confused over transform scale

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
January 25, 2026
4 replies
61 views

Hello, I am confused over something regarding tranform-scale... I have a psd with miltiple layers that is 33" wide... When I select everything, and scale it down to about 6", things get very pixelated. I would expect that to happen when scaling things way up, but not sure why it's happening when I scale way down? This was a design in illustrator origanally, but when I try to scall down in illustrator, strokes etc get moved on me...

Thanks for any advice/explanation...

macOS

E

ExUSA

Legend

Photoshop operates with pixels and NOT inch scales. Illustrator is a vector based app and does use inches with dimensioning. Scaling in Illustrator is generally lossless but yes you may see pixilation in Photoshop. If you group your elements in Illustrator, you should be able to scale the group just fine.

Ares Hovhannesyan

Community Expert

What type of layers you have?

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Do you see the pixelation as you’re doing the transformation (the transform controls are still active), or after the transformation is applied (the transform controls are no longer active)? Photoshops shows only a low-resolution proxy while transforming, which I think is for performance reasons, but after you apply the transformation the selected layers are re-rendered at the scaled pixel width and height and should look normally sharp again.

What is the view magnification (for example, 100% or 400%) when you see the pixelation?

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

Please supply a screenshot of the transform controls, particularly the interpolation method.

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