HELP–Horrible JPG images in CS2 but not in Windows Viewers!

S
Posted By
SteveFoobar
May 2, 2007
Views
333
Replies
3
Status
Closed
Help–I’m going crazy trying to figure out what’s going on in CS2 on my system.

When I view high quality jpg images of printed text brochures for example in Windows programs like the Windows Picture and Fax viewer or Paint for example, the image looks perfect–sharp and high resolution with perfectly readable text in the image.

When I import these same images into Photoshop CS2, the image looks horrible. The text is so jagged, it’s unreadable. Highlights in the original image and viewable within the Windows programs are gone in CS2 and there are other very subtle differences in image quality.

If I edit the image in CS2, then export it, once again the image looks perfect when viewed in other Windows programs.

What the heck is going on? I’ve tried every conceivable setting change, proof settings change and color profile change and nothing makes a difference after I hit the "Apply" button after making the settings changes.

Thanks!

Steve
Chicago, IL USA
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chrisjbirchall
May 2, 2007
Photoshop is an image editing application, not an image viewer.

the latter will apply adjustments to render an acceptable representation of the image regardless of the magnification ratio.

Photoshop does not.

If it did, you would end up editing "imaginary" pixels.

For that reason, critical edits should only be carried out whilst viewing the image at 100% (one image pixel per screen pixel).

Or if you must – use 50% or even 25%. All the "odd" magnification settings will cause the image to display with "jaggies" due to the fact you are attempting to display fractions of pixels per screen pixel and this is clearly impossible without some degree of on-the-fly interpolation.
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SteveFoobar
May 4, 2007
Thanks. This doesn’t make complete sense to me, but I guess I’ll have to accept it as true, since I did a test as you suggested and indeed, the jaggies went away if I used 100%, "View Actual Pixels" and it also looked much better when I used a zoom ratio of 100%, 50% or 25% instead of the odd percentage values I was using.

Thanks!

Steve
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
May 4, 2007
View actual pixels is the same as 100% zoom.

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