Participant

Question

the size is ridiculously small compared to what it should

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
January 31, 2018
3 replies
1409 views

Hi,

Why when I create a new file in Photoshop or import a new image, even if the zoom is 100%, the size is ridiculously small compared to what it should (the 500x500 seems like about 100x100)?

Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.

mglush

Community Expert

Hi!

I just noticed one thing in your image. Yes, you have a 500 x 500 pixel image, but your resolution is set to 300 pixels per inch. So....the image will show up on your screen small because of it being 100%.

rayek.elfin

Legend

PPI has nothing to do with the display size on the screen in Photoshop.

D Fosse

Community Expert

You have a high resolution display. Photoshop displays correctly, the other applications don't. In Photoshop at 100% zoom, one image pixel maps to exactly one screen pixel. You can measure this out against your display's actual pixel resolution to check.

Most other applications don't have the same strict requirements for accuracy, so they scale images to 200% to compensate. This makes everything display at the physical size people are used to from traditional displays. But it's not accurate.

Edit: Dave beat me.

rayek.elfin

Legend

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse wrote
Most other applications don't have the same strict requirements for accuracy, so they scale images to 200% to compensate. This makes everything display at the physical size people are used to from traditional displays. But it's not accurate.

Whether Photoshop's display behaviour in this is correct or not, is up for discussion depending on the job and user perspective.

The key solution that is missing is a view option similar to the pixel aspect ratio: when the designer must design for retina screens X0.5, x2,x3,x4, custom setting, etc. it would be very useful to have a similar view option that displays the pixel density of the design as most other applications (such as a browser) and how 1 pixel "behaves".

D Fosse

Community Expert

rayek.elfin wrote
Whether Photoshop's display behaviour in this is correct or not, is up for discussion

No, this is actually not up for discussion. 100% means one image pixel to one screen pixel. That is the only way to reproduce the file with absolute accuracy.

Anything else is scaling. So let's just call it that.

If we all had high resolution displays this issue wouldn't even exist. All this is about finding workarounds for displaying files on displays of very different densities. Likewise, the issue didn't exist five years ago when all displays had roughly the same density.

This is a display property, it is completely out of Photoshop's realm. A pixel is a pixel, it's just a data point. It has no size.

davescm

Community Expert

Are you using a screen with a high pixel density?

100% zoom is not a physical size, at 100% Photoshop maps 1 image pixel onto 1 screen pixel. So the smaller your screen pixels the smaller physical size of the image on the screen.

Dave

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