Whenever I take a screenshot and paste it to Obsidian, the pasted image takes about double the originally printed area. I want pasted screenshots to take the same amount of area of the originally selected area. I use Flameshot to take screenshots.
Things I have tried
I think the problem is that my monitor at home has a 4k resolution. Whenever I do the same thing using a 2k monitor at work, the area is preserved upon pasting. Setting my monitor to a lower resolution solves the problem, but of course this is not a valid option, since I don’t want to get a blurry view of everything.
I have found this topic with a similar issue, but I could not use it to solve the same problem on Windows. Maybe there’s a fix inside Obsidian itself when pasting…? Currently, I have to manually resize all the pasted pictures by embedding like this: ![[paste image | 600]], which takes a lot of time even though I set some snippets to help on this task.
First of all, thank you for the answer!
The issue persists on any theme I’ve tried so far, including the default.
I just tested pasting on sandbox and I got the same result.
I know the problem is about the resolution because changing it solves the problem. I just don’t know why that happens. I don’t remember this happening anywhere else… for example, if I paste to MS Word or to Paint, the area is preserved. It’s just Obsidian that enlarges the screenshot. Maybe it’s just not optimized for higher resolutions. I don’t think the issue is Flameshot either, because I get the same results by using Lightshot or Windows Snipping Tool.
Maybe I should report it as a bug? I think it is a bit weird that I couldn’t find more reports about this issue besides that one I linked to. Should be common, a lot of people have 4k monitors.
It’s not an Obsidian bug. This is because you’re taking high DPI screenshots. I don’t know the exact details, but it seems some apps compensate for this and hide it from you when you paste. You’ve already linked to the related thread about this. Like I said there, paste an image here in the forum, and you’ll likely see the same result.
Your solution will be found in Windows or in Flameshot, not in Obsidian. Obsidian is simply showing the images you are pasting into it.
You’ll have to find a screenshot tool that can automatically downsize, or modify the DPI, or something.
You could hide it in Obsidian with some CSS hack or something, but you’d just be storing double the image information for nothing.
(It is weird I admit. I don’t get exactly why you end up seeing a different size on the same screen. But that just seems to be how it is.)
I mostly use a mac with a 5K monitor and haven’t come across this. I’m pretty sure the Obsidian devs are mainly Windows users; I would image they have a few 4K monitors kicking around and would have noticed it.
I don’t really know much about how Windows deals with display resolution, etc. Hopefully a Windows user can jump in with a few things to try.
Edit: Just realized you had replied 5min before me. Weird I didn’t see the post.
Ah, I guess pasting into the forum is big. I was just testing pasting screenshots into Obsidian where they look the same size as the original screenshot area to me.
When I take a paragraph size screenshot, the screenshot is actually slightly smaller than the original area. I also usually have Settings > Editor > Readable line length enabled. This limits the editor size 700px wide.
So, using Flameshot (or other software), do something like the above to adjust the size. If you are pasting a lot of images, some kind of automation script. I haven’t in years, but I used to use some kind of Adobe action where I would drop a bunch of images on an icon and it would convert them all and dump them in a folder. Hopefully something like that would work.
Actually I’ve tried that before posting here, unsuccessfully. They don’t have that option. But in any case I think it’s a problem with Obsidian, not with other software. As mentioned before, it works flawlessly when pasting to MS Word, etc.
I think it’s potentially the opposite. My guess is that MS Word is compensating, and hiding it from you.
Try it in other apps. And you’ll often see the same enlarged result.
And like I already pointed out. Pasting here in the forum has the same effect. So it isn’t an Obsidian problem. Or at least not exclusively Obsidian. I’m not even sure it’s a problem. You’re taking a screenshot of a display which is higher resolution than the dimensions of the screen, so as far as I understand it shows a crisper sub-sampled result to you. (Why it doesn’t show up the same size on the same screen? I still don’t know or understand.)
I found a decent explanation here. This is about MacOS, but I assume it’s the same basic mechanism in Windows. Reddit - Dive into anything
I guess there’s no solution as for now. For anyone interested, you can download shareX and set it to resize your screenshot before copying to clipboard, so when you paste to obsidian, it looks smaller. I am not doing that because of the relevant quality loss.
