Blurry image rendering in Chromium browsers
- Thread starter SeriousHoax
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Chrome & Chromium
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Taking images may not show it. This is why I said this above. Did you try the "Alt+Tab" method after going full screen? Focus mainly on the first music video since that's where the difference is huge in my PC.
I watched them in YT. I'd say Brave and FF are pretty similar, with Edge being worst. The biggest difference I see is FF font rendering which is more clean, but it's also a different font than Chromium. Brave gives me YouTube in dark mode and FF doesn't.
Yes, not all chromium browsers are created equally. Opera (the browser one loves to hate, apparently) is qualitatively superior with rendering both moving and static images on here. It's obviously not perfect but then, neither is Edge--by a long shot.
Forgot to add, I also downloaded videos from YouTube to compare and here VLC and Pot Player rendering is as same as Firefox. Both showing accurate color and details. K-Lite Codec and MPC-BE has just a slight white balancing issue but not bad as Chromium. I remember Pot Player had a white balancing issue a few years back, but they fixed that later on. VLC has always been good for me.
Ok, so the image rendering issue is universal, true for everyone but the video rendering thing varies from device to device it seems. The graphics card makes a difference in rendering probably and the output of everyone's monitor is different too of course.
But trust me the difference in my PC is worthy of me not using Chromium browsers. Worse image rendering and now worse video rendering. So, I'm gonna stick to Firefox which is already my main browser anyway.
Maybe I'll post these problems in Chrome and Edge subreddits. The devs themselves browse there so this should give the issues more exposure and hopefully something positive will happen.
Ok, so the image rendering issue is universal, true for everyone but the video rendering thing varies from device to device it seems. The graphics card makes a difference in rendering probably and the output of everyone's monitor is different too of course.
But trust me the difference in my PC is worthy of me not using Chromium browsers. Worse image rendering and now worse video rendering. So, I'm gonna stick to Firefox which is already my main browser anyway.
Maybe I'll post these problems in Chrome and Edge subreddits. The devs themselves browse there so this should give the issues more exposure and hopefully something positive will happen.
Update:
I have found out the culprit behind my washed out video color on YouTube and possibly other sites too on Chromium browsers.
It's AMD's graphics driver which is responsible for this. AMD are always known to be awful at making drivers for their GPUs so looks like they are still lagging behind Nvidia & Intel in this department even though they have improved over time.
Check out this Reddit thread. Here users are quite disgusted & frustrated at AMD. The post itself is 6 months old, and it was also reported to AMD engineers but yet to be fixed. This is very disappointing.
Possible fix for grey or washed out colors in YouTube videos observed by some in the 20.5.1 beta and in 20.7.1 drivers. : Amd (reddit.com)
The proposed solution on there doesn't work anymore. So it's up to AMD to fix it.
One of the user suggested that older driver version 19.8.2 fixed it for him and I can confirm that he's right. This version is problem free, but this driver is almost 2 years old.
Maybe this doesn't happen on every AMD GPU but many users reported this, so it's quite common I guess.
The image rendering problem still remains and that is not related to any drivers. It's chromium itself.
Firefox renders everything (image+video) perfectly no matter what the driver is.
Both image & video rendering issue for all Chromium browsers goes away if hardware acceleration is turned off, but it's not recommended as CPU's are more power hungry.
I'll post more updates here once AMD release a driver fixing this issue.
I have found out the culprit behind my washed out video color on YouTube and possibly other sites too on Chromium browsers.
It's AMD's graphics driver which is responsible for this. AMD are always known to be awful at making drivers for their GPUs so looks like they are still lagging behind Nvidia & Intel in this department even though they have improved over time.
Check out this Reddit thread. Here users are quite disgusted & frustrated at AMD. The post itself is 6 months old, and it was also reported to AMD engineers but yet to be fixed. This is very disappointing.
Possible fix for grey or washed out colors in YouTube videos observed by some in the 20.5.1 beta and in 20.7.1 drivers. : Amd (reddit.com)
The proposed solution on there doesn't work anymore. So it's up to AMD to fix it.
One of the user suggested that older driver version 19.8.2 fixed it for him and I can confirm that he's right. This version is problem free, but this driver is almost 2 years old.
Maybe this doesn't happen on every AMD GPU but many users reported this, so it's quite common I guess.
The image rendering problem still remains and that is not related to any drivers. It's chromium itself.
Firefox renders everything (image+video) perfectly no matter what the driver is.
Both image & video rendering issue for all Chromium browsers goes away if hardware acceleration is turned off, but it's not recommended as CPU's are more power hungry.
I'll post more updates here once AMD release a driver fixing this issue.
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ForgottenSeer 85179
This doesn't make sense if it's really a driver problem.
I also own AMD hardware and doesn't see any problems in Edge.
Firefox is a different browser using a different engine with different implementation of hardware acceleration. So it's not surprising. Whatever problem current AMD drivers have is not affecting Firefox in this case.
You can't know for sure if you're having this issue or not if you don't compare Firefox vs Edge. I wouldn't know there's a problem if I didn't have Firefox. But the difference is quite huge once you see it. Besides, it's possible that not every GPU is affected by this. But many other users complained and reproduced in that Reddit thread as well as I found few more in their forum. So it's obvious that there's a problem. Also like I said, I installed an older driver which doesn't have this problem.
Have you tried setting up Edge/Chrome to use Intel graphics instead of AMD in display settings? Maybe that can fix rendering issues.
I don't have an Intel GPU. I use an AMD APU, 3400G.
L
Local Host
Seems another case of misusing drivers and user error, you can easily setup your colour accurary in AMD Display Settings (in Radeon Software), so there's no problem with AMD drivers.
Anyone who understands half of the options will disable Custom Color and change the Pixel Format to Full RGB (or even HDR if you have it).
I have no washed out colours in neither Firefox nor Chrome, as for image "blurryness" I would call it post processing and I like it, sharp images don't always equal to better quality images, so for me is Firefox that looks inferior.
Plus being a driver problem that affects colour accuracy, the problem wouldn't be exclusive to Chrome (since is system wide), if you all read the topic in question the users also confirm this.
Anyone who understands half of the options will disable Custom Color and change the Pixel Format to Full RGB (or even HDR if you have it).
I have no washed out colours in neither Firefox nor Chrome, as for image "blurryness" I would call it post processing and I like it, sharp images don't always equal to better quality images, so for me is Firefox that looks inferior.
Plus being a driver problem that affects colour accuracy, the problem wouldn't be exclusive to Chrome (since is system wide), if you all read the topic in question the users also confirm this.
I see.
Looks like you haven't read all of my comments in this thread so let me make everything clear again.
First, why would I want to change color settings for Chromium only! There's no color issue on Firefox, no issues on games, no issues on video players, no issue on Windows itself. Everywhere colors are alright except Chromium browsers. A user shouldn't mess with color settings for Chromium only.
I also said that an older driver version 19.8.2 don't have this issue. The issue also goes away if I disable hardware acceleration. So it's 100% a driver issue. Maybe it's not happening on every AMD GPU, but it happens on many/some GPUs including mine. Anyway, this is AMD's issue not Chromium's so ignore it for this thread.
The image blurriness is absolutely 100% problematic. There's nothing to like about it. It looks way too blurry here. Sometimes I can't even properly read images where there are texts.
Like I said above, even this problem goes away if I disable hardware acceleration. If I turn that off then there's no difference between Chromium and Firefox in image rendering. Everything looks the same. So surely Chromium don't render blurry images by default/by choice. This has something to do with their hardware acceleration. This has been reproduced by everyone on this thread including you, my real life friends and many other users around the world. It's not just about sharpness. Images are losing details, making clear things unclear, degrading quality of images. This is not a pleasant experience at all. The example car image from the CNN article is a very good example. I can share more example images if required.
I will repeat once again, "Images looks normal, sharp & clear like it's meant to be if I disable hardware acceleration"
L
Local Host
You cannot change colour settings for specific applications, the drivers use a global switch to tweak your monitor (not software), it affects the entire system and is entirely unrelated to Chrome.
If your Chrome has colour issues, you should contact Google, is the same as trying to contact AMD when a game crashes, the issue is in the game.
Plus you just proved further what I said earlier, post processing is being applied to your Chrome browser, which doesn't degrate image quality contrary to popular believe.
The only noticeable difference between Chrome and Firefox is font rendering, since they use different techniques (all down to personal preference, IE always had the best font rendering of the market).
If I worked at AMD, I would blacklist Chrome and let only experienced users use hardware acceleration on it, problem solved for the casuals.
But go ahead keeps blaming AMD, image-rendering: pixelated | Web | Google Developers is pretty much the default smoothing by Chome (which is also used in fonts), I would be more worried if this doesn't happen with NVidia like you claim (means is not working as intended).
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I know I can't do it for specific applications that's why I said I'm not going to change color for the sake of seeing proper color on Chrome only. Everywhere else color looks alright except Chromium browsers.
Chrome has no issue with the older 19.8.2 AMD driver version. Later versions create this issue. So it seems AMD's driver related. Many users who reported this on Reddit using totally different AMD GPUs. But ok I'll try my luck posting it on Chrome subreddit to know if Chromium is the guilty party here.
You're right. But that's not the main point. The point is how images look on the device with hardware acceleration on. I shouldn't need to disable hardware acceleration to get the accurate image.
Is this suppose to be an excuse or what! If your software has a problem then you should try your best to fix it. Chrome has issue with hardware acceleration, and it needs to be fixed. That's it. It's 2021 and post-processing or whatever that is, I want images to look good in Chromium browsers like it happens on Firefox. Disabling hardware acceleration is not a solution.
This is the reason for me to open this thread. I wanted to know if it's affecting our forum members too. I want Chrome to fix it ASAP and make this thread a history.
You can suggest me what's the best way for me to report it to them.
Adding one more demonstration of the blurry image issue. This one is shared to me by @McMcbrad. You can clearly see what's wrong with Chromium.
Till Chrome fix this, as a temporary solution you may make images appear similar to Firefox by setting "GPU rasterization" in flags to "Disabled".
This fixes the problem almost everywhere. I would say 90% at least. I'm saying 90% because I noticed even with this trick/even with hardware acceleration disabled there are some images which still appears blurry on Chromium browsers. So, Firefox is still superior for the best image viewing experience but like I said, to me based on my short experience, almost all blurry image problems get solved with this flag.
Now I am not knowledgeable enough to understand "rastertization" fully but on browsers at least it is something to do with image rendering mainly. So, all/part of the image rendering will be done by your CPU now instead of GPU. Since the main issue lies in the hardware acceleration of Chromium, this explains why disabling this flag fixes the issue.
Till Chrome fix this, as a temporary solution you may make images appear similar to Firefox by setting "GPU rasterization" in flags to "Disabled".
This fixes the problem almost everywhere. I would say 90% at least. I'm saying 90% because I noticed even with this trick/even with hardware acceleration disabled there are some images which still appears blurry on Chromium browsers. So, Firefox is still superior for the best image viewing experience but like I said, to me based on my short experience, almost all blurry image problems get solved with this flag.
Now I am not knowledgeable enough to understand "rastertization" fully but on browsers at least it is something to do with image rendering mainly. So, all/part of the image rendering will be done by your CPU now instead of GPU. Since the main issue lies in the hardware acceleration of Chromium, this explains why disabling this flag fixes the issue.
OK, thank you for the image comparison. Firefox's image does look qualitatively better.
On both of my chromium browsers, gpu rasterization was set as "default" or in Opera--default-undefined. So, I disabled this in both Edge and Opera and the image is still poorer in quality than Firefox's rendering. Specifically, the crimson area around the end of the fencing sword at the extreme left is still blurred.
Can someone further confirm this observation, please? Or did disabling the gpu flag make it all better? I mean, this has been a consistent thing for months now.
On both of my chromium browsers, gpu rasterization was set as "default" or in Opera--default-undefined. So, I disabled this in both Edge and Opera and the image is still poorer in quality than Firefox's rendering. Specifically, the crimson area around the end of the fencing sword at the extreme left is still blurred.
Can someone further confirm this observation, please? Or did disabling the gpu flag make it all better? I mean, this has been a consistent thing for months now.
Are talking about the attached image? In that case it will always look worse since it was captured from Firefox and Chrome respectively demonstrating their difference.OK, thank you for the image comparison. Firefox's image does look qualitatively better.
On both of my chromium browsers, gpu rasterization was set as "default" or in Opera--default-undefined. So, I disabled this in both Edge and Opera and the image is still poorer in quality than Firefox's rendering. Specifically, the crimson area around the end of the fencing sword at the extreme left is still blurred.
Can someone further confirm this observation, please? Or did disabling the gpu flag make it all better? I mean, this has been a consistent thing for months now.
The image itself is present on Trend Micro's official site. There you can check the difference between rasterization on and off.
TrendMicro
Provide top-rated antivirus and anti-scam tools to secure your system and devices. Keeping your home and family away from potential network threats and identity theft.
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ForgottenSeer 89360
Images rendered in Chrome with default settings seem to lose both contrast and sharpness...
As a result, much more details are noticeable in Firefox.
This can be seen on any website that hasn't implemented image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast.
It can't be seen on the Apple and Samsung websites for example. I can't notice it on MalwareTips either.
The following content is from Bittdefender.co.uk page.
Chrome:
Firefox:
Notice how "Comparatives" and "NSS Recommended are far more readable on FF. The blue shade in "Wave Leader" + Black text are far darker and more contrasting too.
Overall, the whole graphic has lost contrast in Chrome.
As a result, much more details are noticeable in Firefox.
This can be seen on any website that hasn't implemented image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast.
It can't be seen on the Apple and Samsung websites for example. I can't notice it on MalwareTips either.
The following content is from Bittdefender.co.uk page.
Chrome:
Firefox:
Notice how "Comparatives" and "NSS Recommended are far more readable on FF. The blue shade in "Wave Leader" + Black text are far darker and more contrasting too.
Overall, the whole graphic has lost contrast in Chrome.
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You're right. Applying "image-rendering: -webkit-optimize-contrast;" does fix the problem in most cases. I also mentioned it in my initial post. But applying it now often over sharpens images but if the site owner does that then probably the result will be better.
I actually also notice problems in MalwareTips in Chrome default settings. Everyone's DP is blurry.
But this blurry & contrast issue doesn't happen when images are rendered on CPU and on Firefox, so it's ultimately up to google to do something about it.
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