Why are the pictures I transfer from my camera to my Mac bad quality?

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Pomparenekl

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I have this machine for few years now... Always had a problem transferring pictures from a digital camera to it. I tried on other MAC and did not have any problem.

I actually can transfer the pictures BUT their quality is very dubious. The same transfer on an other machine gives a good result!

Would anyone help me... I have a Power Mac G5 (PowerMac 7,2)

Cheers!!!

Sabine
 
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I had this problem when I first tried bringing photos onto my mac. Then I realized what was up. The issue I had was with both displayed image size AND quality. You may be having this too.

If you are looking at the images you are bringing onto your Mac via Preview (the default if you just double click an image file in Finder), you may note that they look pretty poor. This is because Preview defaults to paying attention to the DPI setting of the images and attempts to scale them to what it perceives to be their correct phyical size for your screen.

If you go into Preview's preferences and disable this option, it will display the imported image pixel for pixel as you wish, and you suddenly have your quality back again. Unfortunately, I can't give a step-by-step recipe for this as I am out of town on a business trip and not near my Mac. However, I recall that it was an easy to find option in the Preview preferences.

Could this be your issue?
 
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Pomparenekl

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Nope, does not work, but thanks a lot for your help!

It is difficult to explain what I mean by bad quality. The picture can for example be "cut and past" incorrectly: some of the right side of the picture appears on the left, the colours can be wrong as well... A bit like having bad reception with cable TV... I've attached a file...

It is a bit frustrating, I can plug my camera in he other MACs around... and the transfered pictures look great!

I hope you'll be able to help me a bit more!!!

Cheers

Sabine

PICT0029.JPG
 
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If you transfer the same picture onto your two macs, they look different? That sounds really weird.

Try installing something like Gimp.app, which doesn't use the internal OS X image rendering libraries, and see if they look OK in that. If they do, then you've got broken rendering. If they look as bad ... well, then I'm stumped.
 
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was it just Preview that disaplyed them like that? Have you tried opening them in anything else? iPhoto, Gimp or even Photoshop. If it appears the same for all of them, then the problem could perhaps lie in the USB port (if it was damaged somehow?).

Try updating whatever software you can and see if that makes any difference. If worst comes to worst, you could try using the drop box on the problematic mac to get photos transferred, or burn them from another computer.
 
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.....Could be the USB port....are you using the camera software or iPhoto to import to your mac?

Can you get someone else to attach their camera with their own cable and import some photos so you can pinpoint things a bit more....

Have you tried connecting your camera to a PC to see the results...just for comparisons sake.
 
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Pomparenekl

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Thanks for all your help!

I tried to open the pictures with everything I had... mailed them to an other computer (mac and pc)... it always looks bad. I can use whatever camera plugged in whatever USB port I have on the bloody but sleek looking computer... I always end up with the same strangely coded pictures.

BUT if I plug my camera or any camera in an other machine (mac or PC), the pictures look great and if I transfer them to my machine (via email or USB) it looks good as well.

I had that problem from the beginning (I have this computer for 3 years now)... With all the cameras I attach to it! I also have problems with USB keys... It might still be the USB ports... But it is strange to think that all the ports are damaged...

The computer is updated daily... I do not think this is the problem...

I tried to open the pics with gimp... Same result. There is something going wrong when the pictures are transfered from the camera to the computer whatever the cable, USB port or camera used...

any other idea?
 
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Pomparenekl

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** and I forgot...

It is not the software either, I tried with iphoto, the software to a Nikon, a Canon and a Minolta camera... Nothing does the trick!
 
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Can you try connecting another camera?

If you still experience the same deterioration with the images then it's looking like a USB problem....

Are your USB ports ver 1 or ver 2, or a mixture?
 
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Definitely sounds like your USB ports are stuffed, or more likely, the USB controller. This would mean that all ports hanging off it will be affected. If you can get hold of a mac compatible PCI USB controller (borrow one if possible) then you could stick it in and see if that is also affected. If not, then it's your controller and a trip to apple. Well, that or just buy your own PCI controller :)
 

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