Actual size in Photoshop 2021 is half size in Mac's Preview program

[GungFu]

Hello, I just gotten a new 16 inch Regina MacBook Pro and have installed the 2021 Photoshop on it. I am used to work on a non-Regina Mid-2012 15.4" screen. To my surprise a picture file which normally fits my whole screen have now reduced the view in Photoshop to half it's size, so I have to zoom it in to 200% to have the "normal view/size" that I am used to. Further more the same picture file appears the normal size I am used to in acutal 100% size in my MacBook's preview program - so it is only in Photoshop the size appear smaller.... 

I would have understood that it was the resolution of the new Regina screen that made the picture file smaller, but then it should also appear the same size in the preview program ?

Any way of making the working view to what I am used to ? I tried to find the UI function, but it seems it is no longer in ther prefernces => Interface in the 2021 Photoshop program...

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

Consumer-oriented image viewers and web browsers scale the image up to 200% when they detect a high density screen. This is the standard workaround to ensure images display at the same physical screen size regardless of screen technology.

Photoshop can't do that, it has to display accurately. 100% in Photoshop has nothing to do with size. It means one image pixel is represented by exactly one screen pixel, and that's what Photoshop does.

To mimic the behavior of those other viewers, set Photoshop to View > 200%.

[defaultkzpb72lo6gwe]

I have the same issue. Viewing at 200% still gives me blurry text even when anti-aliased. I just got a new 24" and my 2015 27" doesn't have this issue.  I wish there were a better setting than to view at 200%. It's just not giving me what the browser is giving me. 

[Michael Bullo]

Is your problem only related to text? Do your graphics look OK?

[D Fosse]

To expand Michael's point:

Photoshop is a pixel-based raster image editor. Text will always be rendered on screen as pixels, at the base document resolution.

This is very different from live text in a web browser, which is vector data that can be scaled up indefinitely and still be rendered at full screen resolution.

In other words, you cannot compare those two. What you can compare is handling of images. For images, view > 200% in Photoshop will be identical to a web browser.

Generally, Photoshop is the wrong tool for text. It will always be pixels.

[defaultkzpb72lo6gwe]

I get this pixel-based response. I've read it over and over in many forums.
The retina display is what is changing the way I view my files. As I said,
I used an older iMac in which Photoshop displays my text and graphics just
fine at 100%. So this change just has me feeling frustrated that I can't do
things the way I've always done them. The 200% view doesn't fix things. It
does appear to be the text that is the issue and not the graphics. I'll
just have to learn to live with designing with blurry graphics I guess. I
do a lot of graphic manipulation where illustrator won't work for me.
Thanks for the feedback!

[D Fosse]

Photoshop is a very bad tool for working with text under any circumstances! Photoshop will always treat text as pixels, and rasterize to the base document resolution (except through some elaborate workarounds involving PDF). Anything you save out from Photoshop will be pixels. This is why it looks bad when you scale it to 200%.

Text should ideally be made natively in your website builder and put on top of the image. Live text is vector and can be scaled up indefinitely, and still render on screen at full screen resolution.

Alternatively, make it in Illustrator or another vector application, and save out to a vector format like SVG.

[Lumigraphics]

Scaling BY DEFAULT is 200% on most Retina displays, but not all, and its user-adjustable.

My 2015 15" MacBook Pro has a native resolution of 2880x1800 pixels and can scale to 1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1440x900, 1280x800, or 1024x640.

Photoshop will always display using the native 2880x1800, so at 1440x900 (default), you set images at 200% in Photoshop.

Blurry text is a different issue, text is normally rendered with anti-aliasing so it SHOULD look a bit fuzzy. Remember that its normally not viewed at 100% outside of an image editor. When printed, Photoshop sends the fonts to the printer as outlines unless you have rasterized the type layer, so printing is sharp.

[forma]

Hi, I had this same problem, but didn't like the 200% view solution they give here.
Don't know if it works on all macbooks, but on my M1 macbook using Big Sur if you go to Applications > Adobe Photoshop > Get Info (Cmd+i) there's a checkbox where it says "Open in Low Resolution". That did it for me.