Internet graphics display problem

[jericho]

I hope someone can help me with this because the frustration is overwhelming right now.

I'm on a Mac G4 running OS X, using what I believe is a Rage 128, although I'm not entirely sure how to check that. My Internet browser is IE 5.2 for Mac. Today, out of the blue, Internet graphics started being displayed really weird for me. I hadn't changed any of my settings, at least not to my knowledge, or done anything out of the ordinary.

Some graphics on the Internet are fine, but others are appearing very blurry and distorted. You know how it looks when you make an image in Photoshop using the lowest possible compression? That's what it looks like. I'm not sure if you can post images here, but I made a screenshot, which you can see at http://www.velvet.net/~divas/misc/sample.jpg . Yesterday, that image was clear as a bell. Everything at this forum looks fine, but at www.apple.com , for example, the tabs at the top look normal but the pictures of the iBooks are distorted.

But wait, there's more! When I open the same images locally in my browser, calling them straight off my hard drive, they look fine. It's only when they are uploaded and appear on the Internet that they look weird. When I download one of said weird images from the Internet and open it in Photoshop, it appears distorted.

What I have tried:

- Viewing the same images in a different browser. I tried Netscape Navigator and the same images are distorted.
- Reloading the images.
- Restarting my computer.
- Uploading images via browser and via FTP and everything I upload appears like this.

You have no idea how grateful I will be if someone could help me with this problem.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

I would like to do a realtime compare with you... please send me a message on when you are available. I am Central time, and have some time options.

You mentioned that you are running OS X. You should be able to go into your System Volume, and find the Applications --> Utilities --> System Profiler application. That will scan your hardware, and peek inside the machine to see what your hardware really is.

I do not think you have a hardware problem -- you are seeing them good at first. I am wondering that when you save the image before uploading it, if you are introducing errors to it (perhaps saving as a .gif file and dithering the colors). I would like to download said image, and see if it distors here for me.

This will take some work.

Christian