Fix Inside- XPS15 9530 HighDPI Scaling Broken for Some Apps

Hey everyone,

As many have noticed, certain apps have an issue properly scaling in Windows 8 on high-dpi displays. This will usually take the form of menus being too small, buttons being smaller than the upscaled text within them, or interface options like checkboxes, click/drag points, etc, being unscaled or too small for proper use.

Photoshop CC is one of the most cited offenders. The program works fine but the menus are too tiny to be easily usable. This page cites a specific fix that consists of a small registry tweak and moving/copying a file to the install directory.

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The issue is that many of these programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, are coded in a way that Windows thinks they are already "high-dpi aware" when they actually aren't. Because of this, Windows will not attempt to rescale the interface, which gives you this tiny interface. To fix this, you'll need to edit your registry and edit/copy a couple of files. If you aren't comfortable working with the registry, please don't mess with it- editing the wrong thing in the registry can cause irreparable damage to your Windows installation. To continue:

- Open the registry editor by running regedit.exe

- Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SideBySide

- Change the "PreferExternalManifest" DWORD entry on the right hand pane to 1.

What this does is basically tell Windows to look for a manifest file in the .exe's directory that will direct Windows when it comes to scaling the program properly. If a manifest file doesn't exist, it'll just use the program's default options as intended by the developer.

Step 2 is creating/editing/moving a manifest file to the program folder. We will use Photoshop, as detailed in the link above, as the example.

Go to the link below and copy the "raw paste text" toward the bottom of the site.


Paste it into a notepad file on your desktop. Save it as photoshop.exe.manifest . We don't need a .txt file here- it needs to be a .manifest file. If you get a message about changing the extension possibly causing problems, just accept/say ok/yes/whatever. If you want to edit it again, just try to open it back up with notepad.

- You just created the manifest file that needs to go in the .exe's directory. Once you paste that in, Windows will reference this file every time you launch the exe in that directory. This file basically tells Windows that the program actually isn't high-dpi aware, so Windows will attempt to scale it properly to work with your screen.

This manifest file can be edited to work with other programs. To do this:

- Read the file in notepad. You'll see a place near the top where it references Photoshop.exe . Replace that with the *exact name* of the broken dpi executable that you're trying to fix. Go to the program directory and read the name of the exe. Don't link the name of a shortcut and don't forget to leave out the extension. If you mess up editing, don't worry about it- the manifest won't load and you'll be left with your weirdly-scaled app. To continue, look for where it's citing the description of the program. Change this to the actual name. This isn't as important, but fix it nontheless. Once those two changes are done, your custom manifest file is ready to be put into your app exe's directory.

Save it as "myprogramname.exe.manifest" (without quotes) where "myprogramname" is the exact name of your exe file. If the exe is called Sonos, for instance, rename the edited notepad file "Sonos.exe.manifest". Take this file and paste it into the directory the exe resides in.

That's it. Restart the program and see if it looks better. Usually, it will. If it doesn't or if it looks worse, feel free to delete the manifest file and wait for a fix from the program's developer.

Keep a copy of the manifest file handy so you can edit a copy and throw it in a directory of a program that isn't scaling properly.

This fix has made many programs go from unusable to issue-free on my high-dpi display. Thanks to the blog above for linking the fix.

Enjoy!

 

Many thanks for your workaround! Didn't know at all about manifest files. Wouldn't have thought that there would be any scaling-fix without patch or something. Manifest-settings look very interesting to me, will invest time to see if you can cover other programs scaling issues with that (as soon I receive my XPS 15 ).

You forgot to post the links to the manifest files.
For Photoshop:
Pastebin.com

Illustrator:
Pastebin.com
(taken from source link you posted)

As those were different I think you cant just copy and rename the manifest files to other programs.

 

So what happens if I scale on my laptops screen but do not scale on my external display? Overscaled photoshop on external screen ?

 

This is how I'm running with a three-screen setup right now. The scaling works properly. Moving windows from the high-dpi screen to the 1080p screen is a little weird until the new window is completely on the second screen. At that point, the window resizes and scales correctly.

 

You mentioned this works with LR too.

Do you have a copy of the file you used?

 

It works with most any program. I personally use lightroom 5, which is already optimized for high dpi displays. Edit the photoshop file above with the lightroom exe. It only takes a few minutes.

 

Right ok cheers.

I don't have a "PreferExternalManifest" DWORD, am I OK to create it?

 

Absolutely.

 

I have implemented this change in the registry on Windows 7 x64 and everything looked normal until I rebooted. After rebooting I noticed the network/wifi and action center icons were missing from the system tray and I was unable to re-enable them, as the options were grayed out. As this was a visual-only issue I did not give it much attention. I then went on and tried to change network settings from the Control Panel, which failed whenever I tried to do anything wifi-related, like connecting to a new network.

The only way I was able to fix this issue was to delete the registry DWORD. In order to make sure this registry option was causing the issue I readded the registry DWORD, then rebooted and noticed that the problem reappeared. Removing the option and rebooting fixed the issue a 2nd time, confirming that in my case it was causing issues.

Has anyone had any similar experiences with this registry option?

 

This would fix the scaling issue but cause some weird Unicode display issue. Quicken, for example, is not usable.

 

Sadly this solution does not work in all cases. Example would be Photoshop Elements. You can modify the launcher and it will scale properly, but when you select the editor, it will show the un-scaled version. So you create a manifest file for the editor and then select the editor from the launcher, it will still show the un-scaled version. I ended up creating a shortcut for the editor and placing it in my start menu...

 

Dang, I need to fix it for Elements. Really strange how LR5 has no scaling issues but every other Adobe program can't seem to deal with it. Wish they would get on it and fix it already, High-DPI displays have already high main-stream laptops for over half a year and more and more are coming out still, don't get why developers still haven't shown any interest in addressing it especially when Mac OS X handles it so well.

 

Strange. For what it's worth, Quicken 2013 seems to scale perfectly out of the box without any manifest tweaking.