Requested Smoother image on editing screen

[Jon]

I work with faxes and often have to open the Paint dialog to add an annotation. When you open paint, the image always pixellates, I assume so that the painting/editing occurs right on the bitmap of the image. On many documents with text or writing, I find that the pixellation makes the text unreadable and I have to switch the Paint dialog on and off to read, then respond.

I understand there is likely some programmatic necessity for this, but if it's easy enough, maintaining a readable image would be great!

[Sprintdriver]

I don't get the same results. Are you sure the image is in 24 bit color?

If not, just click at Image (menu item) --> Increase Color depth. Then draw - and select "antialiased text".

[Jon]

I tried and the situation is the same. I am fitting the image to my windows, so it's not a pixel-to-pixel image. When I open Paint I still see the jaggies.

(Plus, I don't really want the larger file sizes that increasing color depth results in)

[Sprintdriver]

What version of Irfanview are you using?

[Jon]

4.4.4 - 32-bit on Windows 10

[Mij]

I suspect that you are trying to view your text at an unsuitable zoom ratio. If you viewed at 100% ratio (press Ctrl+H) I think you will find that it is readable and it will look just the same with or without the Paint plugin.
Text in 1bpp is especially difficult to read at certain magnifications without using resampling. You are probably comparing what you see in Normal conditions without Paint (image automatically resampled after fitting or zooming the image) with what you see with the Paint plugin open (no resampling)

I have attached screen captures of text being displayed in Irfanview under both conditions. Here I set the zoom to a little under 40% where Normal operation, with resampling, leaves the text quite readable (left hand image) whilst operation with Paint open ,with no resampling, looks awful (right hand image).

The screen captures are in PNG format (24 bpp) so that you can see what was actually on the screen. Click on the PNG images to open, then right click and Save image as...
For each of the images open the Paint plugin (to prevent them being resampled again) and maximize the window so that the text is zoomed to a large size and you will see that resampling of the original Normal text image adds extra gray pixels to give the smooth appearance. Press key I and see that there are over 200 different colors present. With Paint you can see that only the original colors (black and white) are present but the readability suffers badly.

[jazzman]

Jon,
if your screen is large enough, you can have two instances of Irfanview open side by side: one for reading, one with the paint plugin active for making annotations.