Retina Displays?

[Rodney]

Is anyone up on the specifics/requirements regarding creating images for Mac Retina Displays?

I've read a few articles but lost the one that I thought outlined it best.

 

For those that haven't heard of this before it's related to how Mac displays are now produced with pixels spaced closer together which allow for crisper displaying of shapes and lines. This has ushered in a requirement for higher resolution images because the lower rez (normal pictures found all over the web) now look blurry by comparison.

 

Has anyone seen a definitive guide?

[zandoriastudios]

Not sure what the resolution is for the retina display, but certain that A:M can handle it-- See my post "Resolution Independence"

[Rodney]

Great write up Will.

Short. Concise. Informative.

 

You've opened my eyes a little more.

I was thinking in terms of final rendered imagery and hadn't even thought about realtime resolution and animation. That should be at the fore.

(I know your article is saying that because A:M spline patches are resolution independent we are already covered for both, I had just been focused on final rendering resolutions, static images and such.)

 

I guess what I am considering here is whether there is a minimal or even optimal resolution given current images as found on many websites appearing blurry on Retina displays. In the past low rez generally worked for me but now I sense that I may be need to be more cautious of rendering out to lower resolutions.

 

There also seems to me an opportunity to leverage both high and low resolution to take advantage of a greater range of clarity vs blur.

You know those old theories that state things like "the farther away an object is the more it appears blurry".

It presents something of an opportunity that did not exist before.

[NancyGormezano]

From googling retina display: Retina display is a

"marketing term developed by Apple to refer to devices and monitors that have a resolution and pixel density so high that roughly 300 or more pixels per inch“ that a person is unable to discern the individual pixels at a normal viewing distance.

Apple's Retina Display made its debut on 2011's iPhone 4S, which featured a 960x640 pixel screen with four times the number of pixels (326 pixels per inch) as the iPhone 4.

 

The new iPad that was released in early 2012 included a 2048x1536 resolution Retina Display as well. The 2012 lines of updated Mac Book Pro and Mac Book Air notebooks are expected to include Retina Display screens with 2880x1800 resolution displays. Intel is also expected to help make Retina Display a reality in laptops and Windows 8 tablets and ultrabooks with its new Ivy Bridge processor architecture.

 

Sounds to me one would need to know the size, resolution of the targeted display device (and probably normal viewing distance) in order to know what the final rendered image resolution should be.

 

One to three inch screen held 6-12 inches away requires way less rendered pixels (as well as very young eyes) than a huge-i-mongous projection TV at Old eyes Bill Gates house, sitting in first or last row of home theatre.

[MMZ_TimeLord]

I found this information here.

 

Earlier this morning Apple introduced its next-generation MacBook Pro equipped with a Retina Display. The 15.4-inch panel features a native resolution of 2880 x 1800, or exactly four times the standard 1440 x 900 resolution of a regular 15-inch MacBook Pro. As we've seen in the past however, an ultra high resolution screen in a small form factor can make for some very difficult to read text. The Retina MBP ships with a version of OS X Lion however that supports a number of scaling modes to take advantage of the ultra high res display.

 

So, you are looking at just under double 1080p. Not even double (not really four times, unless you are talking about pixel count) an actual standard media resolution (1920x1080 or 1280x720). So, you figure you could double the horizontal and vertical on a 720p frame and still have a 80~90 pixel border.

 

This would be less than a 4k scan of a standard movie frame in any aspect ratio, but more than a 2k scan.

 

So, even Bluray discs will now look a bit blurry on these displays? I can't imagine people having a large enough Apple display to be able to tell the difference.

 

But, what do I know...

[robcat2075]

The buzz i've read suggests the retina display will use its denser res to render type more clearly with less obvious antialiasing.

 

Aside from that, I'm doubtful people will be consuming more data with it unless they want to carry a magnifying glass with their iphone.

 

But I've never seen one.

[Rodney]

Here's a quick down and dirty video that scratches the surface of the tech going on behind the scenes:

 

 

This second one goes into what Nancy referred to regarding screen viewing distance (which with the Retina display is assumed to be 10 inches away):

 

 

and another that focuses on Pixels Per Inch (PPI) and viewing distance:

 

 

 

and the scoop from the guy himself, Steve Jobs:

 

 

Steve implies that the name Retina for these displays comes from the retina's upper threshold of being able to view no more than 300PPI at a distance of 10 to 12 inches. With Retina displays at 326 PPI Steve says they are "comfortably over that threshold".

 

 

So, extrapolating from that I begin to assume that images should target this 300PPI threshold or risk not being optimal on Retina displays. I'm not convinced this is the case but its a starting point.

 

REF:

Pixels per inch (PPI) or pixel density is a measurement of the resolution of devices in various contexts: typically computer displays, image scanners, and digital camera image sensors.

PPI can also describe the resolution, in pixels, of an image to be printed within a specified space. Note, the unit is not square inches. For instance, a 100×100 pixel image that is printed in a 1-inch square has a resolution of 100 pixels per inch (PPI). Used in this way, the measurement is meaningful when printing an image. Good quality photographs usually require 300 pixels per inch when printed.

Emphasis added. Source: Wikipedia

 

Perhaps yet another reason to target 300PPI.

[Rodney]

At the risk of igniting the old discussion about DPI again, here's a DPI to PPI calculator what has quite a few displays precalcuated. Just click on the display type and the data is displayed in the calculator:

 

http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html

 

Note: This calculator assumes square pixels which may be a relevant factor in many cases.

[thejobe]

from what people have told me. they are round pixels and the resolution suppose to start around 4K. but that's all i heard.

that would put in the range of today's professional movie cameras