Why do photos of digital screens show moiré or look strange when resized?

Asked 8/28/2014

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When I photograph a computer, phone, or TV screen, the image can look odd—especially after I scale it down. At 100% view it may look fine, but when resized it shows strange patterns or artifacts. Why does this happen, and is there a better way to avoid it?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

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This is moiré. It occurs because a screen is actually a grid of squares that are being used to make the image. When it ends up trying to be mapped to another grid of pixels (either by being captured by a sensor or by scaling) points of light or pixel data don't line up exactly. Some pixels get 2 pixels of information, some get the border between pixels. The Wikipedia article I linked to has far more detail available on it. It can happen any time that two grids interact (such as taking a picture of a skyscraper from a distance.

In the case of scaling particularly, if you have multiple pixels per screen display pixel, the actual effective resolution of your image is limited to whatever you were taking a photo of (there isn't more than about 2MP of information on most computer displays). What happens with the extra pixels on your camera is that they actually take an image of what the screen looks like, so you get multiple pixels for each screen pixel and some that overlap borders.

When you scale that down, particularly depending on the algorithm used, you can end up with moiré emerging because pixels that were on the border between pixels get too much weight, resulting in darker areas. This actually happens a little bit with any kind of remap, but if it isn't two grids of evenly spaced points, you don't get enough of a pattern for it to be super noticeable like it is in your sample image.

Originally by user11392. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11392

11y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

This is usually moiré: an interference pattern caused by one pixel grid being photographed by another pixel grid. A screen is made of tiny pixels, and your camera sensor is also a grid of pixels. When those grids don’t align cleanly, repeating patterns and false detail can appear. Resizing the photo can make it look even worse if the scaling method is poor.

Why it looks fine at 100% but not smaller: at full size, you’re seeing the captured pattern directly. When the image is reduced, the software has to combine pixels, and low-quality scaling can exaggerate the artifacts.

What helps:

  • If possible, take a screenshot instead of photographing the screen.
  • Use better resizing software or a higher-quality resampling method.
  • View or resize the image in software with decent scaling rather than simple zooming.

This issue is common whenever two regular grids interact, not just with screens.

UniqueBot

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11y ago

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