When I use Photoshop, my images become extremely pixelated. What can I do to fix this!?

Lysa.13 wrote: I have a Canon 5D Mark III and Photoshop CS6 so I shouldn't be having any problems, but when I edit photos in Photoshop, they become VERY pixelated to the point that at 400% there are just blocks in a grid. The pixels are all straight like a grid, what's wrong?

There most likely is nothing wrong the problem you having is more then likely the fact the your new to digital image processing and you do not understand what is going on.   Many thing in digital is not intuitive in fact your intuition is most likely the problem in this case.

Many thing are not going to be how you would envision them to be.    I'm quite sure you realize the is you image and then the is what you see on you display.  The only time you see the pixel on you display that are the same as the ones in you image is when you displaying you image a 100%.  At any other zoom you seeing as scaled image scaled up or down in pixel size and the scaling is done quickly for speed is important so the scaled image will not be of the best quality.  

Also your intuition often jumps to the obvious wrong conclusion. When you scale down in size thing will display smaller and seem sharper and when you scale up thing will display larger and seem softer.  You also jump to an obvious wrong conclusion.

The wrong conclusion most jump on has to with the number of pixels.  You double the size of a picture you double the number of pixels you half the size you cut the pixels in half.  That is wrong. That your problem here.  You do not understand what you asking Photoshop  to do when you ask it to display you image 400%  your not asking it come up quickly with 4x22MP 88mega pixels your asking for it to come up with 256Mega pixels.

Why is the number so big.  It easy to see with as deck of playing cards.  Let one card be your image  lay it down on the table

now let lay out one twice the size  lay two cards down side be side well that is only half the size we want lay two more cards be low those side be side yes  the the size we want a 200% zoom

Ok next size lay out 8 cards across by 8 cards down that 64 cards you need as second deck of cards. 300%

on to 400%  lay out 16 cards by 16 cards that is 256 cards that around 5 decks of cards. So for each pixel in you image Photoshop need to come up with 16by16 256.

The pixels are all straight like a grid, what's wrong?

In Photoshop Pixels are »squares« of color (or brightness) arranged in a orthogonal pattern, so what you are seeing is not wrong necessarily.

If you turn on View > Show > Pixel Grid do the lines contour the squares you see?

What are the pixel dimensions of your file (see Image > Image Size)?

Are they what they should be according to your camera manufacturer and the settings of the camera?

Do you shoot RAW, tif, jpg?