Thank you for those few sane words Michael!
I have been been working out a response for the last 20 posts but you said it all!
We can see what needs to be zoomed in on, in other words.
so all your effects and layers adjustments view correctly at odd zoom levels so you know how to adjust them huh?
ARE YOU PEOPLE ALL DUMB?!! 😛
HOW ABOUT GIVING THE USERS A TOGGLE BETWEEN "SMOOTH AND ACCURATE" AND "CRAPPY AND INACCURATE (DEFAULT)"
Thank you for those few sane words Michael!
that’s it john! as soon as i can (get you to buy me a plane ticket) i’m flying over there to give you a thump on the nose (then buy you a pint)!
Dave you are exactly right!
The first point for us all to agree on is that any odd size zoom out cannot be accurate, even with nearest neighbor!
* Any* display method for downsizing is just an approximation, including how CS3 does it now. That’s why a perfect circle can give artifacts when zooming out.
Using a better display method would not require "artificial" smoothing. It just looks better because it uses more information to determine the value of each pixel in the downsized image.
unrelated subject: i still can’t change my display name with these steps: Preferences -> Personal Information -> "Your Name" Change Text
Click the red "Set Preferences" button at the bottom No change?
Regards,
LTG
I agree that I would like to have a "bicubic resampling for odd zoom percentages" option. Or some less wordy version…whatever. If I can take a 1000 pixel wide image, flatten it and resize it to 637 pixels using bicubic resampling, why couldn’t PS just apply the same processing to my 1000 pixel image when viewed at 63.7% to give me a nice smooth looking onscreen preview? Yes there would be a performance hit to do all that processing, but it would be nice to have the option.
If even then it needs to be driven home that 100% gives the most accurate accurate accurate view, so be it…I can incorporate that into my workflow but I would love a bicubic resampled onscreen preview at any viewing percentage.
Note: I seem to recall older version of Photoshop — maybe as far back as PS4 — showing a smooth preview at any percentage below 100%, and that I started seeing the jagged appearance when PS5 (or something) came out.
Test.
EDIT: yes, it still works.
Rob
The reason is simple. If Adobe did as you asked, you then did you work on the image thrilled with how it looked in Photoshop you saved the image and then opened in say InDesign or some other photo editor, etc. and it didn’t look like it did in Photoshop all of you would come bitching and complaining about that. Adobe is not going to do anything that is going allow such a scenario to come about. Adobe is going to show you the image as it actually looks barring any hardware limitations. The fact that monitors and/or video cards can’t show half pixels which is why the odd zooms look so bad is out of the control of Adobe. Doing as you asked is asking Adobe to fake the way your image looks. It isn’t going to happen even with it as an option. Adobe would never hear the end of it from all of the morons that can’t grasp the facts. Sort of like the request for faking the odd zooms to begin with.
Robert
If Adobe did as you asked, you then did you work on the image thrilled with how it looked in Photoshop you saved the image and
then opened in say InDesign or some other photo editor, etc. and it didn’t look like it did in Photoshop all of you would come bitching and complaining about that. Adobe is not going to do anything that is going allow such a
scenario to come about.
I was just about to say the same thing. Robert said it well.
guys. read again. THE IMAGE IS SCREWED WHEN VIEWED AT NON-100% ANYWAY. you can’t make any decisions based on that. what to edit. what to save. nothing. there’s nothing wrong with giving the option to view the image in a zoomed out manner to get an approximation of what the full image would look like.
they’d be BETTER off and LESS likely to save a screwed up work if there was a reasonable approximation of what an image looked like at 100% when not viewed at 100%.
so you’re now changing your arguments. is it so you know what to go back and edit? no. becuase ANYTHING VIEWED AT A NON-100% ZOOM LEVEL IS INACURATE! is it to protect you from saving when the image isn’t really ready to be saved? no. becuase ANYTHING VIEWED AT A NON-100% ZOOM LEVEL IS INACURATE!
jeez.
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http://milbut.org/smilies/headWall.gif>
Anything viewed at a non-100% zoom level is inaccurate. Correct. Should a pixel editor, at a non-100% zoom level, smooth things over to make them look good, so you might pass on viewing at 100%, falsely thinking the image is fine? Or should it use something similar to pixels from the image that might clue you in to a need to zoom to 100% to see if editing is needed? I vote for the latter, which Photoshop delivers.
At 50% zoom, each displayed pixel represents 4 original pixels. Averaging them will make the image look nicer, even if there are some problems. Not averaging them means, essentially, that one of the four will be displayed, which may cause the image to look jarring (e.g., jaggies, heavier or thinner lines, picking up noise pixels), which prompts the user to zoom in and see if anything’s wrong.
Even at "odd" zoom levels, meaning non-integral multiples or fractions of 100%, nearest neighbor gives you the closest approximation to a pixel-level view, since it preserves at least some pixels, which is the most useful display for a pixel editing program for the reasons set forth above.
Should a pixel editor, at a non-100% zoom level, smooth things over to make them look good, so you might pass on viewing at 100%, falsely thinking the image is fine?
again, what if you want an overall view of your image, not just a 2"x4" secion of it? shouldn’t you have that option via a toggle?
Or should it use something similar to pixels from the image that might clue you in to a need to zoom to 100% to see if editing is needed? I vote for the latter, which Photoshop delivers.
it uses NOTHING similar to the image! it’s nearest neighbor guesses are way off. I’d rather see the title bar go red as an indicator and see a closer representation of what the image is supposed to look like.
so that’s 3 excuses now. 1) it’s so you know what to go back and edit. no. becuase ANYTHING VIEWED AT A NON-100% ZOOM LEVEL IS INACURATE! 2) it’s to protect you from saving when the image isn’t really ready to be saved? no. becuase ANYTHING VIEWED AT A NON-100% ZOOM LEVEL IS INACURATE! 3) it should show you crap because then you know you need to go back and look at 100%. NO! because maybe you produced crap to begin with! 🙂
I hear what you’re saying mike, and it’s the closest to a reasonable explination in this thread, but wouldn’t it be nice to allow the USER to choose what they see?
Dave, for the few of us that understand that images need to be viewed at 100% could probably use a "view nice" button. but for everyone else that does not understand it would cause more problems.
I don’t have a problem with the way Photoshop works now I look at my full image and have a good Idea what its going to look like, I zoom in and view at 100% and fix any flaws.
And if you are producing crap a "view nice" button won’t help anyway.
And if you are producing crap a "view nice" button won’t help anyway.
some of us can’t help it! 😛
but for everyone else that does not understand it would cause more problems.
But this topic was started by someone who is confused by the "crap" display at odd zoom percentages. So someone’s going to be confused either way. Perhaps more people are confused by the current jagged appearance than would be by an "inaccurate" smooth preview, and furthermore I wouldn’t consider it to be an inaccurate preview anyway.
I stand by my argument that PS could do on-the-fly bicubic resampling. To revisit my previous example: if I have a 1000 pixel wide image and I resize it to 666 pixels wide using Image Size with bicubic resampling, I’m seeing a nice clean smooth accurate image, am I not? Why couldn’t PS apply the same resampling when I’m simply viewing my 1000 pixel wide image at 66% zoom? What is inaccurate about that?
Perhaps more people are confused by the current jagged appearance than would be by an "inaccurate" smooth preview, and furthermore I wouldn’t consider it to be an inaccurate preview anyway.
bingo!
This is a point that may be causing confusion, this IS NOT TRUE:
nearest neighbor gives you the closest approximation to a pixel-level view, since it preserves at least some pixels, which is the most useful display for a pixel editing program for the reasons above.
The way CS3 does it now (nearest neighbor) is not the most accurate way.
Nearest neighbor is like using a blunt knife. Say one zoomed out pixel is representing 4 "regular" pixels. NN just picks one of the four to use. Better algorithms take into account all 4 pixels and consider the proper weighting of each and using fractional distance measurements.
Just because it’s "pretty" does not mean it’s less accurate, in fact it’s more accurate.
What about aliased pixels? If you zoomed out, what used to be hard-edged would show as soft-edged anti-aliased pixels if Adobe tried to compensate to give "nice views". This would be dead wrong. There’s nothing really wrong about zooming in at 100% so that each pixel on your monitor corresponds to a pixel in your document. It is as accurate as you will get, and wanting to have anything different that would give you a "fake" image for the sake of looking pretty at all zoom levels is not something a professional would stand for.
This would be dead wrong.
it’s dead wrong now peter.
for the sake of looking pretty
it’s not "for the sake of looking pretty". it’s for the sake of getting an accurate view of what the image will look like. why would a professional stand for a representation that’s totally borked?!!
according to the logic being presented here against, the screen should go black when not viewed at 100%.
Dave, sleep on it, re-read the whole thread and then try and see that Photoshop is about image editing and not nice views.
Sorry, you are still on the wrong side of the fence.
Trust me!
And no one would point out how pissed every one working on large files would be if bicubic or another algorithm was used and there was a longer lag when changing zoom levels. People complain that the interface is slow enough as it is…..I’d rather cope with having to check the occasional thing than have to wait severa lseconds every time I change the zoom level
BRETT
Hi Brett,
I can tell you this: There is freely available code that does this faster than you can blink using only the CPU (no hardware acceleration).
IIRC Intel actually gives out sample code for a good bicubic algortihm with a built benchmark timer. On a good but not great system it takes a very small fraction of second for resolutions around 1920×1080.
Remember this would be just a final part of the pipeline, not something that would have a cumulative effect if you work with 30 layers at once.
Of course if this ever happened it could be an option so the point would be moot (or mute as someone I know would say).
That is a small image. Try a 20MB file that with channels, layers, etc. is a couple of hundred MB’s in memory and see how well it does. Not to mention you are no longer working on the real image, but a fake simulated one. Get over it people what you are asking for isn’t going to happen a the vast majority of us are quite pleased about it.
I would also like someone to show me a photo editor that does fake the display?
Robert
And bear in mind that the image being edited is stored in a scratch file, with layers, filter layers, etc., in tiles designed for quick display, rather than smooth appearance.
all that’s great, but a toggle to a decent rendering would be nice.
Every once in a while I’ll open up a jpeg in the windows picture/fax viewer. It automatically sizes to the screen height and anti-aliases everything. Sometimes, even though the image will fit within the height of my screen, it changes the size ever so slightly (like literally by one pixel, if even that.) and the image takes on a bit of fuzziness as the whole thing gets anti-aliased. I notice that something is wrong with the image and so I click on the "view actual size" button on the bottom and the image doesn’t seem to change in size, but the pixels snap into sharpness as the image displays the pixels at an actual 1 for 1 ratio. I don’t know why the windows viewer does this, but it’s annoying as hell when seemingly the image size is not changed on screen, but the view is compensated with some kind of fuzzy anti-aliasing across the whole thing, and I KNOW that it’s wrong and not what the image is supposed to look like. I don’t want to see a "fake" image like this in photoshop, ever. If ever I’m making critical adjustments I want to see every darned pixel exactly as it is when I make the change. Having a fake view that looks pretty will just mean even more questions from amateurs wondering why their display can’t show them half-pixels accurately, and why what they see at 65.3% isn’t what they get on print or on the web at 100%. At least this way, it is obvious that Photoshop will only show an accurate representation at 100% and doesn’t try to fool you with a fake representation at odd zoom levels.
btw, the way Photoshop is now, even if you think the view is "dead wrong", the point is it is showing you as accurate a representation as it can give given the pixels on your monitor, and you KNOW that it’s wrong. It would be far more harmful to a user (especially every new user of photoshop) to have them working on pixels that look right but are actually showing a wrong representation. The first time I picked up Photoshop, I didn’t even need to read a manual or go to a forum to know that I wasn’t seeing what I was working on properly at odd zoom percentages (as did the original poster). I was able to instinctively deduce that 100% view was the most correct view, and that 50% also looked good, probably because it was an even division of my image. It actually helps because it forces one to work in the only way that is proper and accurate. Taking that away wouldn’t be helping any new user. They would get used to working on inaccurate representations and be constantly frustrated when things don’t end up looking right on the web or in print, then they go to 100% view and wonder why that view is the only one showing them what they are actually seeing.
Having it as an option that someone would have to learn of and go into a preference to toggle on would be a little easier to stomach, but I personally would still feel uncomfortable about making changes to pixels if I knew that my image view was fooling me about what was actually happening to the pixels.
Keep Photoshop real.
You wouldn’t tune a guitar by playing it at the bottom of a barrel of treacle!
