CS5 "Print Size" view soft?

Not sure, might be my first post? Anyway, did some searching, came up blank. I'm using CS5 PS and have noticed an issue where if I choose to display my image at "Print Size", it instantly becomes soft when it finishes resizing. If I bump up or down on the view percentage, even by 1%, or choose a different view preset (like "Fit"), it immediately sharpens back up.

I thought maybe I was crazy but I demo'd it a friend who is a long term PS user, though not to CS5 yet, and he also saw it.

A CS5 issue? Monitor issue perhaps? I did find one similar complaint about this type of behavior, but it was in Bridge. Just in case I applied the fix to that issue to see if somehow it would help in PS and it had no affect (can’t recall right now, something about generating monitored sized preview or something and then clearing the cache).

Ideas?

Welcome to posting!

You should view images at 25, 50, or 100% if you want to see them displayed properly. The reason is too long to type with one hand while i'm eating an apple!

Like Tim says -- you don't say how "Print Size" is defined, but PS is optimized to show sharpening at given resolutions. The only real use for showing at a "print size" is to view overall image qualities, but sharpness is not one of them.

Also, your "print size" will be defined by your image ppi settings, which for Canon cameras is pre-set to 72 ppi, which for an out-of-camera image will be huge and be enlarged beyond the native resolution of your monitor. So, before a realistice print size view, make sure your dimensions and ppi are correct -- for insance, figure out a ppi figure for an 8x12 image and enter that into your image settings so that when you view Print Size it will be approximately that size.

Thanks guys. I wasn't aware there was any restrictions in what percentage was acceptable to view images at in PS. I might have to experiment with that, I never saw correlation with specific percentages being the ticket to sharpness over whatever PS was giving me for "print size". So what you guys are saying is if I don’t view my images in PS at 25, 50, or 100%, any sharpening I’ve applied goes away for the view? I usually just hit the “print size” button during my workflow to see how I like how things are progressing, sort of like a quick snap – lean back – admire (or loathe I suppose) kind of thing.

I do understand the correlation of print size views and ppi. I normally come from ACR at 240, or maybe 300 (40d here) and then crop as desired using no specific ppi, just dimensions (eg 8x10).

I usually end up with something in the 240 range (8x10) I think? I’d have to look from home to be sure.

The ppi is irrelevant. Have a look at the DPI and printing FAQ threads.

The sharpeness thing is about mapping pixels in the image to pixels on the screen.

tim wrote in post #10416087
The ppi is irrelevant. Have a look at the DPI and printing FAQ threads.

The sharpeness thing is about mapping pixels in the image to pixels on the screen.

I wasn't trying to give bad advice about using ppi, but when you choose to view a pic at Print Size it will use your pixel dimensions at the internal ppi unless you specifically set a document size (in inches/mm/whatever) -- either way will work but you'll need to do one or the other or PS will use the Canon 72 ppi and you'll get a huge image.

Wasn't talking about your post Tony, just what Doug said about the ppi of images straight out of ACR. The ppi does matter when printing, but not the way that I think Doug understands it.

Nope, I'm onboard with the understanding of ppi and what Tony was saying. I was just letting him know that I don't use 72 ppi by default so when I click "print size", it doesn't zoom out beyond my monitor border. I just did one for grins and it's 54x36" (3888/72 for me on the 40d).

Back to the original question though, so I'm home and I'm looking at what I've got. I open an image, adjust, crop, apply some sharpening and it's sharp, let's say viewing at 50%. Now I click "print size" to see the 8x10 representation in PS and it goes soft. Okay I hear what you are saying about the 25, 50, 100% issue, but that doesn't explain what I'm seeing. The "print size" button on my 8x10 sets the zoom to 24%, if then click "fit" it zooms all of 12% to 36% and it looks sharp again. Not fitting neatly into the three choices above of 25, 50, 100. I can also manually change that zoom of 24% to 23 or even 27%, whatever I want, and it sharpens backup (of course up to a certain zoom, then we're pixel peeping). If I then click "print size" again, it resizes to 24% zoom and goes soft.

Now can I say that what I'm seeing at 23, or 36% is as sharp as if I viewed at 25 or 50%, I can't say, maybe limitations on my eyes or monitor, but they look acceptable to me, although armed with what I learned here, I think I can see the difference, at least at larger percentages. What I can say though is that no matter what the zoom level is on the "print size" be it 24% for an 8x10, or 33.4% for 16.2x10.8, it is soft enough to be VERY obvious. It doesn't seem to be tied to the viewing percentage but more a result of clicking the button, as weird as that sounds (and hence why I'm here).

It's something I don't recall from CS4, or Elements before that, but CS5 was a bare bones install for me, new PC, 64bit OS etc, a clean slate, so I've been really studying everything (same monitor though).

Well, that's interesting, Doug. I guess they use a different algorythm for "Print Size", but I sure don't know for sure. You might want to visit the Adobe User Forums and see if anyone in the PS section has any insight.

Just so you know, though, Lightroom has the same conditions, although LR3 has improved them. But in LR the only reliable way of viewing sharpness of a Raw preview has been at 100%. This is understandable when dealing with Raw files, but Photoshop needs to be more "real world" since you are preparing things for print and such.

This wil be my first attempt at including some attachments, so bear with me if I screw it up.

Attached will be two snips from PS. Same photo, not much PP except some auto levels and sharpening, just using as an example. The tone is even a little off, might be a color space issue with the snippit tool?

Anyway, one is a snip from the "print size" display, which happened to be 30%. The other I manually zoomed up to 34%. Hopefully it shows what I'm seeing. For me it's most evident in the fur, such as along his fore leg/elbow area, the horn, and face.

EDIT
Shoot I just noticed the scale didn't reset properly on the 34% zoomed image, it's still the same 16x10-ish size, the scale is wrong. Thats actually another issue I've seen. I notice the scale/ruler doesn't keep in proper porportion until you move the image around with the hand or something, then the ruler snaps back into place, is that normal?

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"Print size" size depends on two things: The ppi of the image (set in the "Image Size") and the resolution of the monitor (which you should set correctly in the prefs.)

(This is PSCS4 on my Powerbook G4

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Rene, thanks for the tip. I recall looking around in there, but not sure what those settings are set to, I'll check when I get home. I did buy a “higher” end video card (ATI 5770 1GB) that was on the Adobe "tested with" list for CS5, it definitely can do OpenGL.

Rene

Okay, OpenGL stuff is all on, my video card was already detected and setup. My screen resolution was set to 72. I recall some conflicting info I read on that about screen resolution should always be 72 (old Mac display resolutions), so I think I've always ignored that.

I'm glad you mentioned that should be set accordingly, because as I found out 72 is off for my display. My next question of course was going to be how to I figure it out, but I googled and found it. At first I used "resolution width"/"actual physical width". That gave me a number, though didn't seem to affect my issue in the thread, so looked on. I found this article, which I hope isn't a repost, but was informative for me.

http://www.digitalmast​ery.com …zineArticles/ps​user51.pdf

I used his method and got pretty darn close to my first calculation. So although my screen resolution is right now, I still think that darn "print size" button might have some funky algorithms in use. I'll just learn to not analyze sharpness at print size, and stick to the 25, 50, 100% suggestions.

Thanks everyone.