Severe Text Blurring and Pixelation in Pixel (PX) Documents in Photoshop 2025/2026 (Recent Issue)

Your screen shot shows that magnification is 400% for a document that’s 720 x 300 px. That rendering looks normal, because 720 x 300 px is a small number of pixels and the view is set to 400% (pixels are four times 1:1 magnification).

When you say text is “perfectly clear and sharp” when the document is set up for cm, at what magnification is that? Because at 400%, it should look exactly the same regardless of inches/cm or ppi resolution…if the document is still 720 x 300 px.

The one way I can think of that cm should be sharper is if it was not in Photoshop, but in a vector-based application such as InDesign or Illustrator. In those applications, all type and vector objects are always rendered using all available pixels – the opposite of Photoshop. In Photoshop, it doesn't matter what cm or ppi resolution value are entered, the rendering of vector objects is always  hard-limited by the fixed pixel grid which is in this case is a mere 720 x 300 px (0.2 megapixels).

When I try it in Photoshop 27.7, it doesn’t matter whether I started a document from cm or px, if I set up a 720 x 300 px document it displays the same, at the same magnification, as shown in the demo below where I change the rulers and check both documents.

What is the pixel size of your document? How many pixels wide x high?

Again - there is no such thing as cm-document or pixel document. They are all pixel documents. The ppi number is a way to translate from pixels into a physical size, where a physical size is needed.

If you specify the document in cm, the reverse recalculation is done, using the assigned ppi number as the parameter. But the end result is a pixel size.

Here’s how the math works: 

3000 pixels at 300 pixels per inch = 10 inches, or 25.4 cm. That’s 3000/300.

3000 pixels at 1000 pixels per inch = 3 inches, or 7.62 cm. That’s 3000/1000.

But to Photoshop, this is exactly the same size! To Photoshop, this is just 3000 pixels, period. Photoshop basically has no concept of what a cm is, it has to recalculate from the pixels, using the ppi number.

You should get into the habit of always specifying documents in pixels, because that’s what Photoshop works with. It’s not “mainly” pixel-based, it’s entirely pixel-based, always.

Any Photoshop document is a pixel document. Photoshop works exclusively in pixels. There are vector tools, but they are rendered as pixels in the document.

The pixels per inch number (ppi) is irrelevant here. What is relevant, is the total number of pixels. That’s the real resolution.

Ppi is strictly a print parameter, it does not apply on screen. On screen you already have a pixel grid, which is the physical screen pixels. The document pixels just fall into that existing grid. On paper, however, there is no existing pixel grid, so one has to be invented. That’s the pixels per inch number, ppi. Pixels per inch means exactly what it says: how many inches to spread the document pixels over. It’s just metadata, not a document property. 

If you have a document that is, say, 500 pixels wide, it doesn’t matter whether the ppi number is 1, 72, 300, 10 000. That just affects the printed size. It’s still a low resolution document, and text will be pixelated.

For all of these reasons, Photoshop is not the right tool for working with text! Use a vector-based application like Illustrator or InDesign.