Questions about zoom [photoshop 2024]

[Gabriel Retek]

After zooming to 193.78%, the image becomes pixelated. Is there a setting that will allow me to zoom in a little more without pixelating my image? I work with some line art and sometimes I need to zoom in a lot. Working with a larger resolution is not a solution for me, because I'm working on a 5000x5000 file. Ty!

[Bojan Živković]

You can use Illustrator for that purpose. Illustrator allows you to zoom in significantly without pixelation, thanks to its vector-based nature. Assuming you are zooming in on vector-based content.

[jay fresno]

Photoshop is pixel based. Therefore, when you zoom past a certain point and you'll get pixelation. No way to prevent that. Even vector line art will look pixelized when using Photoshop to zoom in.

[D Fosse]

That's a very odd zoom ratio, just below 200%, which involves just enough subpixel screen resampling to produce artifacts. If you go up to 200%, you get one image pixel represented by exactly four physical screen pixels. Better yet, if you really want to see the image accurately, 100% which is 1:1.

Pixels are pixels. You can't divide a pixel. Zoom in enough and you see them

But yes, you should probably do this as vector art in a vector application.

[Lumigraphics]

Just to add on, EVERYTHING is Photoshop is pixelated, all of the time. You normally just don't see it.

Pixel-based apps give you granular control that is impossible in a vector-based app like Illustrator, while vector-based apps give you objects that are difficult or impossible to edit and output similarly in Photoshop. They really are not all that much alike.

[Conrad_C]

With a pixel editor such as Photoshop, there is no resolution that will avoid what you’re seeing. The reason is this:

In Photoshop and practically all other photo editors, 100% magnification means one display pixel shows one image pixel. 200% means four display pixels show one image pixels (two pixels wide, two pixels tall). So any time you magnify above 100%, it has to start using more than one display pixel to show each image pixel.

It does not matter if your document is 10 x 10 pixels or 1,000,000 by 1,000,000 pixels…if you magnify above 100% you cannot get around it having to use more than one display pixel to show each image pixel. This is not a Photoshop thing, it is math so it will happen in practically every photo editor you try from any company. The pixelation is simply tellling the truth: Your document has x number of pixels and there is not any more detail than that. Because pixel-based images have a fixed width and height in pixels. 

This works differently in vector-based applications such as Adobe Illustrator. In those, vector graphics/line art/type are always rendered at the full resolution of the display or printer. So when you zoom into 200%, it re-renders the vector graphic to fill all available display pixels, so it never pixelates and always displays perfectly smooth.

Now, you might be asking, does this mean the 5000 x 5000 image will pixelate on output? That depends on the final physical output size you specify. For example, if you print the image 5 inches wide on paper, then the 5000 pixels will be divided across the 5 inches, and 5000 / 5 = 1000 ppi. Of course 1000 ppi will appear perfectly sharp at that print size, with no visible pixels. Using the same formula, if printed 10 inches wide, the image will be 500 ppi.

In fact the math tells you that the 5000 pixels long image will not fall below 300 ppi unless you display it at more than 16.66 inches long, so the pixelation on magnification will not affect final viewing on print or screen unless you are going to show it at a very large size.

So the only reason it looks pixelated is, you zoomed in using a pixel-editing application.