Participant

Question

Photos look pixelated when zoomed in at certain levels in Photoshop

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
July 1, 2017
4 replies
8622 views

I recently got the latest version of Photoshop and all photos I open in photoshop look grainy at a certain zoom level. When I save the picture, it's 100% fine but in the program itself (at certain zooming levels) it looks very pixelated. In the example ( http://imgur.com/a/YQoNz ) I have it zoomed at 25% and as you can see it looks fine. When I zoom into it more (it's on "fit on screen" on the second picture, 30,75%) it gets very pixelated. As you can see by the third picture, there's nothing wrong with my sizing or resolution. I've also tried changing the cache level, but to no avail. Can anyone please help?

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Bob_Hallam

Legend

Which Graphics card is being used? Have the drivers been updated?

Check your performance settings in PS preferences:

These should provide some guidance

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

michaelc77849426

Participant

Based on what I've read, photoshop does not require the use of a graphic card for basic editing of photos. In fact I've never used the graphic card in photoshop and never had any issues with this promblem before. I tried reinstalling P.S. and updating Windows 10, but neither helped. The zoom issue even shows up on Instagram. This is so aggervating, I've got a lot of photos to process and cannt even get started. Out of ideas. Maybe it's a P.S. bug. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know, thanks.

D Fosse

Community Expert

This is just the basic problem of resampling - fitting one number of image pixels into another number of screen pixels. Any resampling will soften and blur the data - but even numbers work best because there's no fractional resampling. The rest is up to the resampling algorithm used.

This function is performed by OpenGL code in the video card, when available. So yes, a video card may not be strictly required, but should improve the final result.

Here's a 6 x 6 pixel bitmap; zoomed in to 6400% so you see the individual pixels. Note what happens when it's resampled down to 5 x 5 pixels. This is in fact a perfect illustration of what happens on screen when an image is displayed at an odd zoom ratio:

Nexahs1138

Inspiring

I noticed this on my files after the last update, every second zoom creates a harsh pixelated version but then on the next zoom it's fine. I don't know if there's any way to change/fix this but it shouldn't cause you any problem when painting.

P.S. that's one b*tching Mega Ampharos.

michaelc77849426

Participant

I 've had the same type of issue since updating to Photoshop 2020, but rescently it has started showing on all zooms and also on all saved work. Any ideas, Thanks

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

Historically, there have always been certain “safe” zoom sizes, such as 25%, 50%, 100% (1:1), 200% etc. Notice how these are whole numbers and that they are evenly divisible into the “best” zoom size of 100%. These display issues are more prevalent with patterns that repeat, with a perfect example bing a 2x2 pixel chessboard.

Mylenium

Legend

Crooked zoom levels will always look stairstepped. That's a simple math problem - in order to interpolate or extrapolate at non-even factors, you have to duplicate or skip pixels and since PS does this in realtime and with GPU acceleration, it has to compromise in terms of quality. You simply have to weigh the extra processing power it would take for better antialaising and interpolation against the practicality of keeping things realtime.

Mylenium

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