Images I put into my editor getting down scale or getting blured

[水芹 Cress]

Any images I put into my editor are a lot blurrier than the original source I've tried multiple different images and I looked any other people were having similar problems but looks like it's a pretty rare problem. I made my first wallpaper today and it ended up coming out looking like this https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2451051023

The image is pretty blurry and I asked a friend if they could try editing the original image and seeing if it came out blurry but it doesn't look like they had the same problem as me. the original image I used is below
https://twitter.com/kirisamemuko/status/1289205098258690048/photo/1

I have a GTX 1080 and I run both my monitors at 4 K (3860-2160) I thought maybe there might have been an issue with UI upscaling since I've seen that cause problems with blurriness in the past, I upscale to 225%. Downloading and using other peoples wallpapers seems fine but creating my own I lose a lot of the original image quality

[Tim]

I don't see an issue with it to be honest. The image you used is 2000x1600px, since that's not 16:9, Wallpaper Engine is forced to zoom into it and then upscale it to 4K at the same time, so it just looks like a blurry mess on a 4K screen. If I take the original image and zoom in so that it fills my screen, it looks just as blurry to me though the animations just make it a little bit more obvious.

Generally, you should always use a real aspect ratio such as 16:9 for your wallpapers or at least use the automatic wallpaper cropping functionality during the editor import, otherwise Wallpaper Engine will have to zoom into the image to make it fit your screen (that's just how pixels work). And 1080p will just look blurry on a 4K screen as well. In that sense, the image you are used is simply not a good fit for a 4K animated wallpaper, its resolution is just too low in addition to its odd aspect ratio.

[水芹 Cress]

Sorry I should have given a better example. The wallpaper that I created above I assumed it was just low resolution but even 4 K images are blurry seems to be almost any image I use even when compared side by side at the same size there is a lot of detail being lost I can post some imgur examples. I zoomed out the wallpaper engine image to just show how much more blurry it is compared to the original on the left

https://imgur.com/a/kagrO7X

[Tim]

Could you share the original source images that you imported, otherwise it's impossible to look into this.

[水芹 Cress]

The first wallpaper that I created in my original post you're right it's too low resolution so while creating it I didn't think much of it that it was a little blurry. After playing around with some high resolution images It appears after the wallpaper is applied to the desktop the blurry affect goes away I think there might be some sort of anti aliasing or scaling affect that is being applied in the preview while creating a wallpaper.
Here is an example of that effect
https://imgur.com/a/TJpUESo
and here is the original images that you requested
https://imgur.com/a/qI33y81

I guess if it's only applying the antialiasing/scaling problem or blurry affect inside the wallpaper creation mode and goes away after it's applied to the desktop it's something that I can live with and still make wallpapers. Still if you have any suggestions I will gladly try them out.

[Tim]

So, the resolution itself is not the only problem but also the aspect ratio. None of the images you are using are 16:9 but your screen is 16:9. You cannot take a portrait format image and place it on a landscape format screen without significantly zooming into the image. This is simply how pixels work. Before you take an image and animate it, first crop it to a 16:9 aspect ratio. For a lengthier explanation, see this:

https://docs.wallpaperengine.io/en/scene/performance/resolution.html

[水芹 Cress]

I appreciate your advice and suggestions. turns out once I add my first effect to a wallpaper the blur I've been talking about goes away so it's essentially a non issue thanks for your help tim :)