Unfortunately, supersampling defaults to 3, so the “non-supersampling” command actually needs to be:  save myimage.png supersample 1

—Eric

Eric Pettersen

UCSF Computer Graphics Lab

On Jan 28, 2020, at 10:12 AM, Christophe Leterrier <christophe.leterrier@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Tom,

thank you for your reply. I don't think it's due to supersampling. In the attached screenshot you see form left to right; viewer, no supersampling (save /Users/christo/Desktop/image1.png) and default supersampling (save /Users/christo/Desktop/image2.png supersample 3). The viewer is more contrasted and more saturated that both the non-supersampled and the supersampled images, that look identical. By the way this is on my MacBook Pro whereas the previous one was from iMac (both Retina though).

Christophe

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 at 18:24, Tom Goddard <goddard@sonic.net> wrote:

Hi Christophe,

  I guess you are saving the image with the Snapshot icon on the toolbar.  The equivalent command is shown in the Log panel

        save /Users/goddard/Desktop/image1.png supersample 3

It is probably the "supersample 3" option that is fading your colors.  That option says make the image 3 times bigger and then average over 3 x 3 pixel bins to obtain smoother edges.  If instead you use

        save myimage.png

I believe you will get identical colors to those you see on the screen.

  Maybe I should add some snapshot options to the preferences panel and I could let you choose whether you want supersampling.  On a Mac retina display the snapshot icon makes an image with half the resolution shown on the screen -- could also have an option to up the resolution.  Probably better to just fix it so it uses the screen resolution.

        Tom



> On Jan 28, 2020, at 8:12 AM, Christophe Leterrier <christophe.leterrier@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I wonder why the colors in the snapshots (and movies) from ChimeraX are always washed-out compared to the colors I get live in the viewer. Attached is a screenshot with the viewer on the left, the corresponding snapshot on the right: one can see how the snapshot is desaturated compared to the viewer. From my limited tests it is the case when saving as both PNG and PPM, and I wonder if this could be corrected. I could saturate the screenshots afterward but it doesn't seem right to me to grossly mess with color levels post-hoc given how stunning the shaded rendering from ChimeraX are.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Christophe
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