Don't upscale/smooth the zoom view
When I zoom in the Library or Editor or retouching view, I can zoom as far as it will go (1600%) and still not see pixel blocks. I assume that the underlying viewer code is smoothing or upscaling the image. For all work of this type, whether it’s culling or retouching, I would find it more useful to see the pixels when zoomed in far enough.
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Comments9
Claus Giloi
Nov 7
Thanks! Yes I just tried it and it now behaves just light Lightroom does for me… maxes at 1600% with distinguishable pixels. Really appreciate the change!
Ryan Cush
Nov 7
@Claus Giloi just making sure you saw that this made it into yesterday’s release. There is a new Preferences setting to enable it. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Ryan Cush
Nov 1
Thanks @Claus Giloi, you’re exactly right! Every view in the app smooths the image at every zoom level. That’s the right call when you’re zoomed out, but once you’re past 100% it blends each pixel into its neighbors, so even at 1600% you get a soft blur instead of real pixels. Not what you want for culling or retouching.
The fix is to keep the smoothing when zoomed out and switch to sharp, square pixels once you zoom in past 100%. One detail I need to get right: when you first zoom in, the app briefly shows a lower-resolution preview while the full-resolution image loads, and I only want to show hard pixels from the real full-resolution image (otherwise you’d see blocks bigger than your actual pixels, which would be misleading).
This should be a pretty easy change. Would you rather see the hard pixels start right at 100%, or only from around 200% and up?
Thanks for the great suggestion!
Claus Giloi
Nov 1
I hadn’t consider the need for smoothing when zoomed out… does it cause aliasing or moiree otherwise? Naively, I would think an image editor would avoid smoothing altogether.
Ryan Cush
Nov 1
Good question. When you’re zoomed out, each screen pixel covers several pixels of your image, so the app has to decide what to show there. Smoothing averages them, which is what your photo really looks like at that size. Without it, each screen pixel just picks ONE of the image pixels and ignores the rest. And that’s exactly what causes aliasing: jagged edges, moiré on fine repeating detail like compound eyes or scales, and a shimmer as you zoom or pan because a different pixel wins each time.
So your instinct is right for zoomed in, where smoothing makes up in-between values that aren’t in your file. Zoomed out, it’s the reverse: skipping the smoothing would show you patterns that aren’t in your file. Pretty sure Photoshop and Lightroom both work the same way.
Claus Giloi
Nov 1
Thanks! I hadn’t considered that resampling necessarily involves a form of smoothing. I guess I vote for 100% for the transition point, though if that leaves effects as you zoom in, I’m sure 200% would be fine too. When I zoom way in to see how sharpness looks at the pixel level then it’s usually well past that.
Ryan Cush
Nov 1
Actually you got me digging deeper into this and I realize that Lightroom also smooths at full zoom. I changed Macro Studio to show pixels and it’s super blocky (as expected). Here is the eye of an ant, with the pixel version shown on the right. LrC matches the left (Macro Studio current view). Are you sure you would want to see actual pixels? Which other apps show you that, as a point of comparison? I could also implement it as a Preference with default off.
Claus Giloi
Nov 1
I just checked Helicon and at 1600% the patchwork of pixels is clearly visible. I use Lightroom (cloud version) on Windows, and when I zoom in far enough I also get the tiled view I expect, so I’m not sure why we are seeing different things there.
When using any image editor, I would much prefer the fully blocky view on the right.
Ryan Cush
Nov 1
Interesting, maybe LrC (which I’m using) works differently from the cloud version. In any case, Yes I can add it, and will make it a preference setting. Thanks for the suggestion!