Help me solve this resolution mystery

[torred]

I'm a long-time user of Photoshop (nearly 20 years!) but I've started encountering a problem only in the last year or so with resolution and exporting for web. I'm baffled!

So I'm trying to save some banners to go in an email marketing campaign for a client, and in Photoshop I've made the images 600 x 300px. But even when displayed at 100%, they show up within Photoshop at a much smaller size than they do when I view them elsewhere (looks more like 200px across).

When I export this image and open it in Mail, Preview or in a browser window, it is displaying at 600px as it should, but the resolution is very poor. It's as though Photoshop has sampled it down to 200px across and exported it at 600, meaning the pixelation is horrendous. It used to be that pixels were a reliable cross-platform measurement… what is going on?? Why does Photoshop not display 600px at 100% screen resolution?

This is not related to my monitor or retina, by the way, as I've tried it on multiple monitors and the result is exactly the same. 1080, 4K, monitor adjustments, etc, etc.

Here is an image of the NASA logo (300px) at 100% display in Photoshop and also at 'Actual size' in Preview. Why is Photoshop not displaying at 100%?

[D.A.R · Accepted solution]

Its sort of related to your monitor.

Find the Application in the Applications folder. Right click on the Application icon and select "Get Info"

Check the box that indicates "Open in Low resolution"

Now Photoshop will display files at the same resolution as Finder, Mail, Preview, and Safari

Hope that helps

[D Fosse]

Its sort of related to your monitor.

Actually not "sort of related", but entirely a property of the monitor.

Photoshop displays correctly, one image pixel to one screen pixel, the others compensate by scaling to 200%. So yes, they're pixelated.

[torred]

That worked! I spent over an hour today on a chat with Adobe and they couldn't solve it. The support's English was unfortunately so basic that I could hardly make it out. This person asked to share my screen and commandeer my computer, asking me to grant full access to my system. Um, no. "Just give me instructions," I said. They asked me to go into my library files and change folder names, etc, etc, and then, after almost an hour, I accidentally closed the chat window! Connection lost. It took 30 mins just to reach them to begin with and another 30 trying to reach them again, only I gave up the second time.

You solved it in 50 words. A million thanks.

[Test Screen Name]

It’s bettwr to accept that 100% means different things rather than cripple Photoshop by making it run at low resolution and lose the detail you paid for.

[torred]

This didn't used to be a problem? Never seen this happen until I got Adobe Cloud. It's pretty important that a web designer can see the exact version of what she's designing.

[Test Screen Name]

Yes. So that's why Photoshop is a different size. Because otherwise it isn't exact. This will only happen on Retina screens, of course, not sure why you dismissed that part of the explanation. Photoshop works this way, or I'd want my money back!