How to get crisp image for search result suggestion in Windows 8?

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I'm using a 40 x 40 sized image as a search result suggestion image in Windows 8 search. Only advice about the image format I can find is to have correct size for it (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh700542.aspx: "Windows will scale or crop smaller or larger images").

However, the correctly sized image blurs annoyingly. The same thing happens whether I use jpg or png. Original image looks fine, but the result suggestion in the search charm is very ugly, being still of same size! Is Windows converting the image somehow, and how could I get the image to stay crisp?

I haven't noticed blurring with photo-like images, but this image contains clear lines and areas which are vulnerable to any scaling etc.

Update Sep 24:

Here is the test image I used when trying to figure out the problem. I also created different scale versions, but in my case the 100% version was used (that's why the "100" marking) - as I supposed because the resulting image really is 40x40. As you can see, the resulting image (right) is of same size as original (left), but blurry.

Original test imageBlurry image in Windows 8 search

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windows-8windows-runtime
Have you tried other sizes? Like 32 x 32 or 48 x 48? Sometimes the docs / samples may be out of date. – Krishna
It doesn't help, and I can't see how this even could. The resulting image in the search charm really is 40x40 - it just isn't the same crisp image anymore. – Riikka Heikniemi
I think that it might not be a "bug", but a "feature". Windows 8 with all his user experience think and optimalization stuff, could lead to such memory cut, since user can't see well details on 40x40 image anyway – Skiba
I think your question duplicates mine asked 2 months ago. Never got any answer on that one. Often I find myself the solution if nobody replies but not this time... If you (somebody) figure(s) out, please let me know there: stackoverflow.com/questions/11589999/… – Jan Zeman
@Skiba, I don't see how Windows could spare any significant amount of memory on such small image. And image quality is a big theme in Windows 8 - you can for example provide different scale versions of images, to make sure they look good in any resolution. – Riikka Heikniemi

2 Answers

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it does not happen that often but it seems the right solution in this case was simply to wait ;) I haven't done anything new regarding result suggestion images in my solution and today I realized that the images became crisp. Probably fixed by any of the windows updates.

enter image description here

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[Took a stab at answering what seems the related question mentioned in the comments, so I'm posting here as well.]

It sounds like this could be related to automatic scaling of the images. Windows will automatically scale up/down based on pixel density, and you can help things scale well by either using vector-based images or, for bitmap images, supplying scale-specific versions.

For example, to scale an image referenced in markup as "AppLogo.jpg", you'd include these images:

  • AppLogo.scale-100.jpg
  • AppLogo.scale-140.jpg
  • AppLogo.scale-180.jpg

You can also use folders, e.g. "\scale-140\AppLogo.jpg".

For search result images, the 100% image is the 40x40 pixel version, 140 is 56x56, and 180 is 72x72. Just reference the image as "AppLogo.jpg" and the appropriate version will be used automatically. (You can also detect scale with DisplayProperties.ResolutionScale and manually choose an image.)

Here's a couple of articles with more examples/details:

There's also some scaling discussion in the forums (general, not specific to search) here and here.