Stop Pixel Peeking! It’s bad for you!

Are you a pixel-peeker? Do you obsess over those individual dots? Well, stop it; pixel-peeking is bad for you.

Hi, my name is Rich Dyson from Edinburgh Photography Workshop, and this is Coffee Break Photography.

I do like receiving most of the comments under the videos I post. When there is an interesting comment, I like to engage and reply. But some of them…. Oh dear! A case in point is one responding to my video on depth of field, which you can watch here. In it, I use the standard definition of depth of field—the area around the focal point that is acceptably sharp. Quite a few sources confirm this, including the very well-respected Merriam-Webster dictionary. However, one contributor (who I assume isn’t a native English speaker) tells me that the example image I provided, “I can argue the you statement on the “acceptably sharp” for the last shoot is not sharp to my needs (as if you pixel peep you will see the actual truth).”

Well, let me justify the title for this week’s video so that the old keyboard warriors don’t need to watch too many minutes before saying the title is just clickbait… Hmm, I wonder why they call it clickbait. Of course, I want you to watch my videos—duh. That’s why I put a title that makes you want to click it! But anyway, let’s go back to why pixel-peeking is bad for you.

Our commenter got so upset after zooming into a relatively poor-quality JPEG image at 1600% that they felt angry enough to type a long comment in an unfamiliar language. When we get angry, a small structure in the brain called the amygdala is triggered. This sends a message to the hypothalamus, which blasts a shot of adrenalin through the body. Adrenalin increases blood pressure, your heart pumps faster, and respiration levels increase. Now and again, these things aren’t bad for you, but if you are pixel-peeking every photo and getting more and more upset by the tiniest imperfections – it ain’t going to be good for the old ticker. There, the title is no longer clickbait because I have evidenced why it is true; now, let’s see how we can get over it.

The real reason for this week’s video is to consider what acceptably sharp means. There is an accepted ideal viewing distance between 1.5 times and two times the diagonal length in an image. This is based on someone of average height looking at a picture with their head straight so they can see the entire image. I would argue that acceptably sharp should mean that the picture looks sharp when viewed from this distance.

Nearly half of the people who watch my YouTube content do so on a computer. The data doesn’t go any deeper than this, but I am guessing some will be on laptops with, say, 15-inch screens, and some are on desktops with, say, a 24-inch screen. The ideal viewing distance for these two would be 22 inches (56 centimetres) for the laptop and 36 inches (91 centimetres) for the desktop. Check your position right now. I’m guessing you are probably closer than this – I know I was, but only by 3 or 4 centimetres.

A typical mobile phone is 6 inches on the diagonal, so the ideal viewing is more like 9 inches or 22 centimetres. For the 30% of people on one of those devices, you may be slightly further away.

Given that we rarely print images these days and are usually viewed on digital devices, it’s fair to say that we generally view images at around the ideal distance. I don’t see many people doing this or this.

There really is no need to add pixel-peeking into your workflow. It doesn’t benefit the viewer. You waste time trying to fix something that isn’t going to be seen. Worse of all – it’s bad for your health! Remember those amygdala and hypothalamus reactions!

If you’ve enjoyed this video, it would be great if you could like it and share it by clicking on the thumbs-up button below. That way, a few more people will get to see it. You can also subscribe to the channel by clicking on this button here. I send out a monthly newsletter to my subscribers with news about photography, as well as exclusive offers. Scan this QR code to sign up. My name is Rich Dyson, from Edinburgh Photography Workshop, and this has been Coffee Break Photography. See you next time.