100% zoom is too small on screen (designers don't get high resolution displays)

[pmlink360]

Hello, I'm using photoshop CC on amacbook pro retina. I mainly use photoshop for web design and when I open a document that is 300x200 px, the 100% view is too small on screen. Any ideas, It was this way on PS cs6 also before I upgraded. I just tried to delete the prefs file and restarted PS and it did not change. I have also tried to change my screen resolution to "best for retina" and it is still the same.

Steve

[D Fosse]

As Dave said.

There's no need to drag the GPU into this. Just let it output at the monitor's native resolution and forget it. If you need to see things at half resolution, it's much better to let Photoshop display at 200%.

Funny: on my computer, Illustrator manages to show things the "right" size (following my GUI settings). Why can't Photoshop?

Ah, this is a very common misunderstanding. It's not that Illustrator "gets it right" and Photoshop doesn't.

It's because Illustrator is vector-based, and always displays according to physical print dimensions. It doesn't care about resolution; just size. Photoshop is the opposite. It's pixel-based, and print size is irrelevant to the application.

Note that 100% means different things in the two applications! In Illustrator it means "actual print size". In Photoshop it means one image pixel per one screen pixel, regardless of size.

[Eternal Warrior]

Ok. But that's essentially a wishlist feature. Photoshop isn't actually displaying your image wrong it's just not displaying at the same level as the desired ratio

[makemyday6789]

I think I found a fix on a different thread. It was probably also mentioned somewhere in this thread, but I don't have time to read pages and pages of ....Anyway, this worked for me. Hope it works for those of you who are having the same issues. Most of all, I hope this thread is marked fixed sometime soon.

[gunnarlinn]

makemyday6789 skrev:

I think I found a fix on a different thread. It was probably also mentioned somewhere in this thread, but I don't have time to read pages and pages of ....Anyway, this worked for me. Hope it works for those of you who are having the same issues. Most of all, I hope this thread is marked fixed sometime soon.

Great, exactly what I wished for. Will try it first thing tomorrow. Apparently someone at Adobe has gone beyond his/her authorities and implemented a solution for us non-professionals (by D Fosse's definition above). I'm thankful, but at the same time a bit sorry about being classified as someone who's not really worthy of using the Ultimately Fantastic Piece Of Software, despite having used it professionally – and having managed to make my clients happy – for twenty years. Well well.

[gunnarlinn]

Tried the suggested trick, but unfortunately it's still not right. I have to set the zoom level to 50% to get WISIWYG. Not much better than 200.

However, I was working with a screenshot, which is the only kind of file that displays correctly with the standard settings, if I'm not mistaking. That's probably why the image shows at twice its size at 100%.

My opinion is (still) that this has not been sufficiently thought through by Adobe.

[Eternal Warrior]

If you actually look at what makes a retina image retina you would know that they will look totally different on the web compared to photoshop.

Apple DOES upscale images *SORT OF* Read below to understand:

Try reading various articles like this one to understand.

https://www.mightybytes.com/blog/make-retina-images-website/

Essentially this is the big confusion > people think that a retina ready image is 300 PPI....BUT THAT's a lie!!!

A Retina ready image is atleast 2x or even 3x as many PPI that is then scaled down by code so that it crams loads more pixels into every inch.

In fact if you want a Retina ready Image you would be better at looking at your image resolution in pixels per CM and making that at least 300 PPCM

[Eternal Warrior]

ERGO look at your image at 200% if on a Retina display or 100% on a normal display and they should look the same.

[gunnarlinn]

Eternal Warrior skrev:

ERGO look at your image at 200% if on a Retina display or 100% on a normal display and they should look the same.

Provided that you've chosen a GUI magnification level that is exactly half of what your graphics card delivers, yes. Other levels require other percentages.

[Eternal Warrior]

Yup... but dang talking about Retina get's confusing

[majermatheus]

Hi guys,

I'm having the same "problem".

I opened photoshop, indesign and illustrator and compared the windows at 100% in each one (200x200px).

That's what I got.

[D Fosse]

majermatheus, this is fully explained in post #364, a little further up on the page.

Quote:

"...It's not that Illustrator "gets it right" and Photoshop doesn't.

It's because Illustrator is vector-based, and always displays according to physical print dimensions. It doesn't care about resolution; just size. Photoshop is the opposite. It's pixel-based, and print size is irrelevant to the application.

Note that 100% means different things in the two applications! In Illustrator it means "actual print size". In Photoshop it means one image pixel per one screen pixel, regardless of size"

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

...and just for kicks, I started to read from the beginning of this endless thread. It turns out that the whole "problem" was fully explained inside 20 posts or so. The rest of the thread, 360 or so posts by now, is just repetition, over and over and over again.

This one, post #20, from Noel Carboni, gave me an acute sense of déjà vu...

And two posts later, he went all in with a detailed and comprehensive rundown on every aspect of high resolution displays. Read it, everyone, please. And when you've read it, read it again, and again, until it's understood:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5601271#5601271

Case closed, you might think...

[Trevor.Dennis]

D Fosse wrote:

Case closed, you might think...

I bet we have all been to work meetings that went round and round in circles getting nowhere.  Dag's post #384 is now marked as correct, so fingers crossed, this thread might fade away.   I won't hold my breath, and frustrating as many of the comments have been, the thread has also had a few moments of smile inducing light relief, so not a total waste of time.  

[Nancy OShea]

Maybe someone should lock it.  It's 4 years old and not really going anywhere new.  Just the same old stuff

[gunnarlinn]

Nancy OShea skrev:

Maybe someone should lock it. It's 4 years old and not really going anywhere new. Just the same old stuff

Please close it. We still don't understand each other. Both ways.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Nancy OShea wrote:
Maybe someone should lock it. It's 4 years old and not really going anywhere new. Just the same old stuff 

If only 

Sheriff Root will close it if we ask nicely.

[D Fosse]

Yes, absolutely lock it.

Of course these posts will keep coming, but it's better to have them in manageable threads. Chop it up into edible parts, as it were, so that you can just refer posters back.

There's no way I'm going to ask anyone to read this in its entirety. They'd have to commit unspeakable atrocities to deserve such a punishment. I'm a reasonable guy.

[Eternal Warrior]

As Nancy OShea​, Trevor.Dennis and D Fosse​ are in agreement. I will lock this thread if I don't hear objections by 8PM GMT. This is going in continuous circles. If it MUST continue then I personally think it should either be a new thread or we should chop this one up.

Best,

EW

[Eternal Warrior]

That's not to not mention anyone else who said we should lock this... but this is now 10 pages and I can't list that many people who agree

[ijazr51683862]

I was having the same issue and couldn't find anything working from this thread till now but found something really helpful and got it solved quickly. So simple and clear:

here you go and explained everything in detail by Dan Antonielli:

Adobe App Scaling on High DPI Displays (FIX) | Dan Antonielli

Another guy posted a video tutorial to resolve the issue:

How To Make Adobe Software Display Larger On High Resolution Monitors - YouTube

hope it will help everyone.

Thanks,

[gunnarlinn]

ijazr51683862  skrev

I was having the same issue …

I'm happy for you, ijazr51683862.

However, this was not the same problem as the one I've been trying to discuss (with little success). I'm not sure I have the energy to take another shot at this, but maybe I should make one last effort, just to clarify that the links you presented are not related to the problem I, and some others, have experienced.

My situation has been that the entire Photoshop GUI has scaled correctly to my chosen resolution (from the 5k graphics card down to my selected 2560x1440) – with the exception of my open documents inside Photoshop; these are presented in my graphic card's native 5k resolution, bypassing the scaling that I've ordered in my monitor preferences, resulting in images exactly half the size of what I would expect when viewing 1:1. If the entire GUI would have been scaled this way (like in your case), it would at least have been logical. But for me, only the docs differ.

This is apparently perfectly correct to many users (and Adobe employees/developers), but to me it's annoying and puts obstacles in my workflow. However, I can live with it; it's far better than activating Photoshop's low-resolution mode – which corrects the display size of open files but also results in a badly downsampled GUI (however of the exact same size):

HR panel

LR panel

I don't expect anyone to solve – or even acknowledge – my problem; this last post of mine is entirely for the sake of supporting anyone who's stumbled onto this thread and can't find the answers to his/her actual problem, getting the impression that he or she has gotten everything wrong and really shouldn't be using Photoshop at all. You're not alone.