the source data) and then more mirrored copies of that content "aliased" to higher frequencies. In other words, it contains frequencies source never had.

Bilinear filter filters that out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency

[Omega X]

That image looks over blurred compared to what I've seen with Fx bilinear filtering.

[dickvl]

You can also look at the discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=664257

[sanjuro]

I have also posted about this aesthetic problem here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=727215

Not a good feature, in my opinion. Personally I did switch back to FF2 because of it.

[dreedee]

Yeah, I hate that as well! turns out that FF3 is anti-alising the images, and not anti-alising the text, that'd be better.
I was just building a website, and was working on Safari, it was looking great! sharp images, nice anti.aliased text, switch to FireFox to check it, and oh my god, the disappointment. the images are anti.aliased and the fonts are ubber ruff... wont even mention IE
so yeah, if you are listening "mr", just do it the other way around:

images:no anti.alias
text: anti-alias

cause images we can just do whatever we want with the source, now text, that really needs some amount of smothing!
try it out!

peace out!

[dreedee]

oh yeah just rebembered why they did that. it's that CTRL+MouseWheel to zoom in and out.
t e x t a n t i a l i a s , pleeease

[ConceitArturo]

Why hasnt an alternative been implemented yet? I just installed the new version hoping this would be fixed but it's anything but.

[VanillaMozilla]

I thought at first it looked as if it were not properly done for bilinear interpolation, but I checked and it appears to be. My best suggestion is that you don't enlarge pixel art, since there probably is really no proper way to restore what you've already thrown out by pixellation. If you want to see pixels that look like checkerboard squares, you'll have to save the image and view it with another application.

Text is smoothed with ClearType. You need to enable that on your system, if that's what you want. Enabling it for IE does not enable it for the whole computer. It works very well, and it's usually recommended for LCD monitors.

[monkey912]

At least one of the sites the problem was that the website is scaling the image -- they should be saving the image at that height instead, because the client resizing can be different.

[uribakker]

.png images are not showing up properly, they have a grey background. How to avoid it.

[steviex]

@ uribakker ... Your post is not related to this problem. It has a different cause, and solution.
Please start a new topic for this problem.

Also, Please remove your Signature, for the reasons James outlined.

[ConceitArturo]

We HAVE to see the pixel between pixel interaction close up, in it's originally square form without any blurring. There isn't anything "lost" in pixelation, pixelation is simply showing what is REALLY going on, and we know how to work with it to make a clear picture with a small grid pattern. We make faces with 5x5 spaces, and the square edges of pixels are a big tool in doing that, combined with the way the CRT/plasma emmits the light, and the way the eye itself recieves the light. But if you go and destroy all the edges all you get is a big puddle of mush.

I dont understand this idea of making everything mushy and pretending it's better, and I really dont care how a theorist of information would look at the issue because clearly all it does is hide the real nature of how the information is handled; trough pixels. I dont care if you view pixels as insufficient sampling, we view pixels for what they are and our original information is designed to take advantage of it, not hide the fact that there really isnt any more information than what pixels show.

I would understand if this filter processed the way light and colour interact and generated extra information trough it's application, like "Alienskin's blow up" ( http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/blowup_example-4.aspx ) filter does, but this is a dumb filter that is simply destroying the images for the purpose that we utilize them.

I went to the first option that Firefox gave for complaining about this issue, and I was told to head here and to hendrix, but I dont feel like I am being heard at all...I am also upset that other pixel artists arent making a bigger effort to make this statement, and what upsets me the most is we're only asking firefox to give us the the CHOICE to turn something off..we dont even want any extra work done...I would expect better of the browser of customization.

We have a complaint about the way Firefox forces us to handle the image and not only do they not try to fix it, they act as if they know better than us what is good for our picture.