Detail changes with zoom

[gaseavey]

Does anyone know why when you change the viewing zoom amount of an image with fine detail such as the rigging of a ship, the lines (ropes), change from continuous to segmented (like dashes) and back to continuous again as you proceed with the zoom.

[tomlaronge]

Gary,

Can you please post a couple of examples so we can try to be accurate?

Gary, do you se this on the monitor or on the print or on both?

Tom

[gaseavey]

I was going to attach an example but when I save it for web, a smaller size I don't see the effect. I have not printed one yet but I noticed it on my laptop screen. I also observed the same effect with other photo editing software.

[TonyW]

Gary: I think what you're seeing is the simplification that Elements uses when it caches the different sized thumbnails it needs to fit the image on the screen at different zoom levels. The only reliable way to see WYSIWYG is to look at the image at 100% - which is why you should always sharpen at 100%. You won't see it when you print or save at a size to post on the web. You'll see the same effect on text - it can look ragged on the screen at certain zoom levels but the raggedness disappears when you print.

Tony

[gaseavey]

Tony

I believe that is it.
I printed it and the lines are continuous.
When viewed at 100% it is continuous.
It doesn't show the discontinuity at all Zoom sizes it changes as I change from size to size.

Thanks for your explanation.

[TonyW]

Gary: I'm not completely sure how it works but in Preferences under Memory and Image cache there's an item called Cache Levels - the number there is the number of zoom level thumbnails that Elements stores in RAM. How it decides which zoom levels I'm not sure but I suspect that anything in between it interpolates and that's when you get the jaggies. I also think that when it runs short on RAM it cuts down on the number of zoom level thumbnails - at least my empirical observation is that my laptop which is low on RAM compared to my desktop seems to get the jaggies more often :)

Tony

[jlwilm]

I think this has as much to do with the fact that the screen resolution is 72 dpi. If your image is above this threshold, the monotir is showing you its best shot at resolving all of the details.

When I first started playing in Elements lane, I was dismayed to see one of my shots with the rigging lines demonstrating all of these jagged edges. I printed one at 8x10 and no problem.

The problem is accentuated when you have a straight edge on a diagonal (like rigging lines) and even more so when the edge is a fine line.

As in for sharpening, if you want to be sure, you must view the image at 100%.

[debbiel]

This same thing happens in digital scrapbooking with background textures. If you look at some at less than 100%, they look really ragged. At 100%, everything is as it should be.:confused:

[TonyW]

It's quite strange how it works. I just drew a diagonal 2 pixel line on a 300 ppi canvas and it looks fine at 100% and 50% but terrible at 52%. Made me realise that using my mouse scroll wheel to zoom isn't a good idea as it gives odd zoom numbers. Looks a lot better if I stuck with Ctrl-Spacebar and click because that seems to hit the good numbers like 33.3%, 50%, 66.7% and 100%.

Interesting :)

Tony

[jlwilm]

Tony,

Yeah, I tend to use the scroll wheel all/most of the time - it just works right, except for the uneven zoom level - hadn't noticed that before. The uneven zoom also happens in a couple of other places, so sometimes you can't trust what your screen is telling you!

Probably most of the time! :rolleyes:

[gaseavey]

I was also using the mouse wheel to scrool the zoom.

Thanks for the inputs.