1422595 - Attached JPEG image shows obvious poorer quality compared to other image viewer images

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Graphics: ImageLib, defect, P3)

Description

[anders]

Attachment: DSCF5279.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171112125346

Steps to reproduce:

Open attached image in Firefox (only Windows tested). Opening it directly or embedded in a page does not seem to make a difference.

Opening the same attached image in Google Chrome, Adobe Lightroom or Windows' built-in image viewer shows an image that appears to have higher quality.


Actual results:

Image appears lower quality in Firefox than in other image viewers. Note especially the face of the person in the picture, which seems to have a lot less detail when compared to other image viewers.


Expected results:

Firefox should have comparable image quality to other image viewers.

Comment 1

[anders]

I tested this on version 58b8 as well with similar results.

Comment 2

[anders]

I have now tested this on Firefox 57 on Fedora 27 Linux as well, and it does NOT reproduce there for me.

Comment 3

[anders]

I have now tested this on my work computer, which does not yet have the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (build 1709). I cannot reproduce this issue there.

Comment 4

[Flore Allemandou [:flore]]

Can you make a screenshot of the differences between the 2 pictures opened in Firefox and in another viewer not affected.
Preferably 100% crop of the same portion (the face, as you said, it shows the most differences).
100% crop explained (in case you're not familiar with photographic language): https://www.juzaphoto.com/article.php?l=en&article=9

Comment 5

[anders]

Attachment: Comparison, left is FF, right is windows image viewer

I don't have access to my home computer right now, but I have an image here that I sent to a friend yesterday before I had figured out the root cause. It should show the difference clearly enough, but I can post an image with better cropping in ~8 hours if needed.

Comment 6

[Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel)]

My guess is this is due to color management profiles. Try setting the pref gfx.color_management.mode to 0 and see if it improves things.

Comment 7

[anders]

(In reply to Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel) from comment #6)
> My guess is this is due to color management profiles. Try setting the pref
> gfx.color_management.mode to 0 and see if it improves things.

Indeed. Setting gfx.color_management.mode to 0 causes the issue to disappear. Setting it to 2 causes it to reappear.

I'll add that this happens on a fresh installation of Firefox Developer Edition, I do not think its related to something suspicious in my Firefox configuration. I also do not have any specific color management settings enabled, although my monitor (Dell U2711) is assigned its own color profile by Windows 10 (removing this color profile does not seem to have an effect on this issue).

Whether this issue is actually due to some kind of misconfiguration on my side is something I'm unable to answer, unfortunately. Adobe products do not have this issue, and I suspect those use Windows' color management facilities, so I think there could be some issue in Firefox.

Comment 8

[my2centos20]

I am experiencing part of the original issue on Firefox 68.12.0esr (64bit) running on CentOS 7.8.2003 (Core). I am fairly certain the original reporter was experiencing two distinct issues, only one of which was related to color profiles.

JPEGs rendered in Chrome or GIMP reveal exponentially more detail than in FireFox. (approximately 64x or worse) They also lack contrast and color saturation in comparison. I believe the loss of contrast and saturation is directly related to the blurring effect. Changing the color profile setting has no effect on this issue.

I will attach screenshots of the original samples which demonstrate this problem. They should be viewed at 100% crop to fully experience the reduced detail in Firefox. Switching back and forth between the screenshots on the same monitor will demonstrate both symptoms quite well. I will also provide one of my image samples which demonstrate the problem more strongly than the original sample.

My initial thought was that the rendering component is doing chroma subsampling incorrectly. However, when I used GIMP to re-save the image with 4:4:4 sampling (all image components at same resolution, Firefox did not display that file any better.

The blurring effect appears to be affecting (approximately) 8x8 pixel blocks. This is demonstrated because I used 8x8 pixel blocks to obfuscate some reflections in my photos, and those blocks are only faintly discernible when viewed in Firefox. They are crisply defined as expected in Chrome.

Comment 9

[my2centos20]

Attachment: OP's image @ 100% in Firefox 68.12.0esr

Image rendered in Firefox 68.12.0esr on CentOS 7.8.2003
100% zoom

Notice slightly subdued contrast and saturation, general softness, and artifacts along the right edge of the subject's face.

Comment 10

[my2centos20]

Attachment: OP's image @ 100% in Chrome 86.0.4240.75

Image rendered in Chrome 86.0.4240.75 on CentOS 7.8.2003
100% zoom

Notice slightly improved skin tone, color, and contrast, detail of hair, and crisp diagonal line along the right side of subject's face. you can also now see that the image has faint suggestions of optical motion blur.

Comment 11

[Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel)]

I can see the blurriness in your screenshot but when I view the OP image I do not see the blurriness.

Can you test in a newer version of firefox? Can you try viewing the image via an html file with <img width= height=> set to the size of the image?

Comment 12

[my2centos20]

Attachment: IMG_1743413_hires.jpg

"Original" picture of red truck. Lots of clean lines in the image help demonstrate the issue very well.

Some reflections on the actual original have been obfuscated using GIMP's Pixelize effect at 8px (64px squares). File was exported using original quality settings, but variations of the quality settings did not seem to affect Firefox's rendering, either.

Comment 13

[my2centos20]

(In reply to Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel) from comment #11)

I can see the blurriness in your screenshot but when I view the OP image I do not see the blurriness.

Can you test in a newer version of firefox? Can you try viewing the image via an html file with <img width= height=> set to the size of the image?

I should have checked the Firefox update idea. Default install is ESR version on my systems.

It appears fixed in Firefox 80.0.x (32-bit) on Windows 10.
Also appears fixed in Firefox 69.0.2 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 69.0.2 (64-bit)

I will reply again when I can explicitly confirm a fix for CentOS clients.

Comment 14

[my2centos20]

(In reply to Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel) from comment #11)

I can see the blurriness in your screenshot but when I view the OP image I do not see the blurriness.

Can you test in a newer version of firefox? Can you try viewing the image via an html file with <img width= height=> set to the size of the image?

Having mixed results on CentOS...
CentOS 7.8 VM with FF 78ESR: Displays as expected.
CentOS 7.8 desktop regular user with FF 78ESR: Still seeing issue.
CentOS 7.8 desktop alternate user with FF 78ESR: Displays as expected.

After resetting some defaults for several settings that seemed possibly related (including media and image cache), I was finally able to get my main profile working correctly. If I am able to pinpoint the exact setting, I will reply with another update.