Why are linked images in Photoshop and Illustrator blurrier than in InDesign?

[Chris P. Bacon]

Left to right:

first: Illustrator, second: Photoshop, third: InDesign

The blurriest is the Photoshop linked image, it is noticeably blurred in full size compared to InDesign, and the Illustrator image is also a bit blurred.

I am using GPU pereformance and GPU preview in Illustrator and Photoshop, and in InDesign high quality display performance.

[Myra Ferguson]

What happens if you select each of the linked images in InDesign, right-click, and select Display Performance > High Quality Display? Do you still notice the blurring?

[Chris P. Bacon]

Hi Myra, the blurring is in Photoshop, not in InDesign.

[Myra Ferguson]

Oh sorry. I misread your question. The quality setting for imported Photoshop & Illustrator images in InDesign is a question I've gotten before.

[Earth Oliver]

are you viewing the image at 1:1 or are you zoomed in/out?

[Chris P. Bacon]

It's justified to available screen height, as you can see in the screenshot, they are the same size.

[Chris P. Bacon]

This is a 128 MB image.

[Earth Oliver]

in Ps, the only way to judge sharpness is at 1:1.

[davescm]

Photoshop sharpness can only be judged at 100% zoom (i.e. Ctrl+1) not another zoom level that matches an arbitary screen size in another application. Anything else you are only viewing a preview of the image not the actual image pixels.

Dave

[Chris P. Bacon]

But those conditions are the same in InDesign, isn't it? Yet in InDesign the image is sharp at the same scale.

[Chris P. Bacon]

Ctrl + 1 will yield a bigger "maximum" magnification  in Photoshop than in Illustrator and InDesign.

[D Fosse]

100% in Photoshop is not the same thing as in Illustrator or InDesign.

In Photoshop it means one image pixel represented by exactly one physical screen pixel.

In Illustrator/InDesign it's print size (at the specified screen resolution).

This is all different screen resampling algorithms, as long as you're not viewing 1:1 pixel.