Fixing Tiny Font and Icons in Image Editors

If you install a Windows system with a small but very high resolution monitor (e.g. 4K or 8K) you can let Windows choose to apply a scaling so that text and icons stay a reasonable size, or adjust the scaling yourself using

    Right Click on Desktop
    Select Display Settings
    Adjust [Scale and Layout]

But some applications STILL show some text and Icons too small.
The problem is usually that applications tells Windows that it is 'DPIAware' and should run without re-scaling anything.
This enables images etc. to use the full resolution, but also expects the App to adjust it's fonts and icons to match the new scaling instead of using the Windows settings. Most Apps do most of these, but miss some fonts and some or all icons.

Known offenders as of May 2019 (do email me others that this tool fixes):-

    GIMP 2

Freeware Image processing tool - all text & icons are too small.
The executable is usually at c:\Program Files\GIMP 2\bin\gimp-2.10.exe

Paintshop Pro 2019

Commercial Corel Image processing tool - some icons are rescaled but some of the legends over setting items can be unreadably small.

Unless you are in love with the more detailed images you can simply turn off this rescaling by changing an entry in the Windows 'Manifest' for the App, usually to be found tacked onto the end of the executable file. If you have access to a binary editor (one that leaves unchanged blanks, EOF markers and end-line sequences) look for something like (ignoring letter case)

    <dpiAware>true</dpiAware>

and change 'true' to 'fals' (the missing 'e' avoids problematically changing of the file length, and works fine.)

If you would rather use a small App to make the change then you can download it from this site at
    http://www.moorhen.me.uk/dpiaware/dpiaware.exe.
If you want to check the download it's size is 139,264 bytes.
Download this anywhere you like but where you can easily find again.
Programmers can build your own version based on the main source code at
    http://www.moorhen.me.uk/dpiaware/dpiaware.c

To use the utility:-

    Find the start icon for the App
    Right click on it
    Select Properties
    Write down (or select and Copy) the Target file name.
    Cancel

Press the Windows key + 'R' to start Widows Run dialog and run the file you downloaded.
You have to acknowledge [Yes] to User Account Control (so it can access files in \Program Files)
After a few seconds (to give you time to realise that there is help info on the screen) select the Target file (or just paste your clipboard).
If the program finds the keywords in the Manifest it will ask you what to do:-
     To turn OFF DPIAware (what you want initially) answer [No]
     To turn it back on if you don't like the result select [Yes]
Hopefully it will announced success - you can try the App again immediately and expect to see the change.

Otherwise, there are a variety of error messages that I hope make sense.
If it is a help you may want to adjust the Windows scaling to better match your expectations.

VUTRAX PCB CAD (Printed circuit board design by the same author) doesn't use this mechanism.
If you have a problem read the documentation for environment variable VTXSCALE which provides DPIAware On/Off & individual scaling for fonts & icons.