MS3 image capture scaling.
OS: macOS 10.14, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.0.1.20439, revision: 06a66a2
When I take a screen capture with the camera tool, type command-C (or select "Copy") and then view it in Preview (command N in Preview), the image shows at least twice as large as it should be (see image).
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Comments
What resolution do you have selected when you right click the frame? The default is 300, probably "Preview" (whatever that is) is expecting something less highres). If it's important to see it at the same size, you can try 180 in MuseScore, or change the zoom setting.
In reply to What resolution do you have… by Marc Sabatella
I'd never noticed that setting before, and don't understand what it's controlling. My screen is 227 DPI. I experimented and about 100 gives close to the right result (my real target is email, not Preview, but I tested that, too). What is the definition of this parameter?
"Preview" is the Mac generic still image viewer (guess you don't use the Mac much). This worked in MS2 without adjustment.
MS2 has 100 for this setting. That must be it.
In reply to I didn't see that adjustment… by [DELETED] 1831606
MuseScore 2 had a bug, I think, where the resolution was being ignored when using Ctrl+C. That's fixed now, so the image captured does reflected your selected resolution.
Since your target is email, the size on your particular screen is pretty irrelevant - it's going to look totally different on the screen of whoever receives the image. That's the nature of digital images. 300DPI is good if you want them to print the image, but it will indeed generally look pretty on screen. 180 should look close to "life size" on many screens but the specifics will depend on their monitor resolution and system settings, will be too small on print however.
In reply to I didn't see that adjustment… by [DELETED] 1831606
BTW, the default in MuseScore 2.3.2 was 300 DPI as well, You must have customized the setting long ago if you're currently seeing it at 100. And if 100 DPI is causing Preview to display at what appears to be the correct size, it must be artifically magnifying the image. Try doing a screen capture then immediately pasting it back into MuseScore. At 100 DPI, it should look too small. At 300 DPI it should look too big. At 180 DPI it should be the same size as the score itself. At least, that's how it is supposed to work, and does for me, both on 2.3.2 and 3.0.
In reply to BTW, the default in… by Marc Sabatella
The gorilla in the room that we haven't mentioned so far is that MuseScore is not copying the screen, but an abstract idea of the page and its size. That's why my experiments produce counterintuitive results. The Zoom level of the MuseScore view does not affect the output! Furthermore, when using screen zoom = 100% (dropdown in the toolbar), png DPI of 180 produces an image about 1/2 the size it should be when pasted back into MuseScore; 300 produces almost the right size, but a bit small, doing the same thing. 400 gets it about right (pasted into MS, but 4x too big in Preview at "actual size"). Well that's why Preview's idea has nothing to do with what I see on screen. No matter what the MuseScore zoom is set to, png dpi produces "reasonable-size music samples" (in Preview), which, it turns out, look a great deal like a MuseScore zoom of 100% on an 8.5x11 page with staff spacing = 1.764 mm.
So I'm still confused, or MuseScore and I are both confused.
In reply to The gorilla in the room that… by [DELETED] 1831606
It's absolutely true, by design and a very good thing, that the image capture in MuseScore is not limited by your zoom settings. Image capture is much more than just a screen capture. Otherwise it would be impossible to capture a print-quality image (eg, 300 DPI) on a normal monitor (only 100 DPI). Also it would be impossible to capture a print-quality image when zoomed out enough to see a full page unless your monitor was as tall as your printed page. Allowing full control over the resolution of the quality of the image capture independent of your monitor resulution, size, or your zoom setting is what makes the image capture tool so much better than a plain screen capture.
When I mentioned 180 DPI as being the right DPI to get an image of exactly the right size when pasted back into MuseScore, that was on my system on 2.3.2. For 3.0 the correct value should be 360 on all systems I believe, so sorry for the confusion. The code recently changed as a result of the fix for the bug involve the scaling of text that you and I both saw, and it's hard for me to keep it all straight in my head. Although I have only my own system to test on, my understanding is that for 3.0, this 360 DPI value should be independent of the zoom setting and screen resolution; for 2.3.2 I am not convinced it was.
What any given preview utility chooses to show you we have no control over, so when viewed in a such a tool, a 360 DPI image is going to look different one system compared to another depending on the utility you choose to preview your image with, the zoom settings in that tool, your screen resolution, and your OS scaling settings.
Again, if the goal is simply to email someone an image to view on their monitor, 360 DPI is overkill and most viewers on most systems will display it too large - 100 DPI is what "standard" computer monitors traditionally display. But on a system that does better than 100 DPI, a 100 DPI image will look too small unless the operating system does scaling to make it look bigger - and most OS's do provide such controls, often setting them by default to avoid complaints that all images look too small. So again, all those variables we have no control over, and the same 100 DPI is going to look very different on different systems when viewed in any old viewer.
Sounds like your Preview utility and your OS scaling settings are conspired to pretend your monitor is an old-fashioned 100 DPI monitor even though it may really be a "retina" display capable of much higher resolution. Or maybe it really is only a 100 DPI monitor, in which case, indeed, 400 DPI images will look huge in the preview. Which is why, as I mentioned, 100 DPI is usually a better choice for sending images to be displayed on screen - it will look right on "traditional" monitors as well as "high resolution" monitors that have scaling set up to "pretend" to be 100 DPI when previewing images.
In reply to It's absolutely true, by… by Marc Sabatella
All reasonable image-view utilities have an "actual size" setting. My monitor is a 227 DPI Retina screen.
Do you know, do PNG images have a "size" (inches/mm) or only resolution? If the former, there is no question as to at what size it should be displayed. If the latter, one would think that the dimensions in bits divided by that resolution would give the mandatory size (for any tool claiming to display "actual size") regardless of screen or OS resolutions. In either case, it would seem that dots per inch should not affect size, no? In my image-creation tool, Pixelmator, image dimensions and resolution are independent parameters. Only if the image carries neither linear size nor resolution is there a problem about its display size.
Furthermore, why do you assume that when I do a copy from the capture frame, I want "print" as opposed to "screen" size (let alone resolution)? In every case I have ever used, I have wanted to copy what I see as I see it.
In reply to All reasonable image-view… by [DELETED] 1831606
PNG images have can have a DPI setting that will determine the final size, but I'm not so sure about images copied via Ctrl+C - that's going to be system-dependent. My guess is no, they don't usually.
Anyhow, I don't assume you want to print, I am simply observing it is an important feature to be able to. Otherwise using the image capture tool to create ossias and so forth to immediately paste back into MuseScore will look terrible on print.
Saying you want to copy what you see as you see it is all well and good, but again, someone else on a different system with a different monitor, different image view, and different system scaling settings may see something different. This is not anything particular to MsueScore, it is the very nature of digital images and has been since day one.
In reply to PNG images have can have a… by Marc Sabatella
If the images copied via ctrl-C have neither DPI nor dimensions, that is the end of the discussion, as it answers all questions and observed phenomena. The stuff that gets pasted into email certainly gets "dimensioned" by the html of the email, and that's surely part of the answer, too.