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Participant
December 7, 2016
Question

Resized photos saving at incorrect size/resolution

  • December 7, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 487 views

My spouse has had this problem with her Photoshop since forever. Now we are sharing a computer and I can't stand it! The photos save in much poorer condition than they were in photoshop, and I have tried jpeg, png, and tiff. I have seen some other people asking what sound like similar questions but I don't think they are being understood by those reading. The problem seems to be that Photoshop thinks everything is half the size that it is. It may be a simple fix and a stupid question but that's why I'm asking for help! Let me use some screencaps to illustrate:

This is the image. It is 3390px wide.

But photoshop says I am viewing at 100%, and it is only pictured as being half that size (that little number of the screencap I'm making across the top says 1,694):

Thus, when I resize the image to my desired 540px, photoshop is showing the image as only 270px wide:

Considering all that, it's no surprise that a very large picture of good quality ends up saving and looking like this in finder, blurry/pixelated/generally sucky:

So. How the heck do I fix this? I've been resizing images on my own Photoshop at this exact size for ages and never had this issue and I can't stand this poor quality. Thank you for any assistance!!!

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1 reply

davescm
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 7, 2016

Are you using a hi res retina screen?

Photoshop, at 100% zoom, maps 1 image pixel to 1 screen pixel regardless of the screen. It does not scale at all.

With a high resolution screen (i.e. higher pixel density) the images will be physically smaller (in inches) on the screen  than on a lower resolution screen at 100%.

Other apps scale up the images so that they look the right physical dimensions on a retina screen - but of course that scaling can introduce the blurred pixelated look you refer to.

Photoshop does it right.

Just to check though - what is your actual screen size and resolution ?

You mention using a screen capture app to measure - what does that measure as the width of your screen. It may be reporting a lower number due to the scaling above.

Dave

Participant
December 8, 2016

Yes i have a 27" iMac with Retina.

I figured this was the issue, but then the question is: Do I size for the 540 dimensions required on the website, or do I save it as 1080 so that it looks right for me? Are most people seeing what I'm seeing or no?